Pope Francis vs The Vatican?

Pope Francis is now effectively at war with the Vatican. If he wins, the Catholic Church could fall apart

Could it?  I suppose.  Assuming it hasn't already.  The quote is the headline to Damian Thompson's article here.  Have a look.  It's an interesting point of view.

The Final Battle

From One Peter Five:

At the start of this work entrusted to me by the Servant of God John Paul II, I wrote to Sister Lucia of Fatima through her Bishop as I couldn’t do so directly. Unexplainably however, since I didn’t expect an answer, seeing that I had only asked for prayers, I received a very long letter with her signature – now in the Institute’s archives. In it we find written: the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.Don’t be afraid, she added, because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be contended and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. And then she concluded: however, Our Lady has already crushed its head.

                  -Carlo Cardinal Caffara of Bologna

" . . .an aggressive insolent faction . . ."

Following the infamous synod are you?  Another source of excellent commentary is Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment.  The latest essay is here.  But there's also this and this and this.  Not to be missed.  Clicke, lege.

Our Lady of Victories

All of my calendars give October 7 as the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.  And so it is.  But, as Fr Hunwicke explains

That great Pontiff, S Pius V, established the Feast of our Lady of Victories to celebrate the triumph of Christian arms at the battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, a victory won by the countless rosaries which clanked through the hands of the Rosary Confraternities of Western Europe. They begged God for the safety of Christendom against the invading Turk. Gregory XIII pusillanimously renamed the feast as 'of the Rosary', and popped it onto the first Sunday of October (a stone's throw from the Feast of the Protecting Robe of the Mother of God in some Byzantine calendars) where it stayed until the reforms of S Pius X. But, to this day, those who follow the Extraordinary Form are allowed, on the first Sunday of October, an External Solemnity of this feast. And, after all, no homilist could be forbidden to refer to this celebration as our Lady of Victories.

Dom Mark Kirby has a series of meditations on the Holy Rosary and the feast day here and here and a reprint of  Pope Leo XIII's Rosary encyclical Supreme Apostolatus Officio here.

Fr Hunwicke has a series of posts on Our Lady of Victories here, here, and here.  In the first of these you will find the above quotation.

Good-bye to Catholic Ireland

The blog Cor Iesu Sacratissimum has a fine review of Mary Kenny's book "Good-bye to Catholic Ireland" here.   I read the book when it first came out and commend to you both the book and the review, or as the reviewer calls it "the tribute".  Even if you don't get your hands on the book, (although you should)  do read the review.

The Synod Approaches

But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you shall have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save. 

I tell you naught for your comfort
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher. 

Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope? 

from The Ballad of the White Horse
   -G. K. Chesterton 

As the Synod of Doom, as Pat Archbold succinctly puts it, approaches some of the best of traditional Catholic blogdom has set up a war room, "a place where traditionally-minded Catholic bloggers, writers and commentators can write and comment about the Synod as it is happening."  You'll find it here.  It's brand new, and from the first few posts, not to be missed.