The court order, in a lawsuit by the state of Louisiana, pauses a Food and Drug Administration regulation that greatly expanded access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
N.B. Who the hell does he think he is? Force me to choose between you, a mere cog in the machine, and the Tradition and I’ll choose the Tradition every time.
Arthur Roche has spent years doing the sort of damage that only a curial functionary can do well: dressing coercion in the language of pastoral concern, dressing rupture in the language of continuity, and then acting scandalized when Catholics notice the costume slipping. In his new OSV interview, he says liturgical debates should be viewed through the lens of unity, not personal preference; he repeats that the older rite was being used against the reform of Vatican II; he calls the traditional Mass a concession still available only “by papal authority”; and then, with a mix of hauteur and paranoia, asks why there is “all this noise” and says “something else is clearly afoot.” He even admits that silence, music, and reverence are part of the old rite’s attraction, and that this exposes a challenge to the Novus Ordo.
That last admission is key. Instead of battling some imaginary cult of nostalgia, Roche is staring straight at the obvious. People are drawn to a liturgy that feels sacred, sounds sacred, and behaves as though God is present. He knows it. He says it. Then he turns around and treats the people who want such worship as a political problem to be managed. The insult comes wrapped in a smirk. They come because the church is quiet, the music is serious, and the rite is reverent. But his answer is not repentance for the desert that replaced it, but another lecture on unity.
The truly revealing thing about Roche is not merely that he wants restrictions. Plenty of prelates want them. The revealing thing is that he already gave away the game in 2023, when his BBC remarks were widely reported as saying that “the theology of the Church has changed.” He explained the difference in terms that effectively conceded what defenders of the post-conciliar settlement had denied for decades: the old Mass and the new order of worship do not simply differ in language, calendar, or emphasis, but in the theological understanding conveyed by the rite itself.
That is why Roche deserves special contempt. For years, traditional Catholics were told that their objections were hysterical, that the new rite was merely the old faith in updated ceremonial dress, that continuity was obvious to any honest observer. Then Roche, perhaps too dull to understand the implications of his own candor, blurted out the truth. Yes, there was a change, the reform embodied it, and the inherited Roman rite sits there like stubborn evidence against the official fairy tale. And once he admitted that, the whole anti-traditional campaign took on a different light. It ceased to look like housecleaning and started looking exactly like what it is: an attempt to suppress a liturgical witness that remembers too much.
The following letter was transmitted electronically early this morning:
May 1, 2026
I am delighted to share with you the news that today Pope Leo has appointed Father Gary Studniewski and Father Robert Boxie to be Auxiliary Bishops of the Archdiocese of Washington. Both are exemplary leaders in our local church, and they will provide great wisdom, counsel and collaboration to me and selfless priestly service to the entire People of God in the District and the five Maryland counties.
Bishop-Elect Studniewski brings an immensely rich and varied life of accomplishment and service to his new role in the Church. A native of Toledo, Ohio, the Bishop-Elect was ordained for the Archdiocese in 1995 and has served as a parochial vicar; a distinguished chaplain in the United States Army rising to the rank of Colonel; and pastor of both Saint Peter's Parish on Capitol Hill and the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. As a dean, member of the presbyteral council and mentor to our newly ordained, he has shown the Christ-like love and priestliness that are emblematic of our presbyterate. In each of these roles, he has demonstrated profound faith, collaborative leadership, pastoral sensitivity, initiative and zeal, making him an ideal candidate for the episcopacy.
Bishop-Elect Boxie was born and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana. After graduating from Vanderbilt and Harvard Law School, he came to Washington to clerk for a federal judge and then work in a law firm, and during those years felt an ever-deepening confirmation of the call to the priesthood that had come to him earlier in life. He was ordained for the Archdiocese in 2016 and received his first assignment as parochial vicar at Saint Joseph in Largo under the tutelage of Bishop Roy Campbell, who was a wonderful mentor to him. Presently, Bishop-Elect Boxie is the Catholic chaplain for Howard University, where he has deeply enhanced the ministry and community there, while building a chapel and dramatically renewing the Sister Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center. He has a priestly heart and keen intelligence, as well as the prayerful compassion and evangelizing core that will be a great gift to our local church in deepening our outreach to all and helping particularly to enrich our black communities.
