
CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY
in the Twilight of Reason

Mary, Conceived
without Sin,
pray for us
who have recourse to Thee
DONE!
2004
Roman Martyrology
in English
is now Complete
![Christo confixus sum cruci. [Galatians 2:19]](images/crucified-martyrs-along-roadside-in-rome.jpg)
“Christo confixus sum cruci.”
(Galatians 2:19)
After over a year
of intense translation, comparative
analysis, and a resolute focus on
the actual text — as of today, the
Feast of the Solemnity of the Assumption
of the blessed Virgin Mary
body and soul into Heaven — and
to whom we dedicate this work
—on Friday August 15, 2025 we have
completed the task we believe
that God had placed before us under
he guidance of Mary Most Holy: the
bringing to the English speaking
world an English translation of
the 2004 Roman Martyrology. May
we merit in some measure to walk
among them.
We
are very pleased to present the
first complete English translation
of the 2004 Roman Martyrology
from the original Latin promulgated
nearly a quarter century ago by the Congregation
for Divine Worship and the Discipline of
the Sacraments in February of 2001 under
the authority of Pope John Paul II, and
printed in 2004 (by the Libreria Editrice
Vaticana).
This is too
precious a patrimony to leave Holy Mother
Church’s
children bereft of, with no accessibility
to it’s
imponderable depths, no glimpse into the
blinding heights to which their love inexorably
brought them through immeasurable pain.
If their story is no longer compelling,
no longer worth telling; if it has ceased
to be urgent, then the Communion of Saints
has been broken and we peer back through
indecipherable runes to a hallowed past
we no longer comprehend.
This translation
is not merely one of names and dates
only, but of the known details that culminated
in their martyrdom. These details are
both chilling and inspiring. They reveal,
at one and the same time, the heights of
sanctity to which men and women can rise
— and the depths of depravity and evil into
which they an descend.
For me, however,
and for others in the Anglosphere who have
been nourished, as it were, on the blood
of the Martyrs as Tertullian might say,
in our long and often painful journey to
Christ, their story is in some measure inescapably
our own. Their witness has sustained us
in dark moments; we may even dare say that
in studying them we have made many intercessors
... and even friends.
This meticulous
translation, carefully compared with and
curated through the original Latin text
beginning December 2024, is available to
be downloaded and printed — free,
in part or in its entirety. Gratis accepistis,
gratis date. (St. Mat. 10.8)
-
If
you wish to view, print,
or download the PDF
version of each month,
click here:
-
For
the
entire year
Martyrology in English
including
All Months
in a
single PDF file (810 pages), click
here:

-
For
the entire year
in the Original Latin
in a PDF file, click
here:

In the Immaculate
Heart of Mary,
Geoffrey K.
Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Boston Catholic Journal
www.boston-catholic-journal.com
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
See also:

(a Modern Edition)
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
MISFORTUNE
and what we should learn from the trials of Job
“Naked
came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return
thither:
the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath
pleased the Lord so is it done:
blessed be the name of the Lord. In all these things
Job sinned not by his lips,
nor spoke he any foolish thing against God.”
(Job 1.21-22)
Job
lost everything
Everything:
children, house,
health, good name, property ... you name it, and Job
lost it. Covered with boils from “the sole of his foot
to the crown of his head,” he sat upon the ashes he
poured over his head and scraped himself with a potsherd.
Even his wife reviled him: “Curse God and die.” Three
friends came, barely recognizing Job, and sat a week
with him in silence. They then proceeded to “console”
Job ... by convicting him of his sins ... sins he never
committed.
Finally, Job himself uttered what we all have uttered
at one time or another in our lives:
“Why did I not die at
birth, come forth from the womb and expire?”
In other words, would
that his nakedness had never been clothed in
honor and glory — for then he would not know the pain
of losing what he never had.
But God had,
“...
made a fence for him, and his house, and all his substance
round about, blessed the works of his hands, and his
possession hath increased on the earth?”
(Job
1.10)
God prospered Job.
The evil one, knowing
this, tore down the hedge, devastated Job’s house, and
tempted Job to despair ... to give up
on God.
And yet ... incredibly, “in all these things Job
sinned not.”
Job was blameless before
God.
We
know Job
We have
been
Job ... in
one form or another at some point, perhaps at many points,
in our lives. We have been devastated, deprived of what
we esteemed good, lost our health, our jobs, our dignity,
security ... and, for great sorrow, even our families.
