Luis E Moreno

Host of Praise Jesus in Mary. Catechist. Knight of the Holy Sepulcher. Thomistic, Marian, trying to save souls from the present Fall, one episode at a time.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Michael, great clip, really, thanks for sharing it. I hadn’t seen it.
One thing worth adding to Fr. Murray’s position… the 2026 decree isn’t pulling a new standard out of thin air for priests and laity. Actually it leans on a 1996 Explanatory Note that already said that formal adherence to the SSPX makes someone a schismatic under Canon 1364, and Rome says that note still stands. So the real question is whether a cardinal’s note can legislate on its own or not. Wasn’t that older 1966 standard met? It does apply here then. Worth a look at the 1996 Note yourself, curious what you make of it.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Yes!!! Christ didn’t say “believe in this.” He said “do this.” That’s the whole point Scott Hahn’s making. Real faith was never just going along to an idea and having the Heavens automatically guaranteed. True belief does something. It shows up at the altar and receives what he actually gave us. Faith acts to save souls from this present Fall.
Yes, the Eucharist came before the New Testament because the doing came before the writing. Faith that doesn’t act isn’t the faith the apostles handed down.
“Do this” is what belief looks like.

[Christine Niles @ChristineNiles1]

Mother Miriam has done a complete 180 on the SSPX: "God has established His Church, his universe, everything on obedience, everything on obedience.

Children are to obey their parents, not if their parents are holy and right, in everything but sin. Wives are to submit to their husbands, not because they're holy, not because they're right, but because God has given them that position — again, in everything but sin. Religious are to obey their superiors, whether their superior is right or holier than them, or no matter what it is, they are to obey in everything.

And Christ's sheep, which is us, every one of us is to obey the successor of Peter, whether we know for sure he is, whether we agree with him, whether we can point out definite heresy. If he's the Pope, then we obey in everything but sin. We don't come against him. So that's where I left it yesterday, and my heart was completely converted."

https://t.co/Ca4kxb6VcQ

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Father, with respect, I believe there's a fundamental confusion here about obedience, authority, and the salvation of souls. You're speaking about obedience as it exists in our fallen world, where authority can be abused and obedience distorted by fear or manipulation. But Catholic obedience can't be reduced to that.
St. Thomas teaches that God isn't merely good but Goodness itself. Human obedience is good when the will is conformed to God's will and to the order He established. Christ Himself became "obedient unto death, even death on a cross." Christian obedience isn't servility or blind submission to human personalities. It's participation in the obedience of Christ to the Father.

When Catholics speak of obedience to the papacy, we're ultimately speaking of obedience to Christ, who established the Petrine office and remains the true Head of the Church. That obedience doesn't depend on the personal holiness, intelligence, or prudence of any individual pope. It's grounded in Christ and in the visible order He gave His Church. That's exactly what's at issue with the SSPX. Archbishop Lefebvre, and the July SSXP Bishops, didn't merely disagree with an imprudent administrative decision. Th consecrated bishops without a papal mandate and against the explicit will of the Roman Pontiff. That act struck directly at the visible order of episcopal communion.

You compared the Pope to a captain who's lost his mind and must be restrained by his crew. But neither you nor the SSPX has the authority to appoint yourselves the replacement captain. You don't get to privately determine what the Pope's office requires and then seize that authority when you believe he's failed.
Yes, St. Paul confronted St. Peter publicly when Peter's conduct threatened the Gospel. But he corrected Peter within the communion of the Church. He didn't deny Peter's office, build a parallel apostolic structure, or consecrate bishops in defiance of Peter's authority.
That's how the saints have always reformed the Church. St. Catherine of Siena corrected popes courageously. St. Francis confronted corruption through radical fidelity to the Gospel. The Cluniac reform battled simony and clerical immorality. None of them created a parallel episcopate. The problems were confronted within the household of God. St. Thomas does teach that a sinful command can't be obeyed. But refusing to commit a sin is one thing. Consecrating bishops without papal authorization is another. Resisting a sinful command doesn't grant anyone the power to appropriate an office Christ never gave him.