Today the Holy Father has also announced the appointment of Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala to be the new bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia. All of you understand how great a loss this is for the Archdiocese. Bishop Menjivar's pastoral love and zeal, as well as his passion for justice and sensitive care for the Hispanic and immigrant communities of our Archdiocese have planted seeds of grace that will yield a harvest here for decades to come. Our consolation is that the people of West Virginia will have a splendid new bishop to continue the work that Bishop Brennan has undertaken there, and for that we give thanks.
Finally, Pope Leo also announced today that he has accepted the resignation of Bishop Roy Campbell as auxiliary bishop of Washington. To Bishop Campbell, who has so magnificently served as pastor and shepherd within our local church, our only words must be thanks. It was a great gift to the Archdiocese that God called Bishop Campbell from his life as a successful banking executive to enter the pathway to the priesthood and ultimately the episcopate. His wisdom, prudence, and love for Our Lord and Our Lady, combined with a keen mind for administration and a caring heart for the poor and the marginalized to provide for us a magnificent leader for the life of our Archdiocese. And his particular care for the black communities of our Archdiocese is an immense grace to our local church. Bishop Campbell will continue as pastor of Saint Joseph until July. It is a fitting tribute to him that Bishop-Elect Boxie, whom Bishop Campbell formed in his f irst assignment, now has been appointed a bishop on the same day that Bishop Campbell retires as auxiliary bishop.
I give thanks to Pope Leo for his great care for the people of the Archdiocese of Washington, and for providing to our local church and to the people of West Virginia such splendid episcopal leadership. And I thank Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who has done so much to make these appointments possible during his service as our Papal Nuncio. Most importantly, I give thanks for all of you in your priestly sacrifices and generous faith.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Robert Cardinal McElroy Archbishop of Washington.
This from James the Catholic @thetexastrad:
“ @RealCandaceO continues Catholic Maxxing as she reveals she recently got confirmed in the faith, in the Traditional Rite, by a cardinal, on a recent trip to Rome.
May God continue to bless and keep her.”
James the Catholic names it: “Catholic Maxxing.” Read it again: “by a Cardinal”. Why go to Rome to get a sacrament readily available in almost any parish here at home? It’s just ever so slightly better than receiving the sacrament from, say, a mere priest with delegation in a plain old US parish. And so much better for “Internet beauty contest” purposes. Much more click-worthy. Admiring glances can be counted ever so much more efficiently on the Internet.
Candace got clicks, no doubt. Everybody wants to see the pics of her and the Cardinal who confirmed her. Or at least the pose in a beautiful Roman church with her photogenic family. Big news! We’re living large on the internet, now. Distraction from the hum-drum details of daily life in abundance. Etc.
There are any number of internet-induced mental illnesses and moral sicknesses. “Looks Maxxing” is the current rage, where any medical, pharmacological or surgical, intervention is sought to “improve” appearance. No thought of consequences in 50 years. If one lives that long, such that all the surgeries begin to fall apart and the drugs wreak havoc on the system. But the mania is driven by the extreme superficiality available on the Internet: appearance is everything.
Porn is another aspect of online activity that presents a constant moral danger to anyone viewing a screen or phone.
Addiction looms.
Catholics who can run with the photogenic crowd, for a while at least, in their youth, can get free online entertainment. They can collect likes, followers and “friends”. They can compete for the “trad chad” title and tout their “clout”.
But images are needed. Feeding the voracious appetite for photos, pics, and getting clicks sends the potential chad trad on a constant hunt for new thrills and chills.
Well, going to a trad group known for generously offering conditional Confirmations can get you a photo op afterward with a REAL trad Archbishop, consecrated in the REAL old rite. Wow! And the vestments will provide the super “drip” that all the kids like! Such is sure to look swell on my Insta and social media. I will win the admiration of all my friends and countless strangers, too!
Catholic to the max. Catholic Maxxing victory. Marinating in self satisfaction results. But only for a while ….
Many young sub-25 individuals without fully formed brains are madly putting everything on the internet. As are many whose brains are only recently fully formed.
Sure, the first thing sketchy bad actors do is block anyone who might track and identify their psychopathic and anti-social behavior. Comfort is measured by cushioning oneself from the nasty consequences of personal misbehavior as long as possible. While, no doubt, assuring oneself the personal content can be otherwise conceal from certain unwanted prying eyes as occasion warrants. Good luck with that. In any conflict with AI and big internet the odds are always stacked against the lonely individual without a millionaire lawyer.
