The Wisdom of OnePeterFive

OnePeterFive  

OnePeterFive offers Catholic news, commentary, and information. We are dedicated to rebuilding Catholic culture and restoring Catholic tradition.
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Steve Skojec Explains His Mission [4-13-16 in comments]
[replying to a young convert]
"Receive the sacraments, frequent the confessional, pray the Rosary and the Auxilium Christianorum, revive little long-lost Catholic traditions, learn all you can.
"When I started this site, it was supposed to be about all of that. But then the gates of hell opened up and everyone talked about how nice that was, how pastoral, how merciful.
"There was a big sword lying on the ground and nobody was picking it up. So I shrugged, and I grabbed it."

1 Peter Five’s Trad Inc.

 Since my departure from the Trad Wars™ I've begun to see #CatholicTwitter as a level of Hell on the Road to TRAdition (get it!? lol).
Mike "The KingDude" Church on Twitter

The good news is that, as members of Christ’s Mystical Body the Church, we have access to the very same grace that transformed the infamous “Saul of Tarsus” (Acts 9:11) into “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ”

As we have now entered into Holy Week, the final preparation for the Sacred Triduum, let us resolve to follow the example of St. Paul and the entire “white-robed army of Martyrs” (Te Deum) so that when our time comes to depart from this life, we too may say in truth: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7).
Matt Gaspers Suffering for Christ: Reflections on Saint Paul (March 28, 2018)

America is wired Catholic, labeled Protestant, and currently functioning as secular. No wonder it has devolved into a secular state rife with bacchanalia, eugenics, and collectivism — symptoms of a republic in name only.

Timothy Gordon-Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome

No matter how dark things get, He will always hear and answer us when we approach Him full of love and faith.  As He said to the woman, the blind man, and the leper, “thy faith hath made thee whole.”  Our Lord hears these prayers, and many prayers like them for one simple reason: He wishes us to have a life of hope, with Joy.
Michael Hichborn The Light Shineth in the Darkness (2017-01-11)

It is a paradox: we will not find time for rejoicing unless we sacrifice time to “do nothing,” to make a burnt offering of our life and our time before the Lord, in a silence without props, without scripts or safe paths or social support. Only by making a choice for inactivity, as it were, will we habituate ourselves to stop walking among noise and stop denying the voice
Peter Kwasniewski The Superiority of Silence (July 24, 2019)

Within a lifetime of St. Peter’s death, Justin Martyr was teaching Christianity as a philosophy in Rome, alongside other masters of philosophical schools; and the thought of writers such as Tertullian and Origen demonstrates the readiness of Christians to pursue the intellectual implications of their belief.
Henry Sire -Phoenix from the Ashes: The Making, Unmaking, and Restoration of Catholic Tradition (2015)

I don't want to argue with people on this website, but I can't just let them keep being wrong, either.
Steve Skojec (Aug 18, 2019) Twitter

God created men for heaven. God created all men to know Jesus Christ, to have supernatural life in Him and to achieve eternal life. To lead all men to Jesus Christ and to eternal life is, therefore, the most important mission of the Church.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider Bp. Schneider: Pope’s Revised ‘Diversity of Religions’ Take ‘Remains Insufficient’ (August 29, 2019)

I think the natural world is terribly, terribly important, and not just because it’s pretty and often weirdly mysterious and amazing, but mainly because I have to live in it for the rest of my life.
Hilary White We Should Care For Animals, But They Don’t Have Rights (August 3, 2015)

Some Popular 1P5 Writers

The world’s oldest Nun celebrated her 116th Birthday and revealed her secret to happiness.
Daughter of Charity Sister André Randon said the key to happiness is “Pray and drink a cup of chocolate every day.”
I guess she forgot to mention flame wars on Twitter and mixing it up with trolls in the Facebook combox.
Patrick Archbold World's Oldest Nun Reveals Her Secret to Happiness  (February 19, 2020) Creative Minority Report
https://www.creativeminorityreport.com/

In science, technology, economics, industry, agriculture, armaments, and democratic rule, America, Europe, and Japan are generations ahead. But the Islamic world retains something the West has lost: a desire to have children and the will to carry on their civilization, cultures, families, and faith.
-Patrick J. Buchanan

The great woman Doctor of the Church. Saint Catherine of Siena stated: “The two most important moments of our life are now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” Of course this reminds us of the prayer that the Blessed Mother loves so much—the Angelic Salutation commonly known as the Hail Mary.

