The newly promulgated statutes of the Pontifical International Marian Academy, effective February 1 and published on February 7, should anger the faithful, as they seem to be yet another subtle attack on the Church’s perennial Marian patrimony.>The document includes the usual synodal garbage of “balance,” “dialogue,” and “intercultural encounter,” but what is more concerning is its stated aim of avoiding so-called “maximalism” in Marian devotion. This seems to be a sly attempt to cast suspicion on what has always been considered authentic Catholic piety. St. Louis Marie de Montfort, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and St. Alphonsus Liguori repeatedly argued that we cannot revere the Blessed Virgin “too much,” since devotion to her always leads to Our Lord Jesus Christ.>From its founding under Father Carlo Balić, the Academy existed explicitly to promote the excellence of Mariology and to foster Marian devotion as an organic expression of the sensus fidelium. Its original mandate presumed that Marian doctrine and devotion grow together, as they always have within the Church’s Tradition, from Ephesus through the dogmatic definitions of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, down to the flourishing of Marian shrines and popular piety across the centuries.

Originally published in Radical Fidelity. Read original article

I don’t have any idea why, but for the longest time I thought the National Catholic Register wasn’t as bad as the National Catholic Reporter.>I refuse to even refer to the National Catholic Reporter as a Catholic publication, lumping it into the same cesspool category as Religion Digital and Where Peter Is. But, like I say, due to some glitch in the fabric of reality, I thought the Register was slightly more palatable than the Reporter.>That was until a few days ago, when, slightly gorged on news about the SSPX consecrations, I decided to go clean my palate somewhere else than the usual sources I frequent. Suffice it to say, I discovered that cleaning your palate with the Register is like licking the bowl of a public toilet. Maybe I am harsh in my judgement of the Register but I came to this conclusion after I read two articles by Larry Chapp that confirmed his post-conciliar modernist clown status. I mean, let’s face it—even his name sounds like that of a third-rate comedian in a cheap suit telling humorless jokes somewhere in an air-conditionless bar in Las Vegas. I am not even going to discuss them here, but trust me when I say that if you want confirmation that the post-conciliar religion is not only poison to your soul but clearly also to your intellect, you will find the proof in Chapp’s two articles (here and here).

Originally published in Radical Fidelity. Read original article