How do we console ourselves? Most often, as Job’s friends
had consoled him, we tell ourselves that our misfortune
is, in some incomprehensible sense, just
... that we are suffering the rigors of an exacting
and ineluctable justice that we had somehow eluded for
sins or crimes we no longer remember ... from which
we had inexplicably managed to escape, and which have
finally caught up with us and demanded tribute.
However, the fact of the matter is that — at least in
the case of Job — Job’s misfortunes were not
just. There was no proportion between what he suffered
and what he had done — indeed, Job had done nothing
but good! Job’s misfortunes, we find, were not God’s
“payback.”
And neither are ours.
Even were justice
demanded of us for our sins — and unlike Job, our own
sins are many — we can never make adequate restitution,
never pay reparation, for we are too poor. We
had squandered that patrimony of grace which had been
given our First Parents in justice, and we forfeited
it just as they did — even after Baptism washed
us of that Original Sin, that primal effrontery through
which our patrimony became our poverty!
Only what is without
sin can cancel sin. And that justice has already
been rendered — through Jesus Christ on the
Cross.
Yes, God is just. But it was not Job — and it
is not us — it is God Himself who paid
the price of justice in the shattered humanity of Christ.
Rendering Justice to God
God did not – and
He does not – exact the restitution of justice
from us. We do not possess the
tribute, the wherewithal — and we are fools, or deceived,
if we believe that we can render justice
to God. Only God can render justice to God. Why?
Because the plenitude of justice that is
God and that is due God is infinite because
God Himself is infinite. His justice — like His
love, goodness, and mercy — is the perpetual act
of His being: it is, as it were, the very
fabric of His Being: a “Being-good,”
a “Being-loving,” a “Being-merciful”
... and a “Being-just”.
Love, mercy, goodness,
justice are not merely “parts” of God's Being
— rather, His being is a “Being-good,”
“Being-loving,” “Being-merciful” ... and
“Being-just.” These infinite and eternal
acts (the acts of being: a-being-loving,
a-being-good, a-being-just) do not simply coincide
with His Being as something extraneous to it — they
constitute His Being! To
sin against justice, then, is to sin against the infinite
justice of God Who alone is a Being-just
... and note merely a “just” being. How, then, can
finite man make infinite restitution?
We cannot. Only Christ, being God, could — on the Cross.
That is why Jesus is called, “the Just One.”
*
So, what of Job? What
of us?
We came into this world
with nothing. We will leave it with nothing. We think
that we have worked for, earned, all the good
things we enjoy, and reckon the day they may be taken
from us injustice, not understanding that injustice
was never done us, for we never merited, deserved,
any of these things. What, then, of all our hard
work and sweat?
Ask yourself from the depths of the truthfulness of
your being: have you worked harder,
more diligently, more desperately, more
deservingly, than the poverty stricken farmer
in sub-Sahara Africa? Why is he not adorned as
you? Why is his plate empty? Because you
are “more just” and these things are “more justly”
yours (your “due” in justice?) — but somehow
not his?
If you possess power, wealth, esteem, glory, in this
world, do not congratulate yourself on your diligence,
your “uncanny” insight, your “good luck” and success.
Given the blandishment of the evil one — the “father
of lies” — which we find in the temptation of Christ,
it is, I suggest, far more appropriate to tremble.
Behold Job. And also behold Christ — Christ Who was
also tempted by that same evil one who,
in his empty promise, is frightfully revealing:
“And the
devil led Him into a high mountain, and showed Him all
the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and he
said to Him:
To thee will I give all this power, and the glory
of them; for to me they are delivered, and
to whom I will, I give them.”
(Saint Luke 4.5-6)
Ask yourself soberly:
whence your prosperity, your power, your wealth?
From whom, and to what end? And at the
cost of whose dignity and through the poverty of how
many did you acquire it? Prosperity, many Protestants
hold, is a sign of God’s favor, a token
of His predilection: if you are “just” and “Godly,”
God will prosper you.
Misfortune and suffering, then, are —
much in line with the reasoning of Job’s “consolers”
— afflictions from God. They are the
penalty — meted out by God — for “injustice”
and “ungodliness.” Material prosperity, on the other
hand, together with wealth and power — these are
God’s blessings for the “just.” It
is, in a word, their “reward” ... their “due” in all
justice.
But it was not Saint Paul’s
... nor the “reward” due in “justice” to the other
Apostles:
“Even unto
this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked,
and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode;
And we labour, working with our own hands: we are reviled,
and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it.
We are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the
refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until
now”
(1 Cor.
4.10-13)
This was the insidious
trap set for Job by the devil through his “consolers”
... and by our own self-recrimination in the face of
misfortune. We are confronted with misfortune.