Now, on to the next online competition for most views, likes and retweets. Catholic to the max! Well, at least superficially. They won’t really find out about the IRL, will they?
As the Society of St. Pius X continues preparations to consecrate several bishops without a papal mandate, leaders within the group have begun preparing the ground for the seemingly inevitable canonical consequences.
Pagliarani has stated that consecrating new bishops is essential to securing the society’s future, ensuring that it has the sacramental means to ordain priests. He has also stated that the work of the society is itself essential because, according to him, “in an ordinary parish, the faithful no longer find the means necessary to ensure their eternal salvation.”
At the same time, the SSPX have insisted that any dialogue with the Vatican must include matters of doctrine and ecclesiology over which the society “disagrees” with the Church, “particularly regarding the fundamental orientations adopted since the Second Vatican Council” — something the Holy See has said it will simply not accept.
Through all of this, the society’s leadership has appeared to strike a tone of aggrieved seekers of compromise, while insisting their illicit consecrations will go ahead without papal mandate.
Last Sunday, the society’s Bishop Bernard Fellay appeared to warn supporters of the group that “there is an enormous probability that all of you, we included, may be excommunicated, declared schismatic” by the Vatican if the consecrations proceed as expected.
Although Fellay claimed “there is a very high probability” that everyone — bishops, priests, and laity — affiliated with the SSPX would be canonically excommunicated “because they [the Vatican] already said it in public,” the Vatican has made no such statement, and the assertion is not supported by the relevant canon law on the subject.
However, the bishop’s statement appears in line with an SSPX communications strategy, to portray itself as a the victim of a vindictive and unreasonable Vatican, unwilling to meet its supposedly modest requests.
Key among these “requests” has long been an audience for its superior with Pope Leo XIV. And, as the scheduled consecrations draw closer, those around the SSPX and sympathetic to it have increasingly highlighted Leo’s refusal to meet with Pagliarani as evidence that Rome isn’t interested in reconciliation — and is even goading the SSPX into a fuller and more formal breach.
But while that portrayal might serve a convenient narrative, the reality is Leo’s refusal to meet with the SSPX leadership is more likely to be an act of charity towards the society’s leaders, and a desire to keep a moment of ultimate crisis at bay for as long as possible.
More: https://x.com/frbmulcahyop/status/2049907481933975558?s=46&t=IydJ-X8H6c0NM044nYKQ0w
The following is a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts press statement…
Fordham University in the Bronx is one of America’s leading Jesuit institutions of higher learning.
In what must be a first for the Catholic Church in the United States, Fordham President Tania Tetlow is the daughter of a former Jesuit priest.
A supporter of same sex marriage, the ordination of women and the LGBT agenda, Tetlow has characterized the traditional understanding of gender as “fundamentalist.”
She is a friend and ally of homosexualist priest James Martin.
Now, Tetlow has expressed, publicly, her rejection of perennial Catholic teaching on the impermissibility of artificial birth control.
Earlier this month, in response to a student government proposal to allow the distribution of contraceptives on campus, Tetlow stated:
“I will tell you that, like the vast majority of American Catholics, I disagree with the Church on its policy on contraception, but it is the Church’s policy and, as a Catholic institution, we don’t violate that.”
On April 28th, reporter Matt Lamb of LifeSiteNew contacted the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, seeking a comment.
League Executive Director C. J. Doyle issued the following statement:
“Jesuit higher education in America is in an advanced state of apostasy and has been for decades.
This is reflected in every aspect of university life: the choices of commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients; the public figures who are given platforms; the persons invited to serve on boards of trustees; the persons hired as administrators and faculty members; the student groups which are recognized and funded and afforded access to university facilities; the provisions for student health services; the links to institutions which offer students internships; and the ubiquitous LGBTQ advocasy.
Fordham is no different. It is a corrupt, secularized, post-Christian institution.
Its statement of Fordham Values never mentions Jesus Christ or the Catholic Faith, while its Mission Statement ignores Christian formation in favor of “the living tradition of Catholicism.”
Its list of commencement speakers include such pro-abortion public figures as Senator Chuck Schumer; Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo; Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III; Irish Presidents Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese; and broadcaster Chris Matthews.
