The Return to Order Moment

We want to welcome you to episode two of The Return to Order Moment’s Christmas gift to our listeners, taken from The Christ, the Son of God: A Life of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by Abbe Constant Henri Fouard.

Last week, we brought you the events surrounding the Annunciation, Visitation, and the Dreams of Saint Joseph. This week, we will pick up Father Fouard’s narrative and take our listeners through Mary and Joseph’s trip to the City of David, the Nativity, the Visit of the Shepherds and 1the Presentation of the Baby Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem.

We hope that you have enjoyed our attempt to add something to the Holiness of your Christmas Holidays. May God bless you all!

We want to welcome you to the Christmas episode of the Return to Order Moment. In this annual celebration, we attempt to help you deepen your celebration of this Holy time by reading material that our listeners would be unlikely to find otherwise.

This year, we turn to Abbe Constant Henri Fouard (1837-1903). He was part of a tradition of priests who were best known for their scholarly work. In addition to his ecclesiastical duties, Father Fouard was a historian who traveled widely in Palestine, Syria, Greece, and Italy.

His extensive travels bore fruit in his many books, including his The Christ, The Son of God – A Life of Jesus, from which these excerpts are taken. He had the ability to write about the scenes of Our Lord’s life that could only come from one who had spent considerable time there tracing the steps that Our Lord Himself took. It is also significant that Father Fouard’s journeys took place in an age when Palestine still looked and felt much as it did during the time of Christ, without the modern traffic, industries, and tourist traps that one finds there today.

We decided to bring you this magnificent narrative over two episodes. This week, we will give you the setting of the Nativity and the condition of the people who lived there. Then, we will speak of the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the visions of Saint Joseph.

Next week, only five days before Christmas, we will hear of the Holy Family’s journey to Bethlehem, the Nativity itself, the visit of the Shepherds, and conclude with the presentation in the Temple.

As Pope Francis ages, he appears to become more consistent. Normally, that would be a good thing. However, the trend seems to be that the aging pontiff is consistently wrong on every new issue. He appears to be so enamored of radical leftism, that he seems willing to take the Church down every radical road. Today’s podcast will look at three areas in which that tendency manifests itself.

Listeners who wish to read the essays in their original format may use the following links - https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/11/pope-francis-the-war-and-the-holy-places/, https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/10/why-pope-franciss-eco-friendly-apostolic-exhortation-rings-unconvincingly-for-the-faithful/, and https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/09/pope-franciss-synodal-path-mimics-the-anglicans-route-to-self-destruction/.

Thank you for listening.

We Americans don’t usually think much of titles. In fact, this disdain was written into our Constitution, where Article I, Section 9, Clause 9 states, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.”

Not only that, but any government official must get the permission of Congress before accepting one from a foreign king.

So, we tend to turn a deaf ear to titles like marquis, duke or knight. We have a few titles for current and former office holders. We allow medical doctors and members of the clergy to put Doctor or Reverend in front of their names. Other than that, it is just plain Mister, Missus, or Miss, and even those become less common every day.

The founder of the TFP, Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, thought that this tendency was very unfortunate. In his mind, titles separated those who provided exceptional service to their nations and God – together with their descendants – from the rest of the human herd. He believed that such separations – or hierarchies – were essential to the proper order of society.

Radicals and Revolutionaries always make the same mistake. They all think that the Church is just going to roll over and die. Perhaps Josef Stalin posed this error most succinctly when he asked, “How many divisions does the Pope have?” In his mind, it was the size of the army that made you strong. Nothing else mattered. The Church had no army, except the spear-bearing Swiss Guards. Therefore, it was weak and would soon die.

Of course, today, Stalin is dead and the country that he led no longer exists. Vladimir Putin pretends to be some sort of modern-day Stalin. However, the Ukrainians are proving that Putin is more like Humpty-Dumpty than the legendary Soviet dictator.

Even though the Church today is in crisis, it is nowhere near death. It still exists and claims millions of followers, which is far more than one can say for the many enemies who predicted her demise over the centuries.

The spread of Western, and particularly Christian Civilization from Europe to the rest of the world is a magnificent story. Unfortunately, most of America’s young people never hear it. Most of those who do hear it get a doctored, out of context version written by woke so-called historians who abandon the truths of history to promote their political agendas.

This episode of the Return to Order Moment will try to set the record right. Of course, a single podcast cannot undo the years of work of that the university propagandists put into their lies, half-truths, and out-of-context conclusions. Hopefully enough people will hear this to begin to make a dent.

This podcast looks at two missionaries to the Americas and a site where much missionary work takes place.

These are only three of the hundreds of missionary stories that took place in North America during the exploration and colonization of this great continent. They are essential parts of the American story. We hope that you enjoy them, are edified by them, and use them as a beginning of your own studies of early American Catholicism.

