In this week's show, we take a look at the growing Catholic community in New York City, and the growing influence of modernist Catholics in Ireland. We also hear from Jenny Holland, Frank Walker, and Frank's good friend, the late former president of Ireland Mary McAleese.
00:00:00.880Another banger mass at St Joe's, Sunday 6pm. This week was a wee bit more special and they
00:00:06.960were awful nice that they offered the mass for my late aunt Rose who passed away a couple
00:00:11.440of weeks ago. To reiterate the point of the community aspect of this chapel is that they
00:00:16.720offered the mass for my aunt. Such a nice gesture. As well as that I've got to bump into this guy
00:00:21.600Anthony who you've probably seen his videos as well. It just adds to the whole aspect of why
00:00:26.880people enjoy going to this mass, what's so special about it and as you can see here at these videos
00:00:31.920at the end it was packed downstairs. This is where after the mass you can go downstairs, you get to
00:00:36.880as you say mingle with people, you get to see people who are first timers or who are the regulars as well.
00:00:42.160So again I can't say enough good things about this mass. If you're a Catholic in New York City
00:00:48.0806pm on Sunday St Joe's it's on 6th Avenue in Washington Place. Come in, check it out and I'll see you next week.
00:00:56.880This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going to medieval on these people.
00:01:08.000Here's one time I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it.
00:01:13.920I know you don't like hearing that. I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.
00:01:18.880And where do people like that go to share the big lie? Mega Media. I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:01:29.200Ask yourself what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
00:01:39.840War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.
00:01:49.920Wednesday, 4th of January, Anno Domini, 2026.
00:01:55.760Harnwell here at the helm. This is the week in Christendom in review which we do every Wednesday evening with our usual expert commentators on these things.
00:02:07.840Jenny Holland, Frank Walker. Jenny, you picked the video there for the cold open today because you had a specific observation you wanted to make on that, right?
00:02:19.360Yeah, I came across my Instagram feed a few weeks ago and it was very charming.
00:02:24.240The audience probably noted the young man's accent, his Northern Irish accent, and his location, which is Greenwich Village, New York City.
00:02:34.960And I found this somewhat incongruous, given Greenwich Village's more recent history, but this is apparently a very thriving parish.
00:02:44.560It's the same, one of the churches that we've mentioned before in the New York, when we discussed the New York Post story and the Free Press story about this burgeoning young Catholic community in New York.
00:02:56.760And I just think it's fascinating. This guy is young, his other Instagram videos are about fitness and cooking, and a large amount of his content is about his faith.
00:03:10.200And if you notice in that reel, when he goes down into the parish community hall, everyone in there is young.
00:03:17.240Everyone in there looks like they're in their 20s. They're young professionals who are flocking back to the Catholic faith, which is such an interesting, it's just, it's a very striking visual.
00:03:28.060And it's even more striking, especially given that he's Irish, because in the last couple of weeks, the Irish, the elites, the elite Catholics in Ireland have gone in, or have shown themselves to be going in the totally opposite direction.
00:03:44.740So again, it's as we often talk about the laity being the sort of the true representation of the traditional faith, and versus very much here in Ireland, the elites, the former president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, also from the north of Ireland, and a very devout, formerly very devout Catholic,
00:04:05.700caused a real stir about 10 days ago, when she gave a talk to a bunch of Catholic school girls at a school in Belfast, not far from where I live, calling the Catholic Church rancid, and its teachings rancid.
00:04:21.160And she's been on this campaign to modernize, shall we say, the Catholic faith in a way that is really appalling, even to me as someone from outside the church.
00:04:33.020As I say often, what's the point in being Catholic if you're going to try and modernize it?
00:04:38.140The whole point of it is that you stick with the tradition.
00:04:41.200And, you know, local television and local, the Irish state broadcaster recently did a video portraying St. Bridget, one of the patron saints of Ireland, whose feast day was, I think, on the first, as a sort of pagan abortionist.
00:04:57.580So the assault from the powers that be never ends, to demoralize the Catholic laity and their beloved traditions.
00:05:05.940So, in synthesis, your theory of the case is that the elites are off doing one crazy modernist stuff on the one hand,
00:05:14.920but the youth, the next generation, the future of the church, is actually, is tuning out.
00:05:21.500And because it's tuning out, it's actually getting on with the nitty gritty of making the church grow, as we saw in that opening video.
