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| Livestream @10:30 a.m.: 18th Sunday After Pentecost “St. Isaac Jogues” September 27, 2026 |
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Posted by: Deus Vult - Yesterday, 03:52 PM - Forum: September
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Fr. Hewko's Mass for the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost will be livestreamed at 10:30 a.m. eastern time
“St. Isaac Jogues”
September 27, 2026 (NH)
PRAYERS WHICH MAY BE SAID AT THE OFFERTORY:
WHEN THE PRIEST OFFERS THE HOST-
I place upon the paten my heart, the hearts of all those near and dear to me,
especially the hearts of my relatives; the hearts of all those for whom I have
promised to pray; the hearts of all those who have injured me; the hearts
of all those whom I have injured; the hearts of all the agonizing.
Jesus, when Thou changest the Host into Thy body, change our hearts
into hearts pleasing to Thee.
WHEN THE PRIEST OFFERS THE CHALICE-
I place within the chalice the souls of all the faithful departed, especially
my relatives and all those for whom I should pray; the souls for those for whom
I may have forgotten to pray; the souls most devoted to the Precious Blood,
the Sacred Heart, and the Blessed Virgin; the souls of the most abandoned.
Jesus, when Thou changest the wine into Thy Precious Blood, bring these
poor souls from their place of suffering into eternal happiness.
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| Poland: Priest dies in knife attack at Benedictine convent |
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Posted by: Stone - 09-25-2026, 07:42 AM - Forum: Anti-Catholic Violence
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Priest dies in knife attack at Benedictine convent
A 31-year-old Ukrainian stabbed five people, including three priests and two laypeople, at the Benedictine foundation this morning.
Sep 24, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — A priest died in the wake of a knife attack at a Benedictine convent in southeastern Poland.
According to Polish Catholic outlet Polonia Christiana, a 31-year-old Ukrainian stabbed five people, including three priests and two members of the laity, a man and a woman, at the monastic foundation in Jarosław (pronounced ‘Yar-o-swaf’) this morning.
Fr. Stanisław Zbojnowicz died from his wounds.
“Today around 9:30 AM (local time), police received a call that, on the premises of the Jarosław abbey, which is on Benedictine Street in Jarosław, a Ukrainian citizen had attacked a man with a knife,” said Anna Długosz from the district police headquarters.
Polonia Christiana reported that all of the wounded were taken to the hospital. Reports differed over how many priests had died. The earliest reports said that one had succumbed to his injuries, but at 2 p.m. local time, Rzeszów Cathedral announced over Facebook that two priests had died.
However, Polish media later reported that one priest is dead. Two others are in serious condition.
Rzeszów Cathedral apologized for its mistake “and for the pain it may have caused.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that the killer is Ukrainian and in the hands of Polish police.
“He will be punished to the full extent of the Polish law,” Tusk wrote. “I join with the loved ones of the victims of this brutal attack in their suffering.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also condemned the attack.
The knifings follow increasing tension in Poland regarding the presence of the millions of Ukrainians who fled from the nearby war with Russia. Jarosław is located about 25 miles from the Ukrainian border. However, the UK’s Sky News reported that the alleged killer, Ihor M., entered Poland earlier today from Germany.
According to the Hungarian Conservative, the suspect “first entered a kitchen inside the abbey complex, where he took a knife.” He then stabbed a priest in “the adjoining café area” before entering the church. Confessions were being heard, and the church was filling with the congregation for the 10 a.m. Mass. Here, the suspect stabbed two more priests, as those gathered tried to stop him.
A motive for the attack has not yet been revealed.
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| Which Fulton Sheen Did Leo Just Beatify? |
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Posted by: Stone - 09-25-2026, 07:39 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Which Fulton Sheen Did Leo Just Beatify?
Sheen defended traditional Catholicism, embraced Vatican II, praised Teilhard, and opposed the SSPX. What does his beatification mean for Tradition?
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Chris Jackson via Hiraeth in Exile | September 25, 2026
The Bishop Who Warned Catholics Away From Tradition
On September 21, 1978, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote to a Catholic mother of eight children who was concerned about a friend attending Mass with the Society of St. Pius X. Sheen urged the woman to persuade her friend to leave the Society, warning that continued involvement could lead her family into schism and even heresy.