Who is to blame? With incredible subtlety, the devils
suggests that either we are
guilty — or God is! If we are not
guilty for this misfortune, then God is.
If God is not, then we are.
But neither is the
case!
In other words, Job brought
it unknowingly upon himself — and God (not
the devil, mind you ...) was perfectly willing to be
complicit in this injustice —by punishing Job for what
he did not do! What is more, He punished Job
by “unjustly” taking away “what was his.” It
was a masterpiece of illusion! Diabolically brilliant!
Job was tempted by the devil to despair in having
“unjustly” lost all that was “not his
in justice” to begin with!
In a supreme irony, Christ
was tempted by the same devil to idolatry through an
empty promise to give Him what was already
His to begin with.
Remember, who precisely was it who had
said that wealth, material prosperity,
and power was his to give? And
who was it that took it away from Job
– that was his to give and
his to take?
Misfortunes are not from God. Nor are
they the penalty of your sins, for you would then have
nothing (given your countless sins and the justice that
would be exacted for each.)
Misfortunes, suffering, want, pain, destitution, illness,
are not lofty, if cruel, tributes to justice! They are
evils! Evils out of which God ever brings good
... as He did with Job who, “in all these things
... sinned not.”
Misfortune is not of your
own making — still less is it from God. Saint Paul understood
this.
You must also:
“For our
wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against
principalities and power, against the rulers of the
world
of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness
in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armor
of God,
that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and
to stand in all things perfect.”
(Ephesians
6.12)
Let us see misfortune
for what it is — and not for what the “father of lies”
would entice us to believe. Evil is from the
“evil one,” endlessly contending with
the ever-redemptive love of God lifting us up from the
squalor of misery through the arduous path to holiness,
calling us from that relentless malice that would pull
us down to despair.
_____________________________________________________
*
Acts 7.52
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Boston Catholic Journal
www.boston.catholic.journal.com
May 26, 2025, Feast of Saint Philip Neri
Printable PDF Version
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Leo XIV Continues Francis’s
Obsessive Agenda:
Deconstructing the Catholic Church
What appeared
to be a promising beginning, is unfolding as not just
more of Francis, but the fulfillment
of Francis’s most obsessive — and destructive — agenda
for the Post-Catholic Conciliar Church of Vatican
II which, now more than ever, appears entirely estranged
from the Church that baptized, taught, blessed, sanctified,
and buried her children for the 2000 years prior to
that catastrophic Council that
“built bridges”
to the world by burning bridges to her past — and lost
God in the sorry trade.
Let us consider one change in appointments
that he has made — which is really no change at all
— that is indicative of more than his pontifical
and public posture; one which reveals a
decidedly “progressive” (.i.e. unorthodox) theological
perspective acquired under the tutelage of his predecessor,
promoter, and friend, Francis:
The Pontifical John Paul II Institute
for Marriage and Family Sciences
Leo indeed removed Cardinal Vincenzo
Paglia, a man of unenviable repute. However
... before we can applaud Leo for this
‘bold’
and
‘principled’
move, we must reconcile it with a more sobering
assessment in recognizing that Leo replaced him with
Cardinal Baldassare Reina, a man, by all accounts,
little — if any — better
than Paglia is!
Indeed, while Cardinal Baldassare
Reina is now Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical
John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences
— Paglia remains President of the Pontifical
Academy for Life!
Quite a shake-up, no?
No.
There is much more to this pontifical
legerdemain than this ecclesiastical shell game, and
the personalities that appear to prevail indicate more
about Leo than his growing absence of transparency ...
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
______________
“But
we have the mind of Christ.”
St. Paul
(1
Cor. 2.16)
“But
we have the mind of Francis.”
Pope Leo XIV: “I would
like to assure you of my intention to continue
Pope Francis’s commitment to promoting the
synodal nature of the Catholic Church and developing
new and concrete forms for an ever stronger synodality
in ecumenical relations.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Most Urgent Question of Our
Time:
“When
the Son of Man Comes, will He Find Faith on Earth?”
(St. Luke 18.8)
No more
stunning, no more frightening, and perhaps no
more ominously portentous words are spoken in all
the Gospels, in fact, in the entire New Testament
— perhaps even in the entirety of Sacred Scripture
itself; words that have become increasingly fraught
with significance with every passing year of the
most unfortunate papacy of Francis — a papacy not
just likely … but I believe with certainty
… will be understood not simply as among the worst
… but the worst … the most destructive to the Faith
and to the Church in the annals of 2000 years of
Church history.
Indeed, with every generation following that devastating
Second Vatican Council — that scorched earth assault
on Tradition and historical Catholicism — the question
increasingly verges on an implied and obvious answer.