Given that the moment we die is of the greatest importance for every living human person, and that our eternal destiny depends on how we die, how we finish our brief earthly sojourn, we must all make a sincere, calm, serene, but also sober and serious effort to arrive at the end of our lives in the grace of God.

Therefore, let us converse calmly, serenely, and confidently on the all-important topic of our mortality, on the reality of death that nobody in this earthly residence can avoid.
Fr. Ed Broom DEATH THE GATEWAY TO ETERNAL LIFE (Nov 05 2019)
http://fatherbroom.com/

Beer may have been invented by the ancient Egyptians, but it was perfected by medieval monasteries, which gave us modern brewing as we know it. To this day, the world’s finest beer is made within the cloister.
Michael P Foley, Drinking with the Saints: The Sinner's Guide to a Holy Happy Hour (2015-05-04). 
https://michaelpfoley.info/

St. Monica wept, prayed and sacrificed for her son for many years. Her greatest desire in life was to see her son’s conversion to Catholicism, and once this happened, she believed her purpose in life had been fulfilled. 

Moms (and dads), don’t give up on your children, and don’t give up on God. I tell parents, “Get in ‘Begging Mode’ … Go ‘Full-On Monica!'” Get in a state of grace, pray the rosary, fast continuously, do novenas, recruit saints, especially St. Monica. Be obnoxious before God!
Fr Richard Heilman Has the World Laid Hold of Your Kids? Go “Full-On Monica” On Them! (August 27, 2019)
https://www.romancatholicman.com/author/frheilman/

It is pride to think the spiritual life must be “great” in terms of external practices, since these are only means to what is truly necessary — faith working charity (Gal. 5:6), which can often be invisible to observers. Rather, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed (Mt. 13:31). One cannot immediately begin praying the whole Divine Office or rosary every day and fasting twice a week as the saints did and more, and it is folly and pride to try.

Instead, begin small and steady. Are you not praying one third of the rosary (five decades) every day? Think about the duties of your state in life, then honestly think of how much time you can spend each day. Maybe it is only a decade a day. Or maybe you can do five decades on your commute every morning.
Timothy Flanders Here’s How the Devil Plans to Ruin Your Resolutions (January 7, 2020)
https://meaningofcatholic.com/

When it appears that God is silent, we must remember the lesson of Holy Saturday. Christ was not lifeless in the tomb; He was actively working out the salvation of mankind. Likewise today, even when we are surrounded by the apparent silence of God, we can be assured that He is working in the world. His work, however, is often accomplished beneath the surface, hidden from the world. Eric Sammons The Silence of God   (August 11, 2016)
https://ericsammons.com/

During my hapless wanderings from California to New York to France, I tried to escape my past. One bright Spring day, while walking through a forest in rural Massachusetts,  nearby a monastery I was visiting, I asked the Lord for advice. Suddenly, I looked up from the dirt path in front of me and saw a flowering dogwood tree in the midst of a sea of green leaves. Tradition dictates that the Cross of Christ was made from dogwood. I got my answer.
Joseph Sciambra (facebook Friend)
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Ours is a time when the fierce and beautiful truth of Christ’s saving Gospel is being eclipsed and the Church is undergoing balkanizing fissures threatening her very stability. A time marked by widespread doctrinal confusion in the Church to a degree heretofore unknown in living memory.
Out of true Christian charity for the Holy Father and for the faithful; may they reaffirm Christ’s moral teachings and implore the Holy Father to boldly and unambiguously strengthen the brethren in the fullness of the faith of Christ.
Michael Sirilla Professor of dogmatic and systematic theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville
Took a Class with him but dropped out which is why I place him here.
Superstition, Dissent, and Scandal? A brief defense of Fr. Thomas Weinandy (November 5, 2017)
Catholic World Report