Then he offered an extraordinary defense of the postconciliar liturgical reform. The changes introduced under Paul VI, Sheen maintained, had merely changed the Mass from Latin into the vernacular.
That was essentially his explanation.
This was nine years after the promulgation of the new Roman Missal, from a bishop who had attended Vatican II and spent decades teaching Catholic theology. The letter, along with a remarkably forceful rebuttal by Dr. EuGene McKenzie of St. Marys, Kansas, appeared in the November 1978 issue of The Angelus. I republished the exchange in Hiraeth in July.
Yesterday, September 24, 2026, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle formally declared Sheen blessed at a ceremony in St. Louis, acting as Leo XIV’s representative. Tens of thousands gathered to honor the man whose extraordinary preaching had once brought Catholic doctrine into millions of American living rooms.
Both episodes belong to Sheen’s life.
The bishop who explained the Holy Sacrifice with such extraordinary eloquence was also the bishop who dismissed traditional Catholics’ objections to the new rite as though somebody had merely switched languages. The television evangelist who fearlessly denounced Communism later celebrated Vatican II as a revolution in the Church’s relationship with the modern world.
Which Sheen is being presented for our admiration? And what might his elevation accomplish for the postconciliar Church under Leo?
The answers require looking beyond the familiar blackboard and cape.
The Fulton Sheen Traditional Catholics Remember
There are good reasons traditional Catholics remain attached to Sheen.
Born in Illinois in 1895 and ordained in 1919, he pursued advanced philosophical and theological studies at Louvain before spending nearly a quarter-century teaching at the Catholic University of America. His national radio ministry began in 1930. By the 1950s, Life Is Worth Living had made him one of the most recognizable religious personalities in the United States, reaching an audience that reportedly approached thirty million.
Watch those broadcasts today and the contrast with contemporary Catholic media is almost painful.
Sheen spoke unapologetically about sin, judgment, the Cross, marriage, chastity, confession, the Blessed Virgin and the supernatural destiny of man. He treated Catholicism as a coherent account of reality. His preaching was intellectually serious without becoming impenetrable, accessible without surrendering doctrinal substance.
His books display much the same confidence. Three to Get Married offers a profoundly sacramental understanding of marriage. The World’s First Love communicates a rich Marian theology. Communism and the Conscience of the West, published in 1948, reflects his longstanding intellectual opposition to Marxist materialism.
His understanding of the Mass was particularly striking. In a preface subsequently recalled by Dr. McKenzie, Sheen connected the altar and Communion rail to the primacy of sacrifice. The Eucharist was never merely a religious gathering with consecrated refreshments. Its sacrificial nature explained the very architecture of Catholic worship.
He also took priestly spirituality seriously. His commitment to a daily Holy Hour was characteristic of an intensely Eucharistic devotional life.
And he was an effective missionary.
For all his celebrity, Sheen understood the importance of conversion and dedicated enormous energy to supporting foreign missions. He directed the American Society for the Propagation of the Faith from 1950 to 1966, raising awareness and resources for Catholics in poorer countries. That concern for the missions would later become central to his participation in Vatican II.
There is considerable substance here. Anyone seeking an explanation for Sheen’s enduring appeal can find it without sentimentalizing the man or pretending that everything he said was correct.
His later enthusiasm for the Council is therefore a serious theological question precisely because his earlier Catholic formation was so substantial.
When John XXIII Opened the Doors
By the Council’s third session in 1964, Sheen had become one of its enthusiastic public interpreters.
In an interview conducted by Benedictine journalist Fr. Placid Jordan, Sheen praised John XXIII for opening a Church he described as having been closed to the world for centuries. He portrayed the Council as a revolutionary redistribution of intellectual and ecclesiastical initiative, celebrated its challenge to entrenched assumptions, and likened the experience to a new Pentecost.
He had no doubt that its momentum would continue after the bishops returned home.
His language was revealing.