Indeed, we must wonder if the question that Christ
poses … “When the Son of Man comes will He find
Faith on earth?” … is, in fact, spoken of this generation,
or of one soon — very soon, to come.
As with so many of Christ’s teachings, this troubling
question is too often and too deftly explained away
— especially by the overwhelming number of the liberal
theologians and bishops who have proliferated and
multiplied since 1962 — which is to say, by
“the learned and the wise”.
If we heed them, it would appear that either Christ
does not know what He is saying, or we
do not know what He is saying — although we all
agree that He said something ... that
sounds suspiciously clear.
We must, however, pay careful attention to these
twelve words, …. perhaps more now than at any
other time in Church history.
“When the Son of Man comes will
He find Faith on earth?”
These are twelve words, however, to which we must
pay careful attention, perhaps more now than at
any other time in Church history.
However reluctant we are to take Christ at His word
— which becomes increasingly inconvenient to us
— we must recognize that Jesus never spoke idly:
His words, His teachings — and yes, His Commandments
— were always uttered to one explicit end: the salvation
of souls — attaining to Heaven and everlasting happiness
and to avoiding Hell and eternal misery.
The Jewish religious authorities
— “the learned” of
His own time — had scornfully dismissed Christ’s
warning that not so much as stone would remain standing
in the great Temple 1
... the very Temple within which, 70 years later,
these words were fulfilled when Rome laid waste
in days what took 46 years to build.
We tend to view such alarming statements made by
Jesus — and there are many — with the same scorn
and disdain today.
Indeed ... what has become of the “Faith of our
Fathers?”
A mere fifty years ago we ourselves would have instinctively
replied “Of course He will find faith! There
simply must be some deeper, some obscure and less
evident meaning to this that we do not presently
understand — and what He appears to be saying,
He is not really saying at all. Surely the
“learned” of our own day can deftly explain the
answer to this troubling question. In the end, they
will conclude, Jesus is really asking something
entirely different from what He appears to
be asking and that it has nothing to do with
our very real defection from the Faith.”
It is likely that many Jews of Jesus’ time — both
the learned and the unlearned — had replied in much
the same way. In fact, they did.
In other words, to us, our faith, the Faith of the
Catholic Church for two millennia, could no sooner
disappear than ... well, the stones of the great
Temple 2000 years ago!
If, however, we take a careful inventory of our
present and undeniably dismal and increasingly scandalous
situation in the Church — especially as it has unfolded
in the last five decades — Jesus does not quite
appear as ... “perplexing” ... as so many apparently
make Him to be.
Candidly Ask yourself the following:
Has the Faith — the Catholic Faith — flourished
in the last 50 years, or has it withered?
Are vocations to the Priesthood and Religious life
growing or dwindling?
Are Catholics having more children or are
they having fewer children?
Are Missionary efforts, to the end of (dare
we say it?) “conversion” as mandated by Christ
encouraged as intrinsic to Catholicism
— or are they discouraged as impolite, obtrusive,
culturally imperialistic and inherently inimical
to the “Ecumenical spirit of Vatican II” — especially
as interpreted by Pope Francis for whom “proselytism
is solemn nonsense,” to use his own words, words
that mock the sacrifices of countless missionary
saints through the 2000 years preceding Vatican
II’s
“more enlightened” understanding of
the
Great Commission*?
Rather, we find that “conversion” to Christ and
His Church is actively discouraged — that
especially under Pope Francis it is no longer
understood as a holy and inherently necessary endeavor
— instead, it is disdained, even dismissed, as “socially
and culturally incorrect” — indeed, we find that
promoting our Catholic Faith — as Christ
has commanded us to— has been forbidden
by Francis and his “progressive” coterie of feckless
and disaffected cardinals and bishops! What pope,
prior to Vatican II, could ever have envisioned
this?
Is our understanding of the Catholic Church, as
an absolutely unique institution indispensable
to the ordinary means of salvation, emphasized
as urgently today (if it is emphasized at all) as
it was a hundred years ago? Fifty years ago? Indeed,
is the concept itself — of the singularity and indispensability
of the Holy Catholic Church — still deemed an actual
dogma and a viable concept at all?
For all our insolence and equivocation, we know
the answers, and we are uncomfortable with them,
for they fly in the face of Christ and all that
He taught — to say nothing of Sacred Scripture,
Holy Tradition, and the Sacred Deposit of the Faith
entrusted to the Catholic Church by God Himself.
