Arouca Press

30/05/2025

This spiritual classic, out-of-print for 50 years, will finally be republished! We are deeply honoured to republish it with the permission of the Wu family. It will be available soon!

22/05/2025

We have good news. Our copies of "The Liturgical Rosary" have arrived in the fulfillment center. We are working hard in fulfilling all of the orders! Thank you all for your patience!

19/05/2025

A careful study on the compatibility of Dignitatis Humanae with the Church's Tradition is now available in English. The principal author is Fr. Bernard Lucien who has deep roots in the Traditional movement. An additional commentary is by Fr. Antoine-Marie Araujo of the Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrer accompanies the main text.

Translated by John Pepino, Ph.D. | Foreword by Alan Fimister, Ph.D.

Purchase here:

https://aroucapress.com/religious-liberty

https://www.amazon.com/Religious-Liberty-Continuity-Contradiction-Dignitatis/dp/1998492206

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/religious-liberty-bernard-lucien/1147398985

Price: 17.95 USD (pbk), 27.95 USD (hc)
(Slight discount on Amazon until May 23)

134 pages

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Endorsements:

The question of religious liberty is no longer a matter of interest only to political philosophers. By the ambiguity of its teaching, the Second Vatican Council elevated the issue to one that concerns all Catholics inasmuch as it touches on the consistency and reliability of the Church herself in her official teaching. Fr. Lucien's work makes an important contribution to resolving the question in favor of that consistency and reliability. —Dr. John Joy, author of On the Ordinary & Extraordinary Magisterium: From Joseph Kleutgen to the Second Vatican Council

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Many Catholics have been disturbed by an apparent contradiction between the teaching of the Vatican II declaration on religious liberty Dignitatis Humanæ and more than one document of the prior magisterium. As a result several writers have offered competing solutions to this apparent contradiction. This present work consists of three essays with two by Fr. Bernard Lucien setting forth his own carefully argued approach. And until one particular solution gains more widespread acceptance as the most probable answer to this difficulty, it is good that theologians and philosophers continue to study and debate this important question that goes to the heart of the Church's ability to know and define truth. —Thomas Storck, author of Foundations of a Catholic Political Order

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Fr. Bernard Lucien is considered one of the best French traditionalist theologians. His explanation of religious liberty has three merits in my eyes: it is simple and clear; it is based on the literal meaning of the text of Dignitatis Humanæ, and it displays a truly traditional spirit. Let us hope that, thanks to this publication, it will receive greater recognition. —Fr. Louis-Marie de Blignières, founder, Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrer (Chémeré-le-Roi, France)

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This book makes an original and valuable contribution to the debate on religious liberty. It deserves to be read by all who wish to understand Dignitatis Humanæ and the duty of human societies “toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” —Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., co-author with Dr. Alan Fimister of Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy

**

Father Lucien began studying the conciliar declaration Dignitatis Humanæ in order to demonstrate its incompatibility with traditional teaching. This search for truth, however, led him to reverse his previous position and to find a way out in full agreement with classical moral theology. Analyzing the differing concepts of “conscience” occurring in Western thought since Aquinas, he concluded that the “liberty of conscience and cult” condemned by the nineteenth-century popes was something much more radical and sweeping than the right to religious freedom affirmed by Vatican II. While some of us who have reached the same conclusion have arrived at it by a rather different path from Fr. Lucien, giving more attention to the “due limits” to religious freedom affirmed by DH, his work is a serious contribution to this quaestio disputata that deserves the attention of every theologian. —Fr. Brian W. Harrison, OS, STD, author of Religious Liberty and Contraception

19/05/2025

New book on Religious Liberty - https://mailchi.mp/aroucapress/religious-liberty

16/05/2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFZyBTk_CBQ

On Thermonuclear Mirth

A remarkable novel that deserves to be well-known!

The author speaks several languages!

We also thank the author for such kind words.

Purchase the book here: https://aroucapress.com/our-books/fiction/thermonuclear-mirth

Gracjan Kraszewski, Vandal Catholic Director of Intellectual Formation: https://vandalcatholic.com/intellectGracjan Kraszewski books, Arouca Press website:ht...

15/05/2025

New book on the cardinal virtue of Justice - https://mailchi.mp/aroucapress/justice

14/05/2025

We are working on a new book! We are nearing the typesetting phase! It has taken over a year to get to this point.

14/05/2025

A level-headed analysis which is becoming increasingly rare as people tend towards extremes.

https://mailchi.mp/641f9800c772/winter-gregorius-magnus-15358531?e=febcc24175

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A Pope of the Anglosphere

During the reign of Pope Francis, a lot of attention was, rightly, given to his Argentinian background, and the Argentinian assumptions and habits of minds that he may have carried. I am grateful to our Argentinian friends who helped us to understand what was going on, during a rather confusing time. Now we have a Pope from the English-speaking world – even if he has spent a great deal of time in Peru – and I feel that I can more easily understand him.