Sheen believed the Council had liberated missionary initiative, opened Catholics to non-Western civilizations, strengthened episcopal collegiality and encouraged a Church too accustomed to administering existing institutions to rediscover its missionary vocation.
These were sincerely held convictions, and they reflected genuine concerns. Wealthy dioceses could become complacent. Missionary territories needed resources. Bishops had responsibilities beyond constructing buildings and counting parishioners.
But there is a striking historical irony in Sheen’s account.
Here was a man whose radio broadcasts had reached millions since 1930, whose television programs drew an audience most Catholic evangelists today could scarcely imagine, and whose missionary organization operated across the world.
Yet he was describing the preconciliar Church as though she had spent centuries behind locked doors.
His own career disproved the caricature.
Pius XI had hardly been indifferent to worldwide evangelization. Pius XII had repeatedly addressed the Church’s missionary obligations. Catholic missionaries were establishing churches, schools, hospitals and charitable institutions throughout the developing world long before John XXIII announced an aggiornamento.
There was legitimate room to reform ecclesiastical administration. But Sheen’s enthusiasm risked treating changes in pastoral method as though they represented an unprecedented discovery of the Church’s mission.
For traditional Catholics, that distinction remains central. The Church may improve how she communicates the deposit of faith. She cannot discover, after nineteen centuries, that her previous understanding of her relationship with the world was fundamentally mistaken.
The Optimism Survives the First Signs of Disaster
By January 1970, Sheen had considerably more evidence with which to evaluate the Council’s implementation.
He appeared on William F. Buckley Jr.’s Firing Line shortly after leaving the Diocese of Rochester. Buckley pressed him about the turmoil in Catholicism, declining religious practice and the apparent unwillingness of ecclesiastical authorities to discipline public dissent.
Sheen defended the Council as the means by which the Church had begun relating herself more effectively to the modern world. When Buckley raised the decline in Mass attendance, Sheen suggested that the Council’s effects would require considerable time to mature.
That exchange captures the difficulty with Sheen’s conciliar optimism.
By 1970, the liturgical upheaval was no longer a prospective reform described in carefully drafted conciliar documents. The Roman rite had been extensively rewritten. Catholic institutions were experiencing widespread confusion. Priests and religious were leaving their vocations. Traditional practices were disappearing.
Sheen continued to believe that the new ecclesiastical orientation would eventually produce renewal.
It is possible for a pastor to remain hopeful amid serious difficulties. Indeed, despair would have been a far greater spiritual failure.
But hope is no substitute for an accurate diagnosis.
At what point should a bishop ask whether the anticipated renewal is failing because the reform itself contains fundamental defects?
At what point does defending the Council become an impediment to examining its consequences?
Sheen’s confidence in the reform deserves particular scrutiny because his theological instincts on so many other matters remained recognizably traditional.
The Ecumenical Bishop of Rochester
Sheen’s three years as Bishop of Rochester, from 1966 to 1969, offer a revealing glimpse of how his conciliar enthusiasm translated into pastoral practice.
He took a personal interest in proposals for cooperation between St. Bernard’s Catholic Seminary and neighboring Protestant theological institutions, including Colgate Rochester and the Episcopal Bexley Hall. Plans explored shared educational facilities and broader collaboration while preserving the institutions’ distinct identities. The proposed relocation did not materialize during his tenure; negotiations stalled and St. Bernard’s did not move to the shared campus until 1981.
Sheen also participated prominently in interreligious encounters. In February 1967 he addressed an interfaith gathering at a Rochester synagogue. A year later, he received a brotherhood award during Sabbath services at Mount Neboh Synagogue in New York and addressed the congregation from its pulpit. Contemporary Jewish press coverage emphasized the significance of that encounter for Catholic-Jewish relations.
The traditional objection to these developments requires precision.
Speaking to Jewish or Protestant audiences is hardly, by itself, a betrayal of Catholic doctrine. Sheen’s entire broadcasting career depended upon communicating with non-Catholics, frequently with remarkable success.
The question concerns the theological assumptions governing such encounters.