Indeed, Christ’s question takes on a greater sense
of urgency still, for the sheep are scattered and
confused as never before. The papacy of Francis
has been disastrous for the Church. Why? Precisely
because he has taken Vatican II to its logical conclusion:
the irrelevance of the Church.
Ubi est Pastor?
Where is the Shepherd? Who is earnestly addressing
this spiritual malaise and religious decay due to
the indolence and dereliction of the vast majority
of American and European bishops who appear far
more eager for secular plaudits than the now quaint
and discredited notion of “the salvation of souls.”
Pope Francis has effectively declared this mandate
defunct in favor of the rehabilitation of bodies,
societies, economies, and “the environment”. That
the passing material environment of man is
infinitely less important than the eternal
abode of his soul, often appears to elude Francis.
Indeed, it appears to elude most Catholics whose
mantra increasingly coincides with the world’s:
Social activism! ... not interior conversion
away from this world ... and to Christ.
Shame! Shame on us! By our silence, our fear of
being disparaged by “other Catholics” for the sake
of Christ, we condone this travesty — are complicit
in it ... even promote it!
What will motivate us
to recognize, and to redress, this frightful and
ultimately deadly state of affairs?
There are, after all, other contenders in this world
for the souls of men ... seen and unseen! As our
own wick smolders, others blaze! The burning Crescent
of Islam, poised like a scimitar, and every bit
as deadly, glows and grows in the east, and with
it, not an ethnic, but a Religious
Cleansing to which the world remains indifferent
— an expunging of every vestige of Christianity
in partibus infidelium. And even Islam has
its secular collaborators: the European Union —
once a continent raised up from utter barbarism
to a civilization formed and ennobled by its Catholic
heritage — will no longer tolerate the inclusion
of its indissoluble Christian heritage within its
Constitution. Not only does it thoroughly repudiate
its own Christian cultural heritage — it prohibits
it — even banishes it! This is nothing less
than self-loathing. And perhaps it ought to be.
Surely, then, in our effort to remedy this impending
state of dissolution, we will first turn to our
bishops, since they are, preeminently, the “Teachers
and Guardians of the Faith”. But more often than
not — much more often than not — in the well-appointed
office at the end of the corridor we do not find
a shepherd of souls but a deeply sequestered, occasionally
avuncular, and predictably remote ... “administrator.”
Relegating his prime responsibility as Teacher and
Promoter of the Faith ... to others, in the form
of Lay committees and subcommittees largely “chaired”
by liberal Catholics more concerned with social
issues than the salvation of souls, are we confident
that the patrimony of our faith will somehow percolate
through this strata of already contaminated soil
and reach our children authentically and intact?
Is our fear mitigated ... or further exacerbated
... by our bishops’ resolute lack of diligence in
being attentive to what Catholic colleges and theologians
in their own dioceses are really teaching — and
who are teaching the teachers ... who, in turn,
are teaching our children?
Do you think that your bishop actually — that is
to say, cognitively — is aware of, or even concerned
with — what the teachers themselves are actually
teaching?
Not in this diocese. Not in Boston. In fact, Cardinal
Sean Patrick O’Malley had routinely feted, praised,
and held up as exemplary, the clueless “Catechists”
who churn out our children to the Sacrament of Confirmation
— with no clue whatever of that in which they are
being confirmed. By comparison, even the dismal
failure of our public schools in Boston must be
deemed a stunning success.
For most of us — especially in the Archdiocese of
Boston, but no less elsewhere — the answer is, as
they say, a “no-brainer:” it is a universally resounding
no. Most of us find, to our growing dismay
and deepening cynicism, that our bishops appear
to have “more important,” more ... “pressing” things
to do ... than to communicate the Faith to the faithful
... especially the children.
Really, we beg the question: if no one teaches the
teachers — who, then, teaches the children? If they
are not brought the faith by those to whom it has
been entrusted — the bishops, the episcopacy — who
will bring it to them?
Will they — how can they — acquire the Faith
... if no one brings it to them? Saint Paul is very
clear about this:
“How then shall they
call on him, in whom they have not believed?
Or how shall they believe him, of whom they
have not heard? And how shall they hear,
without a preacher? And how shall they preach
unless they be sent ...?” (Romans
10.14-15)
Ask yourself candidly: do you know more ... or less
... of your Catholic faith than your children? Very
likely more — although, in all honesty, it is probably
little. You politely assent to the now quaint Catholic
notion that “parents are the primary teachers of
their children,” but knowing little of your own
Faith, you simply shell out $175.00 per child and
pan off this grave responsibility to others of whom
you know nothing, and who themselves largely know
nothing of the faith they presume to teach. You
go through the motions as careless of what your
children are taught in their 10 years of “Religious
Education” as your bishop is of what the teachers
teach. 10 years later, and $1500 poorer per child,
you scratch your head and wonder why Johnny still
does not know God, and why Judy never goes to Mass
— and yet we have agreed that you know more than
your children ...
