For, though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.  For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty to God, unto the pulling down of fortifications, destroying counsels, and every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God: and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ…
-- II Corinthians XX: III-V

The Development 
of 20th Century Thomism
By Hans Coessens

          I remember a few years ago having a discussion with a priest about receiving Holy Communion in the hand and I argued that this practice should never be done. It is borderline sacrilege and opens many doors to irreverence towards Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. I gave the example where tiny particles of the host may still be in the person’s hand and that still obviously contains the Blessed Sacrament. The priest told me that I was basing this view of mine on a doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas of substances which had been borrowed from Aristotle. I did not know at the time what to reply to him given he had discredited this. I only came to realize that this disregard for the Aristotelian notion of substances was being taught by possibly one of the most famous theologians of the 20th century, Karl Rahner. Rahner himself went to deny the doctrine of Transubstantiation and this was still being taught in many seminaries. The consequences have been disastrous and have led to a flat denial of the real presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The doctrine was not merely one invented from St Thomas’ borrowing of Aristotle’s notion of substances but was officially proclaimed dogmatic in the Council of Trent. This is a simple example of how a corruption in thought leads to a corruption in practice.

          The revival of Thomism in the late 19th century is owed to Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Aeterni Patris which was commissioned by his brother Giuseppe Cardinal Pecci and the German Jesuit Josef Kleutgen. This in essence gave rise to the refurbishment of the teachings of St Thomas. Not that they had in any way been abandoned by the seminaries and pontifical schools of the time, simply the emphasis on St Thomas' doctrine as perennial had been forgotten. It was also an opportunity for many to combat a prevalent philosophy which had become popular in the late 19th Italian Catholic environment...  Click Here to Keep Reading

Papal Infallibility
And its limitations

By Robert J. Siscoe

          Papal Infallibility was defined as a dogma of the Faith, in the year 1870, during the First Vatican Council.  While most people have heard of this dogma, few understand its true meaning and limitations.  It is not uncommon to find non-Catholics who believe the dogma extends to the moral actions of a pope, in such a way that he is said to be incapable of sin (impeccability).  Most Catholics realize that the scope of infallibility is limited to papal teachings on matters of faith and morals, but they often err by extending it beyond its boundaries; understanding infallibility as if it were a habitual active charism that prevents a pope from erring when he speaks on the subject of faith or morals.  This misunderstanding on the part of Catholics in recent decades has resulted in two opposite errors.  On the one hand, we have those who erroneously believe that whatever a pope says, regardless of how novel it is and how far it deviates from Tradition, must be accepted as an infallible truth, since “the pope is infallible”.  On the other hand, there are some who see apparent errors in the documents of Vatican II and believe that Papal Infallibility would prevent a true pope from ratifying such documents.  In both cases, the error is a result of extending Papal Infallibility beyond the limits determined by the Church.  Click Here to Keep Reading

The Rise of The Romish Papist
By Steven J. Alvey, Editor

For, though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.  For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty to God, unto the pulling down of fortifications, destroying counsels, and every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God: and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ…  -- II Corinthians XX: III-V

          Presently, as any objective observer would agree, the Catholic Church finds itself in a state of crisis.  Practice of the faith, as measured by attendance at church on Sundays, has fallen to below 25 percent while belief in transubstantiation and participation in confession once or more often each year have fallen to about the same level.  Somewhere around 90 percent of Catholics reject or are unaware of the Church’s teaching on contraception, while a majority of Catholics regularly vote for pro-abortion politicians.  

          The world, of course, has also fallen into a moral and cultural decline of epic proportions.  The problem is that the church was supposed to stand apart from the world and be a light in it, a city on a hill, easily distinguishable.  This has not been the case for these past fifty years.  In almost every important statistical and tangible way, the faithful of God’s church cannot be told apart from the secular, pagan, or protestant populations surrounding them.  When the divorce rate in the United States advanced towards 50 percent, Catholics joined the frenzy of serial adultery.  When Americans and Europeans left churches en masse, it was often Catholics leading the exodus.  When the world stopped having children, Catholics followed suit.  To go on would, of course, be futile.  These issues and others will, God willing, be analyzed in detail by our contributors in the years to come.  

          In the midst of this crisis we find ourselves surrounded by conflicting arguments about causes and solutions as Traditional Catholics and so-called conservative Catholics (the few of the latter that even acknowledge a crisis) try to determine where we went wrong and draft a blueprint for how to get out of this mess.  Detailed studies in causality and historical precedent will be forthcoming, but for now it seems only fair that the general angle of this periodical be stated as clearly as possible.  It is the opinion of this editor (and therefore the general view of this periodical and most of its contributors) that the most immediate cause of the present state of affairs is an abandonment of tradition and therefore it is fitting that most people will likely refer to The Romish Papist as a traditionalist periodical, which it most certainly is intended to be...  Click Here to Keep Reading

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New Article by Hans Coessens
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