Pius XI’s 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos insisted that genuine Christian unity could never be achieved by treating incompatible confessions as equally legitimate expressions of Christ’s Church. Catholic charity and the desire for conversion had to remain inseparable from the Church’s claim to possess the fullness of revealed truth.
Vatican II introduced a substantially different public vocabulary concerning religious dialogue and the relationship between Catholics and non-Catholics. Sheen welcomed that change.
His critics must demonstrate where his particular conduct compromised Catholic doctrine rather than simply noting that he participated in an interreligious event. His defenders, however, cannot pretend that the ecclesiology behind these innovations presents no difficulty when measured against the earlier magisterium.
Sheen embodied that unresolved tension.
The Teilhard Problem
One episode in Sheen’s intellectual career presents an even sharper challenge.
In his 1967 book Footprints in a Darkened Forest, Sheen predicted that, once disputes surrounding Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s terminology had subsided, the Jesuit might be regarded alongside St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila as a major spiritual genius of the twentieth century.
This was remarkable praise, especially coming from a bishop with Sheen’s theological education.
Five years earlier, the Holy Office had issued a formal warning concerning Teilhard’s writings. It identified serious doctrinal errors and ambiguities, and urged bishops, religious superiors and seminary rectors to protect the faithful, particularly the young, from their dangers. The warning was reaffirmed in 1981.
Sheen’s enthusiastic assessment does not establish that he endorsed every proposition in Teilhard’s evolutionary theology. Nevertheless, comparing a thinker whose writings had attracted such a serious Roman warning to two great Doctors of mystical theology was an extraordinary exercise of episcopal judgment.
The problem reaches beyond one unfortunate literary prediction.
The traditional Catholic understanding of mystical union presupposes clear distinctions between nature and grace, Creator and creature, and the supernatural destiny bestowed upon man through Christ. Teilhard’s speculative system raised precisely the kinds of questions that required doctrinal caution.
Sheen knew that tradition intimately.
His willingness to promote Teilhard so enthusiastically suggests that his openness to postconciliar theological experimentation was much more substantial than a preference for pastoral friendliness or vernacular worship.
[...]
Does Beatification Settle the Theological Questions?
There remains the question of what Catholics should conclude from Sheen’s beatification itself.
The Vatican recognized an extraordinary recovery attributed to his intercession. The reported miracle concerned James Fulton Engstrom, an infant born in 2010 who survived after an extended period without detectable cardiac activity. Its investigation formed part of the cause approved under Francis.
Traditional Catholics should neither dismiss such testimony merely because they disagree with Sheen’s later theological positions nor treat the recognition as a blanket endorsement of everything he wrote.
Beatification permits public veneration under specified conditions. It does not declare every theological opinion of the blessed irreproachable. Sheen’s praise for Teilhard, his understanding of ecumenism, his enthusiasm for Vatican II and his assertions concerning the SSPX remain legitimate subjects of historical and theological examination.
For Catholics who question the authority of the postconciliar hierarchy, the process raises additional ecclesiological questions. Yet even within the ordinary distinction between beatification and canonization, yesterday’s ceremony does not resolve the doctrinal disputes surrounding Sheen’s later career.
Nor should criticism become a judgment upon his eternal destiny.
A bishop may possess extraordinary virtues, help bring souls to Christ and nevertheless make serious theological mistakes. The historical evidence concerning Sheen is sufficiently substantial that neither hagiography nor wholesale denunciation does him justice.
There is also a lesson here for those who remember the preconciliar Church primarily through its most charismatic public figures.
Fulton Sheen was a formidable defender of Catholic morality, an eloquent teacher of the supernatural life and a pioneering evangelist. He was also an enthusiastic participant in the conciliar transformation whose consequences traditional Catholics continue to condemn.
He lived long enough to witness the beginning of the postconciliar crisis, but died before many of its subsequent controversies developed. His optimism cannot simply be dismissed as dishonesty. Neither should it be treated as prophetic merely because he sincerely believed the promised renewal would eventually arrive.
The Blackboard Cannot Answer for the Council
Fulton Sheen’s life refuses to fit neatly into either the traditionalist or postconciliar portrait.