What, then, we must ask — with growing apprehension
— will your children teach their children
...?
What will they — who know even less than
you — teach those who know nothing?
Total Ignorance
The momentum, as we see, is inexorable — until it
culminates in total ignorance: every generation
knows less of their faith than the generation preceding
it. It is, in the end, the devolution from doctrine
to legend, from legend to fiction, and from fiction
to myth.
That is not just a poor, but a stultifying and ultimately
deadly patrimony.
This default — at every level — in transmitting
the authentic Catholic faith intact ... leaves Jesus’
question very suddenly very real.
“Recently, a Gallup poll was taken on Catholic
attitudes toward Holy Communion. The poll showed
serious confusion among Catholics about one
of the most basic beliefs of the Church. Only
30 percent of those surveyed believe they are
actually receiving the Body and Blood, soul
and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ under
the appearance of bread and wine.”
The problem is more than mathematical; as we have
seen, it is exponential. 70% of Catholics do not
possess this most fundamental, this most essential
understanding of the core article of genuine Catholic
doctrine: that “Unless you
eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His
Blood, you have no life in you.” Heavy stuff!
It is not just a matter of the greatest concern,
but nothing less than a matter of the gravest dereliction
that most Catholics do not realize — do not know
— that the very Mass itself is an abbreviation
of “The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass”, and that
it is really a Sacrifice, the actual re-enactment
of Calvary before their very eyes!
This failure of understanding ... culminates in
a failure in Faith. It possesses, in significant
ways, the remorseless characteristics of mathematical
certainties. Not understanding, grasping — having
never been taught — the most elementary features
of the faith, how can they be understood to possess
what they have not acquired, and how can they transmit,
pass on, what they do not possess? It is inescapable.
Prognostication, of course, is for fools.
But the words of Christ are certainties that will
come to pass.
“Weep not for Me, but for
your children”, 5
Christ told the sorrowing women on the road to Calvary.
Jesus’ question, then — “When
the Son of Man comes will He find faith on earth?”—
is not a “rhetorical question” at all; it is a question
fraught with enormous significance ... the
frightful answer to which appears to be unfolding
before our very eyes ... but that is if you take
Christ at His word — and given Jesus’ track record
on things yet to come, we would do well and wisely
to give pause for more than thought.
Are you worried now ...? Not nearly enough.
And this is all the more frightening still.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Printable PDF Version
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The Holy Catholic Faith
Where is it And Who is Keeping
it?

Has the
Post-Conciliar Church
Lost Custody of the Faith?
All indications are that is has.
The “Dark
Ages” — that disdainful term for the period in history following
the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. until the 15th
century (a period correctly described as the Middle
Ages) is understood by the secular world to have
lasted roughly 1000 years, beginning in Florence, Italy.
Within the
post-Conciliar Catholic Church, however, it appears
that the term extends well beyond the 15th century;
indeed, some 500 years beyond it! According to contemporary
Catholic thought articulated within the past five papacies,
the “Dark Ages” really ended in 1965 at the conclusion
of the Second Vatican Council. All the doctrines and teachings
prior to that Council were only imperfectly, deficiently,
and insufficiently articulated or defectively understood.
The 1000
Years of Darkness
Only
the Second Vatican Council finally attained to enlightenment
in the divine economy, and after 1,965 years of suspension,
it alone has provided the final, sufficient, and correct
understanding of God and Church, man and nature. Prior to
that, according to post-Conciliar thought, Catholics had
essentially lived in darkness, specifically the darkness
of the “pre-Conciliar Dark Ages.” It may be said that where
the Rational Enlightenment “saved the world from religion,”
Vatican II saved the Church from Catholicism.
Continue reading
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Martyrology for Today
Semen est sanguis Christianorum (The blood of Christians
is the seed of the Church) Tertullian, Apologeticum,
50
2004 Roman Martyrology by Month
2004 Roman Martyrology

Friday, August 23rd in the Year of Grace 2025
This Day, the Twenty-third Day of August
Saint Rose, virgin, who, already as a little girl of exceptional
austerity, in Lima in Peru, having assumed the habit of
the Sisters of the Third Order Regular of Preachers, was
devoted to penance and prayer and burned with zeal for the
salvation of sinners and of the Indians, for whom she longed
to give her life; she willingly subjected herself to all
afflictions, so that she might win them for Christ. Her
death occurred on the day following this one.