In a Catholic Church, you do not only praise Christ with your lips, you eat him with your mouth in an act of intimacy shocking alike to the Muslims as to the Gnostic, who regard all matter as evil, and God too good to be incarnate. The shock of incarnation is still alive here, and still offending people.
John C Wright A Universal Apology Point Fifteen: ON SACRAMENT (July 20, 2013) scifiwright.com

Prophets typically fast and pray. What I do is think, fast, and pray that what I write makes some kind of sense. That’s a critical difference. Besides, all public revelation ended with the death of St. John the Apostle. That’s when God stopped adding to the great ball of yarn and left it to the Church to untangle and knit into a sweater.
John Zmirak Heresy Gets Things Done (January 26th, 2013) The Imaginative Conservative

Art and Culture

I've always had an aversion to the James Bond character, and I suppose it has more to do with the fact that he's a glorified womanizing/fornicating spy who will kill at the drop of a hat versus a chaste spy who will "merely injure" at the drop of a hat.

To me, the Bond movies' villains are only slightly less moral than the supposed protagonist: Bond...James Bond. Thus, I feel no sympathy for 007; I don't root for him. I don't care if he gets hurt. I know he's not going to die at the end; there is, after all, too much money invested in the Bond franchise for that to happen.

Now, if he resisted the urge to flirt and fornicate with seductive, pretty women — the so-called Bond girls (no word, by the way, on whether they practice the intrinsic evil of contraception or procure abortions if impregnated by 007 or some other guy) — and killed only when absolutely necessary to defend his own life or that of another person (given his professional skills, he could temporarily incapacitate most of the baddies instead of killing them), I would consider the James Bond character worthy of at least some admiration.
Matt C. Abbott James Bond: heroic spy or womanizing killer? (November 25, 2012) Renew America

For instance, remakes of popular movies from earlier decades, or rehashes upon rehashes of time-tried concepts, now euphemistically advertised as “franchise reboots”, are within the film industry almost exclusively favored over anything approximating innovative or experimental productions.  

We, as Christians, have a clear obligation to provide nourishment and guidance for such embryonic ways of life of future society. We have a duty to dissociate from the sterile spectacle and instead more fully partake in and revitalize our tradition, firmly anchored in virtue and truth. In no other way can we facilitate the transition beyond the contemporary and approaching crises into a resilient, morally sound and sustainable future society, whatever shape it may take.

For this reason, the living authenticity of Christian orthodoxy and communal unity is particularly critical in this period. Contrary to the trends towards greater integration and compromise with the ethos of secular modernity, we should really not yield an inch. Because if Christians cannot provide a clear and coherent worldview grounded in the truths preserved by the Catholic tradition, serving to guide society in accordance with the Gospel in the midst of cultural decline, there really is nobody else that will.
Johan Eddebo ‘In search of lost time (June 24, 2017)

In any case, there is never any excuse for cheapness, pandering to the lowest common denominator, or chasing after the latest fashions. Putting bad art into the eyes, the imagination, and the memory of children deforms them and may place obstacles between them and an encounter with the God, Who is sovereign Beauty. It may even erect subtle psychological barriers to living the fullness of liturgical and sacramental Christianity, for it does not take much intelligence to see that if the Faith is true, it surely cannot express itself in trite, superficial ways. The lamentable fact that the Faith is so often expressed in trite, superficial ways transmits the underlying message that the Faith is not true.

St. John Chrysostom, speaking about icons, says the honor given to the image passes to the original. By extension, if we make images that dishonor Our Lord or Our Lady, isn’t that dishonor also passing to the original?