And the claim that the Pope is leading souls to hell is an extraordinarily grave judgment. Only God knows and judges the human heart. A pope can scandalize, govern badly, speak imprudently, and confuse the faithful. But no one can see how another soul is responding to grace. The Pope doesn't irresistibly send anyone to heaven or hell. Each soul must cooperate freely with the grace of God. Your argument also ignores Church history. Pope Alexander VI was one of the most corrupt popes who ever lived: simony, sexual immorality, nepotism, ecclesiastical power used for his family. All of it centuries before Vatican II, all of it under the exclusive use of the older Roman liturgy. Liturgical traditionalism doesn't automatically produce holiness. A corrupt pope is corrupt whether he celebrates the old Mass or the new.

Now consider the scale of what you're proposing. Masses celebrated according to the current Roman Missal vastly outnumber those in the older form. When you encourage Catholics to distrust the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, you're not addressing a small population. You're telling millions upon millions of souls that the Masses actually available to them are spiritually poisonous and unworthy of Catholic participation.

That's spiritually dangerous.

To be precise, the SSPX doesn't ordinarily claim the newer Mass is invalid. But its clergy and defenders routinely describe it as dangerous, harmful to the faith, even evil in itself. That rhetoric breeds distrust in the sacraments and alienation from the ordinary life of the Church. Christ didn't imprison His sacramental grace inside one historical form of the Roman liturgy. The Church has always possessed a diversity of legitimate rites. The Byzantine, Coptic, Maronite, Chaldean, Armenian, and other Catholic traditions don't depend on the Tridentine Missal for their validity or fruitfulness. The older Latin Mass is venerable, beautiful, and spiritually fruitful. It is not the only legitimate expression of Catholic worship.

So your position risks doing exactly what you claim to oppose. You say you're saving souls, but you risk persuading millions to distrust the valid sacraments available to them, to stay away from Mass, Confession, and Holy Communion unless they can find the one form you've judged acceptable. That doesn't save souls. It isolates them from the grace Christ has provided.
Remember the wheat and the weeds. Christ didn't authorize His servants to uproot everything they judged corrupt, lest they uproot the wheat along with it. He never promised a Church without crises, scandals, or weak shepherds. He promised the gates of hell wouldn't prevail against her. That promise doesn't justify passivity. Catholics must confront error, resist sin, expose corruption, and call shepherds to repentance. But within the Church, in communion with Christ, according to the order He established.
Disobedience isn't automatically courageous just because it's done in the name of Tradition. Satan himself rebelled while claiming a superior vision. Our task isn't to replace the Church. It's to fight for her from within, remain united to Christ, lead sinners to repentance, and bring as many souls as possible to salvation.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Father, with respect, I believe there's a fundamental confusion here about obedience, authority, and the salvation of souls. You're speaking about obedience as it exists in our fallen world, where authority can be abused and obedience distorted by fear or manipulation. But Catholic obedience can't be reduced to that.
St. Thomas teaches that God isn't merely good but Goodness itself. Human obedience is good when the will is conformed to God's will and to the order He established. Christ Himself became "obedient unto death, even death on a cross." Christian obedience isn't servility or blind submission to human personalities. It's participation in the obedience of Christ to the Father.

When Catholics speak of obedience to the papacy, we're ultimately speaking of obedience to Christ, who established the Petrine office and remains the true Head of the Church. That obedience doesn't depend on the personal holiness, intelligence, or prudence of any individual pope. It's grounded in Christ and in the visible order He gave His Church. That's exactly what's at issue with the SSPX. Archbishop Lefebvre, and the July SSXP Bishops, didn't merely disagree with an imprudent administrative decision. Th consecrated bishops without a papal mandate and against the explicit will of the Roman Pontiff. That act struck directly at the visible order of episcopal communion.

You compared the Pope to a captain who's lost his mind and must be restrained by his crew. But neither you nor the SSPX has the authority to appoint yourselves the replacement captain. You don't get to privately determine what the Pope's office requires and then seize that authority when you believe he's failed.
Yes, St. Paul confronted St. Peter publicly when Peter's conduct threatened the Gospel. But he corrected Peter within the communion of the Church. He didn't deny Peter's office, build a parallel apostolic structure, or consecrate bishops in defiance of Peter's authority.
That's how the saints have always reformed the Church. St. Catherine of Siena corrected popes courageously. St. Francis confronted corruption through radical fidelity to the Gospel. The Cluniac reform battled simony and clerical immorality. None of them created a parallel episcopate. The problems were confronted within the household of God. St. Thomas does teach that a sinful command can't be obeyed. But refusing to commit a sin is one thing. Consecrating bishops without papal authorization is another. Resisting a sinful command doesn't grant anyone the power to appropriate an office Christ never gave him.