2.
Commemoration of Saint Zacharias, bishop, who is
said to have been the fourth to govern the Church of Jerusalem
after Saint James, the brother of the Lord.
3.
At Rome, in the cemetery Saint Lawrence on the Via Tiburtina,
the holy Saints Abundius and Irenaeus, martyrs.
4.
At Ostia on the Tiber, the holy martyrs Cyriacus and Archelaus.
5.
At Novae in Lower Moesia,
Saint Luppus, martyr, who is said to have gained
the freedom of Christ by the sword.
6.
At Aegeae in Cilicia, the holy martyrs Claudius, Asterius,
and Neon, brothers, who, accused of the Christian religion
by their stepmother, are said to have been beheaded under
the emperor Diocletian and the governor Lysias.
7.
At Autun in France of Lyon, Saint Flavian, bishop,
who flourished in the time of King Clovis.
8.
At Derry in Ireland, Saint Eugene, the first bishop
of Ardstraw.
9.
In the monastery of Saint Philip near Locri in Lower Calabria,
Saint Anthony of Hieracium, hermit.
10.
At sea, anchored far off from Rochefort in France, blessed
John (Protase) Bourdon, priest of the Order of Friars
Minor Capuchin and martyr, who, during the French
turmoil, enclosed in captivity with many priests, brought
comfort to his fellow captives until he was consumed by
disease.
11.
In the place Tavernes de Valldigna in the region
of Valencia in Spain, the blessed martyrs Constantine
Carbonell Sempere, priest, Peter Gelabert Amer, and Raymond
Grimaldos Monllor, religious of the Society of Jesus,
who suffered martyrdom in the persecution against the faith.
12.
Near the town of Vallibona, likewise in the region of Valencia
in Spain, the blessed martyrs Florentino Pérez Romero,
priest, and Urban Gil Sáez, religious, of the Third
Order of Saint Francis of the Capuchins of the Sorrowful
Virgin, who, at the time of the same persecution, completed
the struggle for the faith.
13.
In the town of Silla in the same region, blessed
John Mary of the Cross (Mariano) García Méndez, priest
of the Congregation of Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
and martyr, who, in the same religious persecution,
preserved the faith of Christ even to death.
14.
In the village of Puzol, likewise near Valencia in
Spain, the blessed virgins Rosario (Petra María Victoria)
Quintana Argos and Serafina (Manuela Justa) Fernández Ibero,
of the Third Order Capuchins of the Holy Family and martyrs,
who, while the same persecution raged, obtained the grace
of martyrdom.
15.
In the detention camp of Dachau near Munich in Bavaria in
Germany, blessed Francis Dachtera, priest and martyr,
who, of Polish nationality, during the war, broken by atrocities
committed by doctors with no regard for human dignity, died
for Christ.
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And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis.
(“All ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us,” from the Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany of the Saints)
℟. Thanks be to God.
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The 1956 edition below, issued during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, is a revision of the typical edition of 1749, which had been promulgated by Pope Benedict XIV remained the foundational text for later updates throughout the 18th–20th centuries up to 2004 — the English translation of which remained the sole source of the Martyrology until the present translation of the 2004 Roman Martyrology by the Boston Catholic Journal in 2025.
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1956 ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

Saturday, August 23rd in the Year of Grace 2025
This Day, the Twenty-Third Day of August
The vigil of St. Bartholomew, Apostle.
At Todi, St. Philip Beniti
of Florence, confessor. He contributed greatly to the growth
of the Order of the Servites of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and was a man of the greatest humility. He was numbered
among the saints by Clement X.
At Antioch, the birthday of the holy
martyrs Restitutus, Donatus, Valerian, and Fructuosa, with
twelve others, who were crowned after having distinguished
themselves by a glorious confession.
At Ostia, the holy martyrs Quiriacus,
bishop, Maximus, priest, Archelaus, deacon, and their companions,
who suffered under the prefect Ulpian, in the time of Alexander.
At Aegaea, in Cilicia, the holy martyrs
Claudius, Asterius, and Neon, brothers, who were
accused of being Christians by their step-mother, under
the emperor Diocletian, and the governor Lysias, and after
enduring bitter torments, were fastened to a cross, and
thus conquered and triumphed with Christ. After them suffered
Donvina and Theonilla.
At Rheims, in France, the birthday of the
Saints Timothy and Apollinaris,
who merited to enter the Heavenly kingdom by consummating
their martyrdom in that city.
At Lyons, the holy martyrs Minervus,
and Eleazar with his eight sons.