This year’s commencement speaker will be former NBC Today Show host Hoda Kotb, long known for her support for homesexual causes.
Fordham hosts two undergraduate same sex organizations, the Pride Alliance and the Rainbow Alliance.
It also sponsors a plethora of other groups and events, including The LGBTQ and Ally Network of Support.
Fordham’s formal prohibition of contraceptive distribution on campus is fraught with loopholes.
President Tania Tetlow’s candid remarks are emblematic of a pervasive university culture of systemic institutional rejection of Catholic teaching.
Tetlow made her remarks confident that there would no consequences for her public dissent from Catholic morality—no repercussions from the Board of Trustees, no rebuke from the parent religious sponsor—the Eastern Province of the Society of Jesus—no walkaways by major donors, and no protests by students, faculty or alumni.
It would have been unusual, surprising and controversial had the President of a Jesuit university publicly defended Humanae Vitae or spoken out about the right to life.
That would have provoked protests.
Tania Tetlow has, obviously, a lucid appreciation of her position in the mainstream of American Jesuit culture.
Institutions like Fordham were built by and for Catholics. They are now controlled by assimilated, culturally conforming, modernist progressives, or who, in another time, would have been called heretics.
Faithful Catholics have been dispossessed. What has happened to American Catholic higher education since the Land O’ Lakes Statement has been, arguably, the greatest dispossession of Catholic property and institutions since Henry VIII seized 900 religious houses in England and another 200 in Ireland.
Institutions like Fordham need to be reclaimed for the Faith and for the Catholic community.”
C. J. Doyle is an alumnus of Jesuit administered Boston College. Doyle was a freshman in 1972 when BC separated from the New England Province of the Society of Jesus to become a secular, non-profit Massachusetts corporation, the Trustees of Boston College, Incorporated.
C. J. Doyle’s remarks were included in a story published today, April 29th, in LifeSiteNews.
If you wish to support our work, you may now donate to the Catholic Action League using SwipeSimple.
@FrLavery:
Below is a quote from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, the great anti-modernist theologian, writing on the danger of an excessive preoccupation with theological complexities leading, ironically, to the loss of that simplicity of mind which is needed to see clearly, and the inability to correctly perceive theological truths.
The remedy, he says, is devotion to Mary, especially consecration to her as recommended by St Louis de Montfort. By this means, piety prevents learning from becoming an obstacle to the truth rather than a benefit, and one is able to see the truth clearly and with simplicity rather than it being obscured in the entanglements of the mind.
From his book, The Priest in Union with Christ, from the chapter on union with Mary:
"Problems of philosophy, of
theology, of history, of canon law—these are their constant pre-occupation. Sometimes they become so entangled in the complex network of these problems that they lose that higher simplicity of mind which is essential for preserving a wise and correct critical faculty—all the more necessary as the problems
become more complex. In other words, their intellectual pursuits are no longer sufficiently inspired by the spirit of faith and of love for God and for souls...
"They find themselves entangled in a maze of questions, possessing no unity of mind. Why? Because they lack that supernatural spirit which is essential if they are to order their study correctly towards God and the saving of souls.
In a word, their outlook is almost exclusively directed towards externals, it is too superficial, too complicated. Their mind lacks unity, depth, and elevation—or, as the moderns would say, the third dimension is missing. Extent and breadth of knowledge they possess, but no depth. Hence they are mentally immature and without that keen perception of intellect which is required if a priest is to have the critical faculty expected of him...
"In order to become a good priest, the seminarist or novice needs the help of a spiritual mother, holy, vigilant, brave, benevolent, loving, who will keep him on his course like the star of the sea; who, as the invisible mistress of his soul, secretly but none the less really and securely directs his intellect, will, and sense-faculties.
"I myself had personal experience of this need as a young student. At that time I was so engrossed in the many and varied questions of critica and metaphysics that I was in danger of losing my simplicity and elevation of mind and balanced judgment. It was then I realized that I needed a spiritual
mother with unlimited kindness and wisdom. This is easily understood when we remember how any child receives its early training."
“Redemptionis Sacramentum states that it is not licit to deny Holy Communion solely because a member of the faithful wishes to receive kneeling or standing. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal for the United States likewise says that standing is the norm, but communicants should not be denied Holy Communion because they kneel.”
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