And the claim that the Pope is leading souls to hell is an extraordinarily grave judgment. Only God knows and judges the human heart. A pope can scandalize, govern badly, speak imprudently, and confuse the faithful. But no one can see how another soul is responding to grace. The Pope doesn't irresistibly send anyone to heaven or hell. Each soul must cooperate freely with the grace of God. Your argument also ignores Church history. Pope Alexander VI was one of the most corrupt popes who ever lived: simony, sexual immorality, nepotism, ecclesiastical power used for his family. All of it centuries before Vatican II, all of it under the exclusive use of the older Roman liturgy. Liturgical traditionalism doesn't automatically produce holiness. A corrupt pope is corrupt whether he celebrates the old Mass or the new.

Now consider the scale of what you're proposing. Masses celebrated according to the current Roman Missal vastly outnumber those in the older form. When you encourage Catholics to distrust the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, you're not addressing a small population. You're telling millions upon millions of souls that the Masses actually available to them are spiritually poisonous and unworthy of Catholic participation.

That's spiritually dangerous.

To be precise, the SSPX doesn't ordinarily claim the newer Mass is invalid. But its clergy and defenders routinely describe it as dangerous, harmful to the faith, even evil in itself. That rhetoric breeds distrust in the sacraments and alienation from the ordinary life of the Church. Christ didn't imprison His sacramental grace inside one historical form of the Roman liturgy. The Church has always possessed a diversity of legitimate rites. The Byzantine, Coptic, Maronite, Chaldean, Armenian, and other Catholic traditions don't depend on the Tridentine Missal for their validity or fruitfulness. The older Latin Mass is venerable, beautiful, and spiritually fruitful. It is not the only legitimate expression of Catholic worship.

So your position risks doing exactly what you claim to oppose. You say you're saving souls, but you risk persuading millions to distrust the valid sacraments available to them, to stay away from Mass, Confession, and Holy Communion unless they can find the one form you've judged acceptable. That doesn't save souls. It isolates them from the grace Christ has provided.
Remember the wheat and the weeds. Christ didn't authorize His servants to uproot everything they judged corrupt, lest they uproot the wheat along with it. He never promised a Church without crises, scandals, or weak shepherds. He promised the gates of hell wouldn't prevail against her. That promise doesn't justify passivity. Catholics must confront error, resist sin, expose corruption, and call shepherds to repentance. But within the Church, in communion with Christ, according to the order He established.
Disobedience isn't automatically courageous just because it's done in the name of Tradition. Satan himself rebelled while claiming a superior vision. Our task isn't to replace the Church. It's to fight for her from within, remain united to Christ, lead sinners to repentance, and bring as many souls as possible to salvation.

[Bree Solstad @BreeSolstad]

The scene in Fatima tonight on the eve of the most theologically significant apparition of Our Lady of Fatima.

On July 13, 1917 the children saw Hell—the true fate of most of sinful humanity—and learned the Fatima Prayer.

Pray, sacrifice, and do penance for poor sinners! 🙏

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Father, your argument confuses one simple thing: doing good doesn't give you the right to disobey.

The SSPX is essentially saying "Look at how well we're doing. Doesn't that prove we were right to act without Rome's permission?" But that's backwards in the biggest way possible. Even if everything you say about their attendance and devotion is true, it doesn't justify what they did Father. The question hasn’t ever been whether they're producing good results; the question is whether they had the authority to do it. The SSPX has no authority.

If the SSPX can say "the crisis is serious enough that we need to consecrate bishops on our own," then any bishop anywhere can say the same thing. They can all look at their own situation; they can all decide Rome isn't doing enough, and they can all act on their own. The problem is that soon you don't have a Church anymore. You have bishops doing whatever they think is right. That's not Catholic at all. That’s Martin Luther again. That's Protestantism.

The Church works because there's one authority: the Pope whom Christ established with His keys. You don't get to bypass that authority just because you think you're right. You don't get to ignore Rome because your results look good. Joan of Arc didn't do it. She submitted to Rome (the Church)even when she could’ve fought. That's the Catholic way.