Also, St. Luppus, martyr, who,
though a slave, enjoyed the liberty of Christ, and was likewise
deemed worthy of the crown of martyrdom.
At Jerusalem, St. Zaccheus, bishop,
who governed the church of that city the fourth after the
blessed Apostle James.
At Alexandria, St. Theonas, bishop
and confessor.
At Utica, in Africa, blessed Victor,
bishop.
At Autun, St. Flavian, bishop.
At Clermont, in Auvergne, St. Sidonius,
a bishop distinguished for learning and sanctity.
And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs,
confessors, and holy virgins.
Omnes sancti
Mártyres, oráte pro nobis.
(“All
ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us,” from the Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany
of the Saints)
Response: Thanks be to God.
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1959 Roman Martyrology by Month
Why the Martyrs Matter
Each day we bring you a calendar,
a list really, of the holy Martyrs who had suffered and died
for Christ, for His Bride the Church, and for our holy Catholic
Faith; men and women for whom — and well they knew — their
Profession of Faith would cost them their lives.
They could have repudiated all three (Christ, Church, and Catholic
Faith) and kept their lives for a short time longer (even the
lapsi * only postponed their death — and
at so great a cost!)
What would motivate men, women, even children and entire families
to willingly undergo the most evil and painfully devised tortures;
to suffer death rather than denial?
Why did they not renounce their Catholic Faith when the first
flame licked at their feet, after the first eye was plucked
out, or after they were “baptized” in mockery by boiling water
or molten lead poured over their heads? Why did they not flee
to offer incense to the pagan gods since such a ritual concession
would be merely perfunctory, having been done, after all, under
duress, exacted by the compulsion of the state? What is a little
burned incense and a few words uttered without conviction, compared
to your own life and the lives of those you love? Surely God
knows that you are merely placating the state with empty gestures
…
Did they love their wives, husbands, children — their mothers,
fathers and friends less than we do? Did they value their own
lives less? Were they less sensitive to pain than we are? In
a word, what did they possess that we do not?
Nothing. They possessed what we ourselves are given in the Sacrament
of Confirmation — but cleaved to it in far greater measure than
we do: Faith and faithfulness; fortitude and valor, uncompromising
belief in the invincible reality of God, of life eternal in
Him for the faithful, of damnation everlasting apart from Him
for the unfaithful; of the ephemerality of this passing world
and all within it, and lives lived in total accord with that
adamant belief.
We are the Martyrs to come! What made them so will make us
so. What they suffered we will suffer. What they died for, we
will die for. If only we will! For most us, life will be
a bloodless martyrdom, a suffering for Christ, for the sake
of Christ, for the sake of the Church in a thousand ways outside
the arena. The road to Heaven is lined on both sides with Crosses,
and upon the Crosses people, people who suffered unknown to
the world, but known to God. Catholics living in partibus
infidelium, under the scourge of Islam. Loveless marriages.
Injustices on all sides. Poverty. Illness. Old age. Dependency.
They are the cruciform! Those whose lives became Crosses because
they would not flee God, the Church, the call to, the
demand for, holiness in the most ordinary things of life made
extraordinary through the grace of God. The Martyrology we celebrate
each day is just a vignette, a small, immeasurably small, sampling
of the martyrdom that has been the lives of countless men and
women whom Christ and the Angels know, but whom the world does
not know.
“Exemplum enim dedi vobis”, Christ
said to His Apostles: “I have given you an example.” And His
Martyrs give one to us — and that is why the Martyrs matter.
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A Martyr is one who suffers
tortures and a violent death for the sake of Christ
and the Catholic Faith.
-
A Confessor is one who
confesses Christ publicly in times of persecution and who
suffers torture, or severe punishment by secular authorities
as a consequence. It is a title given only given
to those who suffered for the Faith —
but was not killed for it — and
who had persevered in the Faith until the end.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Boston Catholic Journal
Note: We suggest that you explore
our newly edited and revised
“De
SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus — The Torments and Tortures of the
Christian Martyrs”
for an in-depth historical account of the sufferings of the
Martyrs.
____________________________
*
Those early Christians who renounced their Catholic Faith
in times of persecution. When confronted with the prospect
of torture and death if they held fast to their faith in
Christ, they denied Him and their Faith through an act of
sacrificing (often incense) to the pagan Roman gods and
in so doing kept their lives and/or their freedom and property.
Gloria Tibi, Domine Iesu Christe,
in altíssimis, et in Sanctíssimo Sacramento Altaris,
in omnibus Tabernaculis terrarum orbis!

Totally Faithful
to the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted
to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti
verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power,
and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied
My Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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