St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us in this hour of darkness. I have been contacted by a community of Carmelites who have seen the document, and are desperate to try to warn the remaining faithful Carmels of the Teresian reform. Today’s piece for the Remnant contains some of their remarks: Today I received an email from a monastery of cloistered Carmelite nuns about the new document from the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious.

The latest document on women’s contemplative life – from men who manifestly loathe it – is aimed at either forcing all nuns to conform to the Bergoglian New Paradigm, or getting rid of them. Latest for the Remnant: Funny you should mention autonomy: Bioethics and the dissolution of “unviable” monasteries It’s funny that the buzzword of the day in Rome should be “autonomy”. As we shall see, the document is what I’ve called above a “chopping block”.

You all were wondering how much he would be willing to sacrifice to preserve his reputation among the seculars… And were we perhaps wondering what would happen to someone who caused serious damage to his programme. Now we know, eh? He’ll sacrifice an entire episcopate to deflect attention from his own guilt. Those expecting a retraction, correction or apology for the Barros disaster, here’s your message from the pope.

Hortus Conclusus: My Medieval Garden, Inauthenticity, and The Real I’ve always wanted a large garden… Very close to the end of the time I had for looking, and as I was starting to become desperate, I happened upon a little flat, a portion of an old family farm house, on some prime agricultural land at the base of the mountain upon which the ancient city of Perugia sits, like a grand medieval hat.

When did ours become a culture that worships death? When did we start thinking that it’s better to die than live with suffering (especially for other people)? Or, as we saw last week, when did we decide that other people are better off dead if it is deemed by doctors that their lives are unlikely to hold the promise of future pleasures? And when did those things turn into an obligation to die (or kill) if that determination is made for you?

First, I’d like to send a huge thank you to everyone who donated in my Spring funder. I especially appreciated all the kind and often funny and very encouraging notes. Quite a lot of it was extremely timely. There can be a kind of morally deadening effect that comes with the kind of thing we read and write about for this work, and when you’re living by yourself that effect can sometimes spread and take root.

It would be easy to quit. It would be easy to get a job writing for a Catholic news service, doing nice easy non-controversial stories about the pope visiting various countries and handing out gelato to the homeless. (I’d probably have to spend the rest of my life writing under a pseudonym…) But there’s this thing going on that I can’t seem to leave alone. It’s been a long time now, and I just can’t stop watching the train coming at us, for some reason.

And He said to him: What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me from the earth. We all know by now that Alfie Evans died early this morning. Listening to the Virgin Radio news at noon in Italian, and Alfie’s death was the top of the charts. At least this country cares. Thank God, at least for that. Ordinary, simple people, people who have not been corrupted by immersion in “modern education” are still sane.

Always nice to get kind notes along with donations: Dear Hilary, Thank you for your writings, they are helpful to me and I am sure helpful to many others as well. I like to think of myself as someone who tries to be careful with his words, not blindly emoting a position on matters that raise my emotional state. Yet, I am not someone who is able to assimilate facts into a meaningful position very easily.

Just a few End Times bibs and bobs… Posted with permission, this is the quick note I got from Dianne in response to my piece the other day. Mostly, she’s the one from whom I learned that our current difficulties and controversies emphatically do not date from the 1960s. She cites Gnosticism – the heresy that will never die because it is based on the infinitely expandable human ego – but I have also read about the corrosive effect of 13th century Nominalism, a poisoned present from William of Ockham, on Scholasticism.