I don’t claim any great insight in him personally, but there are certain aspects of his background, and of what is already evident about his attitudes, which is very familiar to me. I have met and interacted with many people who share things with Pope Leo, which may be puzzling to people from outside this milieu: English-speaking, highly educated, and clerical.

Pope Leo seems to be very comfortable in liberal circles,and evidently was very acceptable to liberal Cardinals in the conclave, as well as, obviously, to Pope Francis, who made him a bishop and then a cardinal. Nevertheless, he is also acceptable, apparently, to conservatives, and has made some conservative signals, such as wearing the red Papal mozetta. Readers may think: well, he was a compromise candidate with middle-of-the-road opinions. However, this is an unhelpful description. He seems to me, on my admittedly limited knowledge, to be what I would call an open-hearted liberal.

I have met many clerics like this. They gravitate naturally to liberal-dominated areas of study, such as biblical scholarship or social justice, and their assumptions are liberal, say, about modern biblical criticism, or the importance of Vatican II ‘updating’ the Church. They are completely comfortable with the Novus Ordo. In other words, in the modern ecclesial environment, they are neither dinosaurs nor wildly eccentric.

Nevertheless, when you talk to them, two things become apparent. First, they don’t hate you. If you are a traditionalist, this, sadly, is not something you can take for granted. Secondly, they acknowledge that harm has been done by overzealous ‘updating’: something has been lost, as well as gained.

Pope Francis himself signalled both these attitudes early in his pontificate. He said that Pope Benedict’s approach to traditionalists was ‘pastoral’, and, on another occasion, that the liturgical reform had led to a loss of mystery and of orientation towards God, by contrast with the Eastern Rites. These statements could be taken as signals not so much of openness towards Trads, but of sophistication. These are classy attitudes: the attitudes of educated, intellectually honest people who can see both sides of a question.

In some places in the Church, I gather, these attitudes are not to be found at all. Pope Leo, on the other hand, comes from a milieu in which they are quite common, and can go quite deep. The depth can be measured like this. First, a liberal might say: yes the Eastern Rites are very moving, our liturgy used be more like that. The second stage is to say: I can understand why some people are attached to the TLM, that’s not necessarily something unhealthy. The third stage is to say that the continued existence of the TLM in the life of the Church is a positive thing. The fourth stage is for a person to become personally interested in it: to attend or celebrate it, as something which contributes his own personal re-integration of a more mystical and contemplative spirituality: an enrichment of his own spiritual life.

Pope Francis may have been stuck at stage one. Pope Leo has got all the way to stage four. For it seems that he has learnt and celebrated the Traditional Mass himself, both as a priest and even in Rome, when a member of the Congregation for Bishops. We know this now from many sources.

This does not mean that he has taken on attitudes and positions unacceptable to liberal Cardinals in a conclave: obviously, that is not the case. It does not mean that he will implement our favourite shopping-list of measures: actually, no pope would do that. It does not even mean that liturgy is necessarily high on his agenda. What it does mean, I hope, is that when the subject arises, as it will before long, he will not continue a policy that has as its aim the destruction of the Traditional Mass, at least among clergy outside the Traditional Institutes and communities. I would imagine the most likely policy would be to let bishops and religious superiors allow it, unless is causes problems.

I was hoping for such a policy from Pope Francis’ successor, even if he had no understanding or interest in the subject at all, simply on the basis that Traditionis custodes has led to a lot of fuss and bother, and no tangible good result. With a Pope with Leo XIV’s background, I am even more confident that this will be the outcome.

Let us pray for Pope Leo. There are some traditional prayers for the Pope here; if you would like to contribute to a spiritual bouquet for him, an easy way of doing so would be to contribute to the one being organised by the Latin Mass Society in England here.

Youcan, incidentally, read my message on Pope Leo to supporters of the Latin Mass Society here.

Joseph Shaw, President

During the reign of Pope Francis, a lot of attention was, rightly, given to his Argentinian background, and the Argentinian assumptions and habits of minds that he may have carried. I am grateful to our Argentinian friends who helped us to understand what was going on, during a rather confusing time...

11/05/2025

This book seems to picking up steam. There must be a reason.

https://aroucapress.com/our-books/catholic-social-teaching/leo-xiii

10/05/2025

Full cover with dust jacket

This will be available soon!

28/04/2025

I want to keep everyone updated as to the shipping status of The Liturgical Rosary. I thought the books would arrive in our fulfillment center (located in Illinois) sooner but it looks like they will arrive there June 5. I apologize for the delay.

Rest assured though that each of the pre-orders will be fulfilled immediately once the books arrive in the US.

Thank you for your patience!

26/04/2025

"But this return to contemplation, to being alone with God, implies a terrible demand before which many souls recoil: the immolation of self. Authentic action begins only when the Christian effaces himself entirely before God, so that God may act in him."

—Marcel De Corte, "The Grandeur of Contemplation," (July 1956)