The SSPX produces real spiritual fruits, yes. Real attendance, real devotion, real priestly vocations. But you can have all that and still be wrong about obedience. In fact, that's what makes it dangerous. Good results make disobedience seem justified. Satan is, as Zachary King says, 99 percent truth and one percent pure, deadly poison. When thee is disobedience, good results are worthless. Legitimacy doesn't come from how many people show up on Sunday. It comes from being in communion with Rome.
That's the issue.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

It has always been part of the Church’s living tradition for liturgical practices to develop and, at times, to change. Please do not assume that the Latin Mass is the only authentic liturgical tradition within the Catholic Church. That idea is historically and theologically mistaken.
The Catholic Church contains several ancient and legitimate liturgical traditions: the Roman, Byzantine, Alexandrian, Antiochene, Armenian, and Chaldean traditions. From these have arisen such venerable rites as the Coptic, Ethiopian, Maronite, Syriac, Chaldean, Syro-Malabar, Armenian, and Byzantine rites.
These are not inferior alternatives to the Latin tradition. They are fully Catholic expressions of the same apostolic faith, with their own ancient liturgies, spirituality, theology, discipline, and canon-law heritage. The Latin Mass therefore possesses no monopoly on Catholic tradition. To identify “Catholic tradition” exclusively with one historical form of the Roman Rite is simply not accurate.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

I’d offer this correction on the framing here. We don’t go to Mass to get a liturgy that looks a certain way. We go to receive Jesus Himself, and through Him the graces to grow in virtue and sanctity. That’s the whole thing. Everything else follows from that or it doesn’t follow at all.

St. Paul tells us how that growth actually happens: “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5). Notice the path runs through suffering and perseverance.
And Our Lord tells us what loving Him looks like: “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14:21). Keeping the commandments, growing in sanctity, and helping save other souls from this present fall. That’s what we go to Mass for.

If I walk into Mass demanding the liturgy conform to my wishes and desires, even beautiful and reverent wishes, I’ve already gotten the attitude backwards. Our wishes and desires aren’t there to be pleased. They’re supposed to be nailed to the cross: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Christ died to the world to save our souls, and we’re called to imitate Him. His sacrifice wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. Christ dying on the Cross wasn’t John Henry Weston’s dream Mass.
We should get that attitude right first and everything else falls into place. Get it wrong and we end up with these endless bloody liturgy wars where everyone has left Jesus standing outside the Mass while we argue about what’s inside it. What an absurd discussion that is.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Right on time. Add the sequel: he attends the Latin Mass every Sunday, corrects the priest’s Latin under his breath, and is quietly convinced his parish is the last outpost of the true Faith. He’s not just the wronged party in the marriage. He’s the wronged party in the whole Church, and he’ll tell you so, charitably, right after Mass.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Yes, it's about the whole body of doctrine that accompanies the rite, not just the liturgy itself. But if we're going to weigh the era of the old Mass by the moral witness of the men who celebrated it, we have to reckon honestly with Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, widely regarded as the most morally corrupt pope in history. He bought the papacy through open simony. He fathered multiple children, Cesare, Lucrezia, Juan, and Jofré among them, both before and during his pontificate, and kept mistresses openly while sitting on the Chair of Peter. His own master of ceremonies, Johann Burchard, recorded scandalous banquets inside the Vatican itself. He waged wars to carve out Borgia territories in the Romagna, using the papacy as a family enterprise, and was widely rumored, with contested but real historical evidence, to have used poison against his rivals. This was the Church of the old rite, at one of its most institutionally rotten moments, and the doctrine did not change because the man teaching it was wicked.
Boccaccio captured exactly this world in the Decameron. In one of his most famous tales, a devout Christian merchant named Giannotto begs his Jewish friend Abraham not to travel to Rome before converting to the faith, terrified of what corruption he'll witness among the clergy there. Abraham goes anyway. He sees it all, the greed, the immorality, the worldliness of Rome's churchmen, and converts regardless. His reasoning was simple: an institution led by such wicked men, and yet still standing after fifteen centuries, could not be sustaining itself. Something beyond the men running it had to be holding it up.
That is not a clever literary flourish. It is the same principle Christ himself gave us directly. He told us the Church would always be a mixed field, not a pure one, until the end: "Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn" (Matthew 13:30). And he grounded the Church's endurance not in the sanctity of her officeholders but in his own promise: "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).