Our Lord Jesus Christ is fairer than the sons of men. As God, He is Beauty itself and the source of all created beauty. Of course, this cannot be depicted by poor mortals like us, but there are centuries of fine art in our Catholic tradition that manage to convey something of the mystery of divine beauty. Every children’s book intended for religious use should be drawing heavily upon this immense heritage of beauty, this inexhaustible fund of iconography that is our birthright as Catholics.
At very least, we should have enough respect not to turn God Incarnate into a cartoon character.
Clarissa Kwasniewski Why Are We Making Our Children the Victims of Bad Religious Art? (September 15, 2017)

Because their ranks are filled with men and women of at least nominal Catholic backgrounds, the police and mob worlds that have supplied Hollywood with so much fodder for its cultural products have also given the industry cause for depicting its characters’ faith lives. Where older films and shows are concerned, these depictions can cause tradition-leaning Catholics to appreciate the beauty and reverence of the Catholic culture portrayed…and to wonder how they would look if they’d been animated by another spirit – say, the spirit of Vatican II.

Take, for example, the scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone is having his infant son baptized. While all viewers might not have understood the clear way the old baptismal rite addresses the existence of evil and our combat against it, the scene captures the rite’s mystery, with its exsufflation and majestic Latin.

Images of traditional Catholicism simply play better than do depictions of the post-conciliar Church and its many works. A return to tradition is something Catholics – and the film industry – should root for.
 Sean McClinch When Will Catholic TV Characters Embrace Tradition? (December 10, 2018)

Catholics should create art. TV and movies can be art. Pope John Paul II wrote in his “Letter to Artists”(1999) calling us to create art both for the Church and for the masses. He wrote, “[T]he divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power.”

Some may be called to paint, some to write. Some, such as this author, are called to be filmmakers. None is inherently better or worse art than another form. The ability of art to reach the hearts and minds of the world is an incredible power, and we must participate, with motion pictures being the most powerful to present a message.  

There is no requirement that good media be overtly Catholic or Christian. While there is nothing wrong with creating faith-based movies, they tend to be aimed at those already leading Christian lives. Should the priest preach to the choir or to the sinner in sitting in the last pew — perhaps the sinner who has not made it to church at all? Many of these faith-focused stories have protagonists who go from being good to being great. These stories are not equipping us, or our children, for the trials they will face in life or the road back from sin. The points that will stick with the viewer long-term are those they come to themselves — the subtext, not the obvious.
The media we create must be high-quality, to honor God and reach the masses. Quality is a function of many things, including practice and the proper tools. Media production, especially content like feature films, is incredibly expensive. If we do not support content creation, the only content created will be low-quality, laughed at, and scorned. It will fail to reach those most in need.

“You can’t win if you don’t play” remains an ongoing truism. In today’s culture, everyone with a cell phone, a TV, or a computer is playing, or consuming the product of Hollywood. As the culture war rages, leaving the field is abandoning our brothers and sisters in combat.
-Tim Serewicz If Catholics Want Good Media, We Have to Pay for Them (July 2, 2019)

Alters

I will soon reach altar number 100! When I started this venture, I never dreamed these would be so needed. I am told that priests use them in a variety of settings: missionary priests who travel around their diocese (or Australian Outback) to provide the Holy Mass for rural areas, in Nursing Homes, on private retreats, on scouting trips, in their parents’ homes when visiting, in hospitals – for the dying, and in military settings.

I was able to provide a priest from Spain with a donated altar stone for his traditional chapel altar. He said he was so grateful especially when he says the words “oramus te domine per merita sanctorun tuorum quorum reliquiae hic sunt.” (“We beseech Thee, O Lord, by the merits of those of Thy saints whose relics are here, and of all the saints, that Thou wouldst vouchsafe to pardon me all my sins.”) I have rescued many altar stones off of eBay that I donate to priests for their altars.
Just a little note about wood in general. It is my favorite medium to work with. I love the smell of freshly cut wood. Each species has it’s own distinct odor. I almost feel as if it talks to me when choosing how to put boards together to accentuate the grain and patterns found in the wood. A favorite technique of mine is to have a continuous grain from one end of the mensa to the other.