Listeners who wish to read the essays in their original formats may use the following links - https://www.tfp.org/saint-anthony-mary-claret-apostolic-missionary-ultramontane-champion-and-crusher-of-communism/, https://www.tfp.org/the-mystic-who-became-a-missionary-the-extraordinary-life-of-saint-marie-of-the-incarnation/, and https://www.tfp.org/a-rare-view-of-frontier-catholicism-in-america/.

Thank you for listening.

Today’s episode of the Return to Order Moment will be shorter than most. However, it is packed with importance.

Twenty-first-century Catholics find ourselves faced with a dilemma that we never expected until recently. We find ourselves torn between loyalty to the papacy while being unable to agree with many statements made by the current pope.

We will not be able to resolve all the points of that dilemma today, but a sense of faithfulness to the unchangeable truths behind Holy Mother Church forces us to respond to certain comments made by Pope Francis. In that necessity, we take comfort in the fact that the author of the essay that we read here today, Mr. Luiz Sérgio Solimeo, is a superb scholar who has been studying such questions for over five decades.

Mr. Solimeo’s essay is richly footnoted. Any listener who wishes to review his sources can gain access to that essay in its original format by clicking on this link - https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/10/at-the-height-of-the-sexual-revolution-why-does-pope-francis-belittle-those-who-defend-chastity/?PKG=RTOE1899

Society conditions us to see ugliness. The television news business thrives on it. Advertising tries to make us pay attention by shocking us. Movies and novels are deemed boring unless there is something in it that is incredibly ugly, like murder or adultery. Even many fashion trends make the people who adopt them appear ugly.

Why did we stop seeking out things that are beautiful? Perhaps it was when society stopped seeking after God. After all, if God is all beauty, then using our wills to embrace ugliness has to be a rejection of God – and an embrace of evil.

Each of the four essays that make up this podcast focus upon beauty.

The first considers the implications of a miracle that saved a beautiful place. The second describes one kind of beauty of character - and how it was found in a surprising place. The third is more philosophical - considering the ways that modern people reject beauty and how it can be recovered. The last describes a vacation in a magnificent and beautiful place - and the factors that make that place beautiful.

Listeners who wish to read the essays in their original formats can use the following links - https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/08/the-miracle-on-maui-is-god-sending-us-a-message/, https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/09/finding-light-in-a-walmart/, https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/08/the-rejection-and-restoration-of-beauty/, and https://www.returntoorder.org/2021/07/finding-a-world-of-peace-and-order-on-michigans-mackinac-island/.

Thank you for listening.

Josef Stalin once said, “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

Our listeners can be sure that Communists, whether they be in China, Cuba, Moscow or anywhere else have not ignored Stalin’s ideas. Throughout the world, they have diligently worked to take over education.

Unlike many other Marxist and Communist doctrines, this one makes sense. In the United States, and much of the world, education is the most socialized segment of society – the area of greatest government control. Even private schools in the United States are staffed with those who meet state certification requirements. To get that certification, teachers and administrators must attend state-approved schools of education. These often become indoctrination centers.

This podcast discusses some of the methods that leftists use that divert the schools' attention away from education and toward creating a new generation of "social justice warriors."

Readers who wish to read the essays in their original formats may use these links - https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/09/the-red-chinese-are-turning-americas-best-schools-into-little-red-classrooms/, https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/09/californias-controversial-math-curriculum-focuses-on-dismantling-white-supremacy/, and https://www.returntoorder.org/2023/06/should-high-school-debaters-be-forced-to-promote-marxism-and-leninism/.

Thank you for listening.

One of the buildings at the American TFP’s headquarters in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania has a glass covered niche immediately across the entrance hall from the main door. It encloses a statue of the Mother of God, under the title of Our Lady of Good Success. Among the members and supporters who enter the building each day, the custom is to stop and bow before this image whenever one enters or leaves the building – or even when walking from one end of the building to the other.

The founder of the international TFP movement, the Brazilian scholar, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, had a fervent love of the Virgin Mary, and of Our Lady of Good Success, in particular.

This essay is typical of the instruction that he gave to TFP members and supporters about the importance of devotion to the Blessed Mother. So, we begin this podcast about Our Lady of Good Success by bringing our listeners Professor Plinio’s essay, “Why We Need Our Lady.” Those who wish to read this essay may use this link - https://www.tfp.org/why-we-need-our-lady/

Then we continue with an excerpt from one of our favorite books, A Spanish Mystic in Quito. It is available as a free download from the American TFP by using this link - https://www.tfp.org/free-version-of-a-spanish-mystic/

We conclude the podcast with a marvelous essay in which Mr. Norman Fulkerson related his experience on a pilgrimage to Quito in his essay, Visiting Our Lady of Good Success: A Pilgrimage to Heaven. That essay can be read at https://www.tfp.org/visiting-our-lady-of-good-success-a-pilgrimage-to-heaven/.

Thank you for listening, and pray to Our Lady of Good Success for her protection of Holy Mother Church.