Kim Jong-un

In a week which contained a lot of major news from the secular world, it might seem odd that my highlights are to do with an event that didn't even take this week - the Chartres pilgrimage. My primary concern is for the Church, for only the Church can save the world, and with that in mind I shall go on to address some of the events on the Chartes pilgrimage.

It is rather significant that the Chartres pilgrimage has become so famous. I had not even heard of it until som 4 years ago or so, but I shall have to agree with Michael Matt that it is one of the most significant events taking place in the Church today, although in his case he plainly states that it is the most significant, with which I do not quite agree. Along with its increasing profile, the mass has attracted higher profiles of celebrants. Last year it was Cardinal Raymond Burke, who is probably the closest thing we have right now to a champion of the faith. When Cardinal Burke celebrated though, it was without a position in the Curia, having been unceremoniously kicked out of his position as the head of the Apostolic Signatura (the Church's highest court) so that Bergoglio could railroad his full-throttled assault on marriage through easy annulments and sacreligious Communion.

This year's celebrant, therefore, would have to count as the most high-profile yet. In Cardinal Sarah, we had the head of the Congregation of Divine Worship, the man in charge of not only the Mass but the administration of all sacraments. Yes, there are bureaucratically speaking other higher-profiled cardinals - the secreatary of state comes to mind - and even with regards to Catholicity the prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith ranks higher. However, in his capacity as head of worship, he ranks second only to the pope, so one is entitled to say that they don't come much higher than Cardinal Sarah. Also in terms of standing up for the faith, Cardinal Sarah is one of only 2 cardinals under the age of 80 - the other being Cardinal Burke - who have consistently stood up against efforts to water down the faith, or to outright corrupt the faith (however tepidly).

It was therefore with great sadness that I read a piece written by Peter Kwasniewski titled Traditional Clergy: Please Stop Making “Pastoral Adaptations”. It quickly became clear that the piece was about the final High Mass at the Chartres pilgrimage, of which Cardinal Sarah had been the main celebrant. Among the 'pastoral adaptations' on show was reading both the Epistle and the Gospel in French, instead of Latin, and not bothering with having the proper orientations when reading Sacred Scripture, instead turning towards the people, and not even bothering to chant but rather speaking it out instead. These were grave liturgical abuses. It is unclear who was in charge of these abuses - the master of ceremony, the local bishop, or the cardinal are all potential agents. What cannot be denied, however, was that in perhaps the most prominent Tridentine Mass in the world today, we were being confronted with a very well-orchestrated Novusordoisation, and that ought to trouble us all.

If there is anything that the Novus Ordo has taught us, it is that slippery slopes are real, and once embarked upon one will quickly find oneself close to the bottom. It is therefore inexcusable that at the most prominent Tridentine Mass the celebrants would embark upon the same slippery slope which led us to where we are in NOChurch today, i.e., little if any reverence at Mass, with priests who treat the Mass as if it is their plaything, and laity who froth in anger at hearing that there are authentic Catholic alternatives. Another point that Dr. Kwasniewski made which is worth repeating is that Latin is the language of the Church, and the Chartres pilgrimage is the most international pilgrimage that we have today. It therefore makes little sense to have the readings in French when many of the attendees will be non-French. They could, if they so wished, read out in Latin according to the rubrics and then afterwards read in French (which is allowed by Ecclesia Dei, it turns out, although even that is a slippery slope) but that's not what they did. In other words, I am quite certain that whoever made the decision did it knowing full well that it was against the liturgical laws and against the spirit of the Tridentine Mass, yet did it anyway, perhaps to force the point that the Tridentine Mass has to get along with the Novus Ordo mass.

This being NOChurch times, of course, not everyone was upset. As I have previously mentioned, Catholics as a whole have lost the ability to get angry at anything directed against the faith. In "WHEREIN ROBERT CARDINAL SARAH GETS IT RIGHT AND FATHER Z DOESN'T " (I've no idea why he insists on capital letters for his headlines), a response to Fr. John Zuhlsdorf's Why we Say The Black and Do The Red, which was in turn a commentary on what Dr. Kwasniewski had wrriten , Fr. Allan McDonald chimed in that Cardinal Sarah was right to make adaptations in order to get people to feel at home, once again showing that the Novus Ordo has poisoned the minds of even many of those who say the Tridentine Mass occasionally. We don't adapt the Mass to ourselves; rather we adapt ourselves to the Mass, and the arguments he was making were well-adressed in Dr. Kwasniewski's original piece, which it seems blew completely over his head.