00:05:30.860So, Jenny, stay with us, because you've got a story coming up later on in the show on exorcism, which is something that it always has ears pricking up.
00:05:42.100So, Frank Walker, when I saw this headline break this week, I thought to myself, this is a story for Frank Walker.
00:05:51.540And it's something that we spoke about, by chance, like two weeks ago, because we said that the SSPX is serious,
00:06:00.840if the Society of Pope St. Pius X is serious about protecting tradition, sacred tradition,
00:06:10.020it will need to get its act together and start consecrating new bishops.
00:06:15.400And that is the story that broke this week.
00:06:18.480Why don't you give us the lowdown on what's happened, not specifically starting with the news,
00:06:30.940which is the consecrations, to say for our largely evangelical audience what the SSPX is,
00:06:38.600like two minutes, right, what the SSPX is, why it was excommunicated, and the jump of a second,
00:06:47.160and the importance for the society of what it is seeking to do, to do the consecrations.
00:06:54.860And then later on in the show, you're going to talk about your favorite theme and my favorite theme,
00:06:59.560which is Trad Inc., just exposing themselves for their pure performative custodian of tradition.
00:07:14.040But first of all, what is the SSPX, the Society of Pope St. Pius X?
00:07:21.240Back when I was a little boy in the 60s, at the time of Paul VI, after Vatican II was finishing,
00:07:35.480But everybody was familiar with this Latin Mass, the Mass in Latin, which had been basically the same Mass going back all throughout history.
00:07:47.460I mean, you can read about people going to Catholic Masses.
00:07:52.760All of a sudden, they had this new Mass that supposedly they came up with on a napkin or something.
00:07:56.880And a bishop that had been a missionary, a French bishop for a long time, and had been at Vatican II petitioned Paul VI to create his own new society, St. Pius X,
00:08:11.100where they only said the Latin Mass because he was so sure that it's not something that we could drop.
00:08:17.300And in fact, not using the Old Mass was something condemned by Pope Pius V.
00:08:24.400So this is something that was really actually sort of anathematized, to come up with a new Mass.
00:08:29.640And there was a huge drop-off in Catholic church attendance after this new Mass.
00:08:35.140And if you've never been to—if you're not a Catholic, you've never been to the new Mass, you walk in and you might find yourself a little bit uncomfortable.
00:08:41.700It's not necessarily a very pleasant experience, depending on where you go.
00:08:45.580So the Society of St. Pius X was able to have their own seminary and train very well, very good priests that were not sort of infected with many of the ambiguous and heretical things that could be taken out of the Vatican II documents.
00:09:05.540And so you had a sort of a purity of Catholic faith, and they just kept going forward when Paul—and then John Paul II came in—until they ran out of bishops.
00:09:17.460And when they began running out of bishops, they could not get a replacement from John Paul II.
00:09:26.000For basically, since the earliest centuries of the Church, the canon of the Mass, the essential core of the Mass, when the priest—I'm sorry, Protestants, got to say this—when the priest confects—is it confects?
00:09:40.020It confects the Eucharist and turns the blood into the body of Christ and the wine into the blood of Christ.
00:09:48.680The part of the Mass called the Latin—the canon of the Mass, the old Latin Mass, that was pretty much unchanged from the 2nd and 3rd centuries right down to us.
00:09:57.900And then, after the 2nd Vatican Council between 1962 and 65, just after that, they changed the Mass fundamentally.
00:10:07.660They didn't just translate that from Latin into the vernacular tongue.
00:10:11.280They actually changed the Mass itself, the parts of it.
00:10:16.960And that caused a lot of consternation amongst Catholics who, like, for centuries, over 1,800 or so years, had known and passed on this and died for this.
00:10:30.040Jenny was talking about Ireland just a moment or so ago.
00:10:33.380The Brits—I hate to say this, but the Brits sort of did a massive persecution of Catholic Ireland over a number of centuries.
00:10:42.160So they're huge martyrs, too, right across the world, to when the church was going out there, you know, from about the 16th century onwards, right across the world, taking the priests out in mission.
00:10:56.960In mission, there's huge martyrs for the huge numbers of martyrs because the mission is wanted to protect and pass over to peoples who didn't know Jesus Christ yet.
00:11:48.400If the Vatican says no, we'll do it anyway.
00:11:51.600But I want to be responsible for the formation of new priests, the seminarians, according to the method, to the teachings that were handed down to me.