I begin each of my workdays by asking St. Joseph to help guide me in my work – so that I can build for the honor and glory of Our Lord, for the sanctification of his priests and those who attend the Masses said on these altars as well as my own sanctification. I love my work and am forever thankful for having been given such a purpose.
I do not know how long I will continue to build – I leave it up to Our Lord to guide me.
Rick Murphey Have Altar – Will Travel (March 27, 2015) Website

Alter Servers

I am not asking for an anathema upon females in the Liturgy or upon every girl altar server. But examine the facts: eighty percent of Priests ordained in this past year were altar boys at one time. Of the females who have served at the altar since 1994, not a single one will ever go on to receive Holy Orders. Is it not both more pastorally and practically prudent to preserve the tradition of male service at the altar? Ought we not give young men in the Church a venue to experience what it might be like to become the Alter Christus in a powerful and anagogical sense? Why shouldn’t young men have this experience apart from the added complexity of dealing with the presence and attention of young ladies?

The Lord consistently calls young men to be His Priests. However, in recent memory, fewer of them are experiencing the sublime joy of serving at the Altar of God and, tragically, fewer are hearing or heeding that call. It is a grave crisis. Like weeds trying to choke the seed in the parable of the sower, some among our number propose the abandonment the holy tradition of Priestly celibacy. Worse, dissidents continue to demand the “ordination” of women. I propose another answer: restore and reinvigorate all-male altar service.
Like a typology lifted from the pages of the Old Testament, let young men glimpse their service at the Altar of God as a prefiguring of their lives sacrificed for Christ and His Church!
Peter Lyons Learning the Priesthood: The Role of Altar Service in Vocational Discernment (February 26, 2015)

Angels

Men can only see in a limited spectrum of light.  But some animals can see other bands of the spectrum, such as ultraviolet light.  The truth of the matter is that there is far more to the universe we live in that we do not see.  There is an invisible world all around us, and it is probably a mercy that God shields our vision from everything that takes place in the very room we sleep in.  And even if we could see this species, I have not the faintest idea what this would resemble.
While it is true that angels only occasionally take the form of men, in their spiritual form, I cannot say what they resemble.  They do not fill space the way we in the physical world do.  How can something exist somewhere but nowhere?  Are they phased out and at a different frequency than our reality?  Are they in a dimension that is adjacent to ours, one easy for them to see beyond but impossible for us to even grasp?  When it comes to the angelic species, we are animals on the ground, as to where those intelligences are like birds in the trees looking down at us and even beyond to the horizon.  When we try to conceive of the angelic realm, it is as though we are trying to look at all of the fish in the daytime, and all of the refracted light from the sky blinds us to all of the fish in the water of that lake.
Some things we were simply not meant to master and understand.  Your guardian angel, who has been with you since the day of your birth, already has a name.  He was given a name by God.  Men do not have dominion over angels.  Men have dominion over the things of the Earth, but not the angels.  You cannot have power over your angel, so therefore you ought not try to name him.  And no, you will not turn into an angel when you die.  You will always be human, even after you pass the threshold of death.  More will be revealed to you, instantly, on the other side.  But for now you must accept what you are: a human being and a subject of God.
The following is one of the oldest prayers to a guardian angel, dating back to St. Macarius of Egypt of the 4th century:

Holy angel, to whose care this poor soul and wretched body of mine have been given, do not cast me off because I am a sinner, do not hold aloof from me because I am not clean. Do not yield your place to the Spirit of Evil; guide me by your influence on my mortal body. Take my limp hand and bring me to the path that leads to salvation.