So if the argument is really about the doctrine that accompanies the old rite, Alexander VI isn’t a footnote, he's the test case. He shows that the holiness of the Church's ministers was never the guarantee of her authority or her doctrine. Christ's promise was. A Renaissance pope's moral collapse didn’t unmake the Church, and it certainly does not hand modern critics of the Novus Ordo, or defenders of a wounded traditionalism that has set itself against Rome, a doctrinal argument they don't actually have. The wheat and the tares have always grown together. That was never a scandal the Church needed to hide from. It was a truth Christ predicted from the beginning.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Yes, it's about the whole body of doctrine that accompanies the rite, not just the liturgy itself. But if we're going to weigh the era of the old Mass by the moral witness of the men who celebrated it, we have to reckon honestly with Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, widely regarded as the most morally corrupt pope in history. He bought the papacy through open simony. He fathered multiple children, Cesare, Lucrezia, Juan, and Jofré among them, both before and during his pontificate, and kept mistresses openly while sitting on the Chair of Peter. His own master of ceremonies, Johann Burchard, recorded scandalous banquets inside the Vatican itself. He waged wars to carve out Borgia territories in the Romagna, using the papacy as a family enterprise, and was widely rumored, with contested but real historical evidence, to have used poison against his rivals. This was the Church of the old rite, at one of its most institutionally rotten moments, and the doctrine did not change because the man teaching it was wicked.
Boccaccio captured exactly this world in the Decameron. In one of his most famous tales, a devout Christian merchant named Giannotto begs his Jewish friend Abraham not to travel to Rome before converting to the faith, terrified of what corruption he'll witness among the clergy there. Abraham goes anyway. He sees it all, the greed, the immorality, the worldliness of Rome's churchmen, and converts regardless. His reasoning was simple: an institution led by such wicked men, and yet still standing after fifteen centuries, could not be sustaining itself. Something beyond the men running it had to be holding it up.
That is not a clever literary flourish. It is the same principle Christ himself gave us directly. He told us the Church would always be a mixed field, not a pure one, until the end: "Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn" (Matthew 13:30). And he grounded the Church's endurance not in the sanctity of her officeholders but in his own promise: "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).

So if the argument is really about the doctrine that accompanies the old rite, Alexander VI isn’t a footnote, he's the test case. He shows that the holiness of the Church's ministers was never the guarantee of her authority or her doctrine. Christ's promise was. A Renaissance pope's moral collapse didn’t unmake the Church, and it certainly does not hand modern critics of the Novus Ordo, or defenders of a wounded traditionalism that has set itself against Rome, a doctrinal argument they don't actually have. The wheat and the tares have always grown together. That was never a scandal the Church needed to hide from. It was a truth Christ predicted from the beginning.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

People keep saying this Vatican adjacent article denying the devil is worse than what SSPX did.

It's not, and here's the actual reason why, not just a gut feeling.
Canon law draws a real line between error and schism. Schism is a refusal, an actual act of breaking communion with Rome. That's Canon 751. SSPX's July 1 consecrations hit that line directly. Conferring or receiving episcopal orders without the Pope's mandate carries an automatic excommunication under Canon 1382. It doesn't need a tribunal or a decree to take effect. The act itself does the damage the moment it happens. Rome's July 2 decree just confirmed what already happened on July 1.

Perroni's essay isn't that. It's a bad theological opinion in a supplement that has zero magisterial weight. She hasn't refused submission to anyone. She hasn't broken communion with the hierarchy. What she's done is publish something false that the Church can correct, the same way she's corrected wayward theologians for two thousand years. Genesis 3:1 still says what it says: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the LORD God had made." Revelation 12:9 still ties that serpent to Satan. The essay is wrong, and Rome staying quiet on it is a real problem people should be pushing on. But wrong and unanswered isn't the same category of crime as a structural break in communion.
Jesus said the field holds wheat and tares together until the harvest. The Church has always carried people who taught error without that error tearing the whole thing apart. That's not the Church being soft. That's the difference between a wound you can still treat and one that's already severed the limb.

So yes…. call the essay what it is, an error Rome needs to deal with. But don't put it in the same box as an act that canon law itself treats as automatically breaking communion. One of these is a bad opinion. The other is schism, by definition, before anyone even wrote it down.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

The Catholic Church does not depend on the Latin Mass. The Latin Mass could disappear completely, and the Church would continue to exist, because the Church does not depend on the Latin Mass, the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, or any other particular liturgical form.

Remember, history hasn’t stopped. We may have another thousand years of human history ahead of us. A few hundred years from now, there could be another form of the Mass in another language that becomes deeply loved and spiritually fruitful for generations. If, over the next eight hundred years, that form became more widespread than the Latin Mass, would the Catholic Church suddenly become dependent on it? Of course not.

What is missing from this entire conversation is God: what God wants and what God has entrusted to His Church.