The old broadcasts remain compelling. His theological explanations can still instruct Catholics. His devotion to the Eucharist, missionary generosity and remarkable capacity to communicate the faith deserve serious attention.
But so do the disturbing features of his later career.
His celebration of Vatican II was unambiguous. His praise for Teilhard was extravagant. His defense of the new liturgy in 1978 was factually inadequate, and his warning against the SSPX dismissed concerns that traditional Catholics had compelling reasons to take seriously.
Yesterday’s ceremony cannot erase any of that.
Leo may sincerely regard Sheen as an exemplary evangelist whose television programs helped shape his own childhood faith. Others will use the new blessed’s legacy to vindicate Vatican II and challenge contemporary resistance to the postconciliar hierarchy.
For traditional Catholics, the obligation remains to examine the whole man against the perennial faith rather than allowing either affection or ecclesiastical ceremony to settle questions that require theological answers.
The great irony is that Sheen himself spent decades teaching his audience to think clearly about Catholic doctrine.
We should extend him the courtesy of taking that instruction seriously—even when it leads us to question Fulton Sheen.
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| Noah's Ark investigation enters new phase with drilling near Ararat |
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Posted by: Stone - 09-25-2026, 07:27 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Noah's Ark investigation enters new phase with drilling near Ararat
‘When we are done, university curricula will need to be rewritten, and Darwinism will be dismantled,’ Lauren Witzke declared.
![[Image: Untitled-23.png]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Untitled-23.png)
Remains of Noah's Ark with boat shaped rock formation at the spot near Mt. Ararat where it is believed that the ark rested in Dogubeyazit, Turkey
MehmetO/Shutterstock
(LifeSiteNews) — Researchers have begun drilling into a boat-shaped rock and mineral formation in the mountains of eastern Turkey believed by some to be the resting place of Noah’s Ark.
“Good morning from the outer rims of Noah’s ark,” the project’s marketing and fundraising director, Christian activist Lauren Witzke, wrote Tuesday on X while sharing aerial video footage of drilling on the Durupinar Formation site. “Core drilling has begun and the big bang evolutionists are already in damage control mode.”
Witzke works with Noah’s Ark Scans, which has said they are the “only team executing advanced underground scans” of the geological site.
According to the research team, “A preliminary technical report is expected in the coming weeks” that will “rank the strongest anomalies, refine the picture of deeper geology, and pinpoint where targeted core drilling has the best chance of answering the central question — moving the project from remote sensing to physical evidence.”
The group says the purpose of its efforts is to “determine whether the physical evidence can withstand scrutiny” and whether there is a “purely natural geological explanation” for the ark-shaped formation.
Witzke said their endeavor has been approved by the Turkish government and is being overseen by local universities, with “some of the most brilliant minds in the world” participating.
“When we are done, university curricula will need to be rewritten, and Darwinism will be dismantled,” Witzke declared. “This is the place where creation began anew.”
In 1959, a Turkish army captain discovered the large, boat-shaped formation embedded in the ground about 18 miles south of Mount Ararat, a location that lines up with the resting place of Noah’s Ark, according to Sacred Scripture. The book of Genesis states, “The ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” (Gen 8:4).
Researchers have since pointed out that the length of the formation exactly matches the length of Noah’s Ark as described in Genesis: 300 cubits long, or 515 feet.
Andrew Jones, a researcher at Noah’s Ark Scans, told GB News earlier this year that relatively new radar scans uncovered parallel cavities underneath the formation that are patterned like corridors in a ship.
“What’s interesting is that these voids are lining up below the ground – and they’re not just random,” he said.
These “corridors” lead to a central cavity that Jones calls “the atrium,” according to the New York Post.
In addition, thermal imaging shows a “ship-shaped hull still preserved deep in the soil,” Jones told GB News. “We have a team that is designing a robotic, remote-controlled device that could go down inside the holes and explore the tunnels.”
The research team at Noah’s Ark Scans pointed to what they say is further evidence that the boat-shaped formation indicates the resting place of Noah’s Ark. Soil samples within the ark-shaped formation show there is three times more organic matter and 38% more potassium within the structure than outside it.
“These changes are consistent with rotting wood,” the research team said.
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