00:12:01.640I want to protect the integrity of that.
00:12:05.320And if necessary, we'll take this priestly society out of communion with Rome because it is necessary, because Marcel Lefebvre was an old man at this stage.
00:12:15.900It is necessary to continue this work and to maintain fidelity to the tradition that we consecrate our own bishops, because you need bishops to ordain priests.
00:12:29.820So I will consecrate four bishops to continue the work after I died.
00:12:34.600He died like a couple of years later, right?
00:12:36.320Those four bishops, two of them had died, leaving two of the original bishops consecrated in what was it, 88 or something like that.
00:12:45.680And now, as we said like a couple of weeks ago, if the SSPX is serious about continuing its work, it will need to consecrate new bishops.
00:12:55.860To do this, they need to do this, not only in prohibition of canon law, because they're doing this explicitly without the consent of the Vatican's authorization process, which is necessary for the consecration.
00:13:14.120But that is also a schismatic act, right?
00:13:16.140And if a bishop consecrates, basically puts his hand on a priest and makes another bishop without the Vatican's permission, approval, delegated, then that, as being a schismatic act, automatically incurs excommunication.
00:13:33.660So if that's the correct synthesis of what you're describing, this is a momental development framework, a really momentous development.
00:13:42.780And it's something that traditionalists have waited.
00:13:46.800Because the SSPX, the Society of Pope St. Pius X, is really the beating heart of the traditionalist movement.
00:13:55.280And all of the other priestly societies that exist, both those in communion with Rome and also those not in communion with Rome, they're basically satellites of the SSPX,
00:14:07.480because it is the largest organization in terms of priests right across the world that refuse to accept the Second Vatican Council and insist only on the old mass.
00:14:21.840Yes, it's true that, you know, the FSSP, which is a spinoff that happened after the 88 consecrations of bishops, they received their own special organization.
00:14:34.520They don't have bishops, they have to work with other bishops.
00:14:37.620And then all these other sort of what they would call smaller, maybe set of the contests, they call different kinds of traditional organizations.
00:16:35.700This is why you're going to come back later on the show and announce.
00:16:37.980In fact, if only it were that easy, Frank Walker, if only it were that easy, that it's like things like the FBI that's opposed to the traditionists.
00:16:48.160We call them trad ink that, you know, that spend their lives promoting traditionism, who are also lining up to condemn the SSPX on this.
00:16:58.940We're going to cover that a little later in the show.
00:17:01.280That's really in the category of the mask is finally slipping.
00:17:06.500Before we move on to Jenny Frank Walker, I just have to quickly ask you this.
00:17:09.700If they go ahead on the 1st of July, and God willing, they do and succeed in consecrating four new bishops,
00:17:18.840what do you think the Vatican's response will be?
00:17:22.980Will it be to pronounce an automatic – will it be to pronounce that they have automatically excommunicated themselves as they did 30 years ago, 35 years ago?
00:17:57.300So it's almost – I wonder if the plan is going forward according to the people behind Leo and Leo's Vatican.
00:18:07.440And they may have something up their sleeve that's different than just a flat excommunication because that excommunication kind of gave them – excommunications give them credibility in a certain way.
00:18:18.440And I think that they have – I think they would – if they could, they would like to kill the SSPX and they would like to find a way.
00:18:28.520So I don't know how they're going to do it.
00:18:49.840Okay, let's just – let me give you – we do have to go on to Jenny, right, to do the excommunications.
00:18:56.160But let me just give you my quick take on this, on why Francis – because this is somewhat unexpected that Francis actually did Bergoglio, actually the late unlamented Pope Francis,
00:19:09.340actually did far more to regularize the SSPX than either of his two immediate predecessors.
00:19:15.160My take on that, even though he hated sort of that sort of 1950s Catholicism that the SSPX sort of represented, he really had an animus against that,
00:19:27.680he's not – he wasn't a guy interested in dogma, in doctrines, in formal theology.
00:19:35.320He couldn't have been less interested in it.
00:19:37.840If the SSPX rejected the Vatican II documents and they did it with footnotes and they went through it with a fine tooth coming, he didn't care because he couldn't have cared less what the document said himself.
00:31:42.460Well, just to very, very quickly finish the point I would have made before the break.
00:31:46.740So I'm not a great ecumenist, ecumaniac, to use the pejorative term.