Has anyone stopped to remember that there are ancient Eastern Catholic Churches that have existed for nearly two thousand years without using the Latin Mass? The Melkite Greek Catholic Church, the Coptic Catholic Church, and the many other Eastern Catholic Churches have preserved their own liturgical traditions for centuries, many of them in Greek, Arabic, Coptic, Syriac, and other ancient languages rather than Latin.

As you know, the Roman Empire was eventually divided into a Latin-speaking West and a Greek-speaking East, whose capital was Constantinople. Those Eastern Catholic Churches have remained fully Catholic throughout the centuries without depending on the Latin Mass.

Does that mean Jesus Christ depends on the Latin Mass or on the vernacular Mass? No. He never has, and He never will.

My concern is that some people have elevated the Latin Mass to a place it should never occupy. They appear to love the Latin Mass more than obedience to God and His Church. In many defenses of the SSPX, I hear extensive arguments about the liturgy but very little about what God wills or about fidelity to the authority Christ established in His Church.

Remember what Jesus told the Samaritan woman: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” He said nothing about the Latin language. God looks first at the heart. He seeks those who worship Him in spirit and in truth, not those who merely cling to external forms.

When attachment to a particular liturgical form becomes greater than one’s obedience to Christ and His Church, that attachment risks becoming disordered. The liturgy is a precious gift, but it must never take the place of God Himself.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Father, your position doesn't survive contact with Scripture or with the actual founding of the Church. It sounds prudent… just seclude the convert, let him mature quietly before entrusting him with influence, but that substitutes a human timeline for the timeline God Himself uses when He calls someone. That substitution isn't just imprudent Father; it's dangerous, because it teaches the faithful to trust institutional seniority over the movement of God’s grace, and it's confusing and misleading, because it implies a spiritual hierarchy Christ never established.
You can see first that none of the Apostles were cradle Catholics. The Church didn't exist before Pentecost. Peter, James, John, all of them were converts in the most literal sense, men called out of a prior life and handed authority to teach, govern, and sanctify. There wasn’t any probationary period imposed by any higher ecclesiastical authority. If you (Father Chenal) and your principle were true, the apostolic college itself would’ve been disqualified from the very mission Christ gave it.
The most famous convert in the history of the Church is Saint Paul, and his case actually strengthens the argument once examined closely rather than weakening it. Acts records that after his conversion he began proclaiming Christ in the synagogues of Damascus almost immediately. Paul's own account in Galatians adds the fuller picture: "But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days." Notice that this time wasn't seclusion imposed by Church authority withholding Paul from influence until he proved himself worthy. It was Paul's own retreat into prayer and formation, running alongside his public preaching in Damascus rather than preceding it. His authority as an apostle didn't derive from tenure or gradual institutional vetting; it came directly from Christ's call, only later confirmed, not conferred, by Peter and James.

And Christ Himself repeatedly commends outsider faith over insider faith with no waiting period attached at all. When the Roman centurion, a man with no covenant pedigree whatsoever, asks Jesus to heal his servant with a word, Jesus marvels: "When Jesus heard him, he marveled, and said to those who followed him, 'Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.'" Not even in Israel. Christ places this Gentile soldier's faith above the faith of those who had known the covenant from birth, and He does so on the spot, not after some probationary interval.

Then there's the Canaanite woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon, whose daughter was tormented by a demon. She isn't Jewish, she isn't a cradle believer by any measure, and she has to press past the disciples' dismissal just to be heard. Christ's verdict on her isn't caution about her newness to grace, it's astonishment at her faith: "Then Jesus answered her, 'O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.' And her daughter was healed instantly."

So the pattern running through Scripture moves in the opposite direction from the rules you Father prescribe. Formation matters, and every convert, Paul included, rightly grows in prayer and understanding after being called. But formation and public witness aren’t mutually exclusive, and nothing in Scripture supports mandating silence or seclusion as the price of maturity. God doesn’t withhold mission or voice from those newly come to faith while they season. He often entrusts the newly converted with extraordinary trust, because faith is what He's measuring, not tenure, not pedigree, and not how long someone has occupied a pew.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Respectfully, Father, this isn’t accurate. The Church Herself provides for this. Canon 230 §3 and Canon 910 §2 permit Extraordinary Ministers precisely when there’s real need, priest shortage, large congregations, the sick who need Communion brought to them. It’s logistics and it goes back to Paul VI’s 1973 instruction “Immensae Caritatis.”
And the “Sue and Karen” line gets the theology backwards. The Eucharist’s efficacy is “ex opere operato.”Christ becomes present through the priest’s words at consecration, and that power comes from Christ’s action, not from the moral or ministerial status of whoever hands it out afterward. Once that happens, the Host is fully Christ regardless of who distributes it. Christ’s grace doesn’t depend on the imperfections of the priest or laity duly appointed. The minister of distribution has zero bearing on validity or efficacy.
If the real concern is reverence, parishes overusing hands, when enough clergy are present, that’s a fair pastoral critique, worth raising. But that’s a prudential question about application, not a defect in Church teaching or a threat to the Real Presence. Let’s not confuse the faithful.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