The best commentary on Fr. McDonald's piece came from Henry , who wrote:

A single instance of vernacular abuse, as at Chartres, is not a big deal. No doubt God will survive the desacralization of a couple of moments in this one Mass, and the

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There was a Pontifical High Mass held by a relatively young archbishop on the 28th of May. Much has been written about this Mass and especially the homily that accompanied it, but I would remiss if I did not take the opportunity to point out the fine work done by Olivia Rao in her article for The Remnant covering this event.

The piece was exemplary in its attention to detail and I especially enjoyed the list over all the celebrants. Virtually nothing was left to assumption, which is a rarity in modern reporting. Olivia Rao certainly deserves credit for her fine work and I hope to read much more from her in the future.

The archbishop in question was Achbishop Sample, one of the best bishops in the U.S. who for the most part gets it right and it was held at the Basilica of National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, the U.S. capital.  It is especially pleasing that he learnt the Tridentine Mass after Pope Benedict had issued Summorum Pontificum - the 10th anniversary of which the Mass was meant to celebrate (delayed due to construction issues ) - because he wanted to act in accordance with the pope's wishes. He says very reasonable things much of the time, with the odd Novusordoism from time to time, as even this homily proved.

The homily itself I must admit I have not listened to, but I have read a lot of reports on it and most of them have been positive. I have read, for instance, that he sees the liturgical revolution as a mistake, and he makes a point in highlighting that a lot of young people are attracted to the Tridentine Mass, thereby destroying the prejudice that it is a Mass which only caters to the "nostalgic", as Bergoglio put it.

He also spoke of "mutual enrichment" and this is the bit I don't like. I can certainly accept that he can't be seem to be making an unapologetic love poem to the authentic Roman Rite, but talk of mutual enrichment bothers me because it will inexorably lead us back to the mess which started all this stuff. Indeed, Tantumblogo had a similar reaction, writing "I also see basically no ways in which the Novus Ordo might enrich the TLM" and I cannot but agree. I do see one utility for the Novus Ordo though, and that is as a negative example. If the Tridentine Mass is Latin Rite worship as it should be, then the Novus Ordo Missae is 'worship' - or it's bad imitiation anyway - as it ought not to be. It serves the purpose of a cautionary tale, a warning to future generations of what to avoid and what not to do, and above all, of the dangers of allowing a bunch of atheists and heretics to butcher what is sacred for reasons most un-Catholic.

Christopher J. Malloy grapped with the question of aggiornamento in "Make Catholicism Relevant? Or Let it Be What it IS." I vote for the latter, for nothing is more irrelevant than something struggling to make itself relevant to fickle minds.

EcclesIsSaved continued his mocking of the bishops of England over their handling of the Alfie Evans case in "Eccles explains it to the bishops" and "English bishops to be replaced by jelly-babies", and the mockery is well-deserved. No insult is too great for these pathetic sorry excuses formen. In fact, Gloria.tv titled one of it's articles "Cardinal Nichols Defends Alfie's Murder" and I have to admit that the title is not misleading.

Donald Trump's admninistration's threats and warmongering continued, as newly-installed foreign minister (secretary of state as they call them over there) arrived in Saudi Arabia. I believe that was one of his first foreign trips. His very first foreign trip was to NATO headquarters if memory serves me right, which says a lot about the outlook of those serving in the Trump regime. In any case, when in Saudi Arabia he naturally didn't waste time threatening Iran.

The other Middle-Eastern state which receives  unconditionaly support from the U.S. is, of course, the zionist criminal state of Israel, whose crimes against the Palestinian people continue in full earnest in response to the Great Return March. Scores of unarmed and non-violent protesters have been short and killed, including journalists and medical personell. Bleeding-heart Trump and Ivanka cheer on, so I suppose we can only assume that whoever is in charge of their TV-watching has screened the broadcasts to leave out images of crying children, as no doubt they do when Trump watches images from Yemen. If we are to believe the 2017 Syrian false flag bombing, after all, we are to believe that Donald Trump launched strikes against Syria because bleeding-heart Ivanka saw images of suffering children and talked her daddy into bombing the bad man who was causing it.

One of my theories regarding why Donald Trump attacked Syria a month ago - following the 2018 hoax flag - is because he wanted to deflect attention away from the zionist crimes in Gaza. It worked largely well, as attention has mainly been on Syria since then.

In a rare piece of good news, the leaders of the two Koreas met last week and agreed to pursue peace and de-nuclearisation of the peninsula. Much credit has to go to Moon Jae-in, who has pursued an independent policy of seeking peace with the North and one suspects this has dragged Donald Trump into the process as he no doubts wants to claim the credit for it, as he does for much else even where he has had no hand in the achievement. That he took credit for 2017 being the safest year in aviation history, as well as taking credit for the defeat of ISIS in Syria, are two very glaring examples of this tendency.

The German problem continues in the Church, and this time it colluded...