00:31:55.920But I do think, given the presence of the diabolic, of the devil, in human actions, that there is a possibility for greater witness between the Catholic Church and the various Christian denominations to come together and warn an unbelieving mankind about the presence of the devil.
00:32:25.920And I think that what we were saying just before the break about the Anglicans starting to relook after many centuries of neglect at exorcism, which they call deliverance.
00:32:44.160I think this is something that I think it's room for common witness.
00:32:48.980I think, let's put it like that, that's room for common witness against Satan and all his pomp and all his works.
00:32:58.900Frank Walker, the awareness that we are in a spiritual battle was always at the very heart of the traditionally understood expression of Catholicism, which is the genuine, authentic expression of Catholicism.
00:33:17.900I was particularly bemused to see probably the most authoritative, most establishment of the traditionalist organizations, the most respected, the most socially respected of the traditionalist organizations come out and very clearly criticized the SSPX.
00:33:46.900For proceeding, announcing its intention to proceed with these consecrations.
00:35:05.180And, but there's a lot of people out there that already are able to get to the Latin mass and they have all the necessary permissions from their church's hierarchy.
00:35:14.200That, to me, rings a little childish to me.
00:35:17.140It's just, there's a thread running through these criticisms about the SSPX about obedience to authority.
00:35:24.780Obedience to authority is a good idea.
00:35:26.520Like if you were working in a corporation, you need to do what your boss says or you're fired.
00:35:30.620But the Catholic Church isn't really like that.
00:35:32.620The Catholic Church has more than just obedience to authority.
00:35:36.340It's so, it's a, uh, obedience to a creed, to a faith before God.
00:35:43.060You know, you know, he's, he wants to be all technical about the permissions, which is true.
00:35:47.580But, um, he says, and, and of course they have some legitimate complaints because they're making it very difficult in Leo church to be able to go to the Latin mass.
00:35:57.980And that's why they get this environment for their silly idea of a state of emergency and creating bishops.
00:36:03.920So he's kind of saying, well, this is your fault, Leo Vatican.
00:36:07.780And, uh, we're here to help you fix it the right way.
00:36:12.020He, I, I, I understand that he got a lot of pushback.
00:36:14.700He gets, and I've seen this happen to him before on Twitter.
00:36:17.540He gets like little ratioed and then he gets kind of angry and, and, uh, a little, uh, a little bit, uh, snitty about it.
00:36:25.100So that's, that's one guy, um, the, the, uh, Bishop Allegante out of Switzerland, who's always touted as a conservative.
00:36:32.720He's also, uh, really attacked the, um, the SSPX for the same reason.
00:36:38.780They're just not, they're not in, in line with what they're supposed to do.
00:36:42.340They're not following the appropriate channels being in line with, uh, Leo's church.
00:36:46.620I mean, that, that's connecting yourself to a lot of characters.
00:36:53.040And, and it's, and there's also the Walsingham, uh, ordinary, it is issued a scathing rebuke.
00:36:59.880So the, the people in the more establishment connected to Leo operations are all stomping up and down about this because of course, you know, SSPX outpaced them and is more successful than them.
00:37:13.660I found the SSPX because I couldn't during the virus, I couldn't find any place to go to mass, but the SSPX would let you go.
00:37:20.720Well, so much to, so much to, um, to, so much to break down in what you just said there.
00:37:26.740Um, so the Una Voce statement coupled with the joint statement with the Latin mass society said that they had heard with concern the announcement by the superior general of the SSPX that they will carry out the Episcopal consecrations this year.
00:37:46.120They say our ardent wish shared by many Catholics of goodwill is for the canonical regularization of the SSPX.
00:37:54.520That's the point Frank Walker you were making, which would enable its many good works to bear the greatest possible fruit.
00:38:01.100This announcement is an indication that this outcome is more, is a more distant prospect than it has seemed for many years.
00:38:09.240So there, there's Una Voce are saying basically that regularization, canonical regularization with a modernist superstructure that hates the Catholic faith is more important than the SSPX being able to continue its own existence.
00:38:28.140Um, there's, there's, there is so, there is so much, there is so much in that statement and what it reveals about the respectable side of tradition, traditionalists.
00:38:39.980Traditionism, Frank Walker, it's not simply about the Latin mass, right?
00:39:05.580Put the kingdom of God first and all the other things will be, will be added to.
00:39:11.540It's the disposition of shutting out the secular world and concentrating on Jesus Christ.