No, and not because I’d be defying legitimate authority. The scenario itself can’t happen.
Trent already defined this dogmatically in 1551: Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the Eucharist, with an anathema attached to denial. That’s not disciplinary language, oh no, that’s the extraordinary Magisterium binding the whole Church, inexorably.Vatican I explains why a future council couldn’t reverse it. Pastor Aeternus says the Holy Spirit was promised to Peter’s successors so they might faithfully guard and expound the deposit of faith already given, not invent new doctrine. Infallibility is a preservative charism. No pope or council has authority to unmake what’s already been infallibly taught. God is, and anything that he teaches for our salvation is unchangeable.
Consider a parallel case. Consecrating a bishop without a papal mandate is contrary to the order Christ Himself established for His Church. Christ chose the Apostles and entrusted them with His authority. Just as Peter and the Apostles chose Matthias to succeed Judas, the Church continues to appoint bishops within that same order, with Peter’s successor uniquely charged to safeguard apostolic unity. That order isn’t the Church’s to discard, which is why bypassing it carries automatic excommunication. The Eucharist works the same way, only further upstream. It touches revelation itself, not just the structure that transmits it. If the apostolic order established by Christ can’t simply be set aside by an individual bishop’s decision, still less can the very nature of the Eucharist be redefined by a future council. The Church guards Christ’s revelation. She doesn’t author it.
Read John 6:53-55 : “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life… For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” That’s the deposit. No council can un-deposit it.
So a “Vatican III” document saying the Eucharist is just a symbol wouldn’t be a valid act of the Magisterium requiring submission. It would be proof it wasn’t one. We’ve seen this pattern before. The 449 Council of Ephesus gathered real bishops under real authority and taught error. The Church later called it the Robber Council, precisely because it broke faith with what was already defined.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

Although there may be a connection if we insist that Satan is the prince of this world…Psalm 16:11 says, "You will show me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand pleasures for evermore."

Now Joy, real joy, flows from nearness to God, and its natural home is the Eucharist, where Christ himself is present. So it follows that a people formed by that presence will express joy even in ordinary things, whether in music, in festivity, or in play.

So jogo bonito was part of a culture still capable of delight because it remained, however imperfectly, close to the sacraments. Once a nation drifts from the Eucharist, though, something is lost that no tactical adjustment can recover. Consequently, communism spreads, and pragmatism replaces beauty. As John 10:10 says, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." Where that life is refused, then, what remains tends toward function without joy, whether in a back four or in a concrete block replacing a cathedral.
Of course, all of this occurs through natural causes. Youth academies, European transfers, and coaching philosophy are all real on their own level, integrated with the spiritual reality underneath. The natural and the spiritual are one story, and Scripture insists on that unity throughout, from Israel's fortunes rising and falling with her fidelity to the Lord, to the joy of the early Church described in Acts 2:46-47, "And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved."
Ultimately, a nation's soccer team is a small thing. Still, small things can give testimony to what a people has kept, or lost.

[Luis E Moreno @tulula77]

I’m not sure… pinning 20 years of Brazilian football results on national spiritual decline skips the boring, verifiable causes. For example, kids leaving for Europe at 16-17 instead of developing in a strong domestic league, tactical shifts toward European pragmatism under Tite and Ancelotti, defensive systems replacing the old jogo bonito freedom. The talent is still there. Vinícius, Endrick, Rodrygo didn’t stop being Brazilian.

Also worth separating two different claims getting merged here: “how many Catholics are on this roster” and “the nation’s Catholic culture has faded” are not the same argument, and neither one explains a back-four.
There should be a real conversation about secularization and Pentecostal growth in Brazil. But I don’t think it’s really a soccer conversation.