00:39:17.380That is what the traditional Catholic faith inculcated, and it's what was destroyed when the church embraced modernism institutionally at the Second Vatican Council.
00:39:29.460And if the SSPX, because there's no way that Ratzinger would ever have liberalized the old mass if the SSPX hadn't existed.
00:39:37.220If the SSPX isn't allowed to secure its episcopal, if it's not able to ensure its episcopal future and the ability to ordain its own priest, then it will die out.
00:39:53.440And that was exactly the long game that John Paul II and Ratzinger were trying to bring about, right?
00:40:01.660If they did what Una Voce said, that would be the end of the whole trad movement.
00:40:06.340Yeah, it would be completely over because the Leo church would take it over, would never give it another bishop, would tell it, it can't say the mass anymore.
00:40:15.680The ones that are pliant would do what they're told, and that would be the end of the traditional movement.
00:40:21.980The SSPX standing separate and having bishops is key to the whole preservation of, like you're saying, the Catholic perspective, the Catholic attitude.
00:40:33.480It's so necessary, and that's why it worries me so much.
00:40:38.320This negotiation that Paul Irani—Paul Irani has just announced it's going to be meeting independently with just Kissy Fernandez next week.
00:40:48.160When they went—when they—the Knights of Malta, when Francis wanted to take over the Knights of Malta, which is a big, powerful organization with its own, you know, passports and a lot of money on the line, he had a meeting with the Frouf Festing, the head of that operation, which is 1,000 years old.
00:41:05.380And bam, the next day, the guy resigned.
00:41:08.740I don't—it scares me that they—this is going into the spider's web and negotiating.
00:41:14.160If you can't hold firm, you're not going to be able to maintain it.
00:41:17.900These bishops need to be good Catholic men, otherwise the whole thing is done.
00:41:23.340We spoke about this, I repeat, we spoke about this two weeks ago, about the SSPXs needed to get on with the job of Episcopal consecration to provide for the next generation.
00:41:36.600I'm not sure this would have happened under the Pagliani's predecessor, Bishop Fellay, and I'm delighted to see that the SSPX is rediscovering its spine here, because it is more important for any Catholic to remain obedient to tradition than it is to modernist hierarchs.
00:42:00.420I wrote down what you said because it was so perfect, right?
00:42:03.860I just want to check your quote before going on to quote you at future moments.
00:42:08.920You said, if the SSPX did what the Vatican says, that would be the end of the traditional movement, right?
00:42:15.760Frank Walker, that is the synthesis of what you said, yeah?
00:46:18.360So the Church of England bursars, which are called the church commissioners, have opened the purse strings, have opened the wallet to pour money into anti-racism, quote unquote, initiatives.
00:46:31.620And as we know here in the war room, but not everyone might know, is that anti-racist does not mean you are against racism.
00:46:41.400Anti-racist means you believe in the new religion of white supremacy, white guilt, and white privilege.
00:46:49.260So the Church of England, in a shock and surprise to absolutely no one, is going fully woke, essentially, more so than it even has already.
00:46:57.560It is paying out £750,000 to parishes across England to do basically woke propaganda.
00:47:12.420So it says here, I'm quoting directly, whether it's Bible studies, baptismal preparations, confirmation preparations, or sermons, what we would like to actively promote is racial justice as one of the ways in engaging with the challenges of the church.
00:47:25.320Which is so ironic, which is so ironic, because basically all of this stuff is just a replacement religion.
00:47:29.860It is not an addition, an addendum to Christianity.
00:47:35.760Furthermore, and you can tell me better, being a true man of God, I thought that the Christian faith covered all of this stuff already,
00:47:47.340and that we were all made in the image of God, and we don't need an updated, modernist, neo-communist ideology to be shoehorned into this ancient religion
00:48:01.600to make us all less guilty of what this article is deeming racial sin.
00:48:07.120So the Church of England is bringing in a new sin.
00:49:14.240But let's not mistake this initiative, which is called the Racial Justice Priority Project for £750,000,
00:49:22.640with a other project called Project Spire, which was a £100 million project to fund healing, repair, and justice to address historic links of the church to the enslavement of peoples in Africa.
00:49:37.540And I would just like to remind the Church of England, far be it from me, to tell them their own history.
00:49:42.380However, it is my understanding that the Anglican Communion in the African nations is far more conservative and far more doctrinaire and correct than anything,
00:49:56.000that any of this nonsense that is passing for Christianity in England today.