Yes, holy angel, God has given you charge of my miserable little soul and body. Forgive every deed of mine that has ever offended you at any time in my life; forgive the sins I have committed today. Protect me during the coming night and keep me safe from the machinations and contrivances of the Enemy, that I may not sin and arouse God’s anger.

Intercede for me with the Lord; ask him to make me fear him more and more, and to enable me to give him the service his goodness deserves. Amen.
Laramie Hirsch Guardian Angels In An Unseen World Around You (October 2, 2018)

Apologetics

Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft famously describes the “Bach argument for the existence of God,” wherein God’s existence is clearly posited by a) the beauty and b) the coherence of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music. God couldn’t fail to have created a universe with such order. Among Kreeft’s students polled about their inchoate path to Christian faith, this simple argument popularly outranks the more technical Aristotelian-Thomist proofs of God. No surprise: in order to convince, such proofs require a good deal more training than most under-equipped, under-educated college students possess today. As such, the “Bach argument for the existence of God” is a nice appetif for the more technical arguments.

I propose an innovation in this vein of aesthetically inclined God proofs: the 3:10 to Yuma argument. In a word, God’s existence is more or less required by a) the beauty and b) the coherence of this film’s commanding moral realism. Both elements countervail upon the powerful forces of Modernist moral mediocrity burnished in most every other film I’ve ever seen. 3:10 to Yuma is moral realism at its very finest. In this Christian morality tale, even the term (“moral realism”) has its definition polished up and reinvigorated, after three or four centuries of ill—even opposite—popular usage.

Conceptually distinct from Kreeft's aesthetic Bach argument and the standard moral argument for God, is a combination of the two: the argument expressing the natural beauty of morality.

Timothy Gordon The “3:10 to Yuma” Proof of God Strange Notions

Apologetics is just one aspect of evangelization, and is often not the most important aspect. We are called to be witnesses, not just explainers. So how have we witnessed the Resurrection? We have experienced first-hand the power of the Resurrection in our own “resurrection” at baptism. After all, St. Paul says that in baptism, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Our first-hand witness of the power of the Resurrection doesn’t end with baptism, however. Every time we go to confession, we are raised from our sins into new life in Christ. When we receive Holy Communion, we receive the Risen Christ. Without the Resurrection, the sacraments have no power; they are just stale, man-made religious rites. When we tell people how Christ has changed our lives, we need to emphasize that it is the Risen Christ who has done this, for what can a man long dead do for us today?

If we are living as faithful disciples of Christ, others will notice. Inevitably, some will ask, “Why?” Why do you live differently than everyone else? Why are you filled with joy and peace? Why do you put the good of others first? (If they aren’t asking these questions, then we need to reevaluate how we live.) When these questions come, we can point them to the Resurrection: the same power that raised Jesus from the dead also makes it possible for us to live differently.
The Resurrection of Christ is the most important event in history, both world history, and our history. Without it, our lives are hopelessly confined to this world. But with it, this world can become the beginning of a life of eternal happiness with God in heaven. This is the good news; this is what we need to emphasize in our evangelization. Like St. Peter and St. Paul, we must make the Resurrection the central focus of our preaching, and of our lives. The Resurrection and Evangelization
The Resurrection must be the central focus of our preaching, and of our lives
Eric Sammons -The Resurrection and Evangelization (4/29/2019)

Baptism

What a wonder it has been, to witness this Sacrament conferred on each of our children, to watch with the eyes of faith as the Blessed Trinity takes hold of this little creature to make it a fitting temple of divine glory, in fulfillment of Christ’s promise: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him” (Jn. 14:23). What peace and consolation is ours, recognizing that in Baptism, we give our children the greatest of gifts: entrance into supernatural life, a life that – if maintained in fidelity to the Word – will continue into an eternity of joy.
Whispers of Restoration An Aid in Experiencing the Striking Beauty of a Traditional Baptism (July 12, 2017) 

Be a Saint

But true Catholicism casts off the dull constraints of mere materialism and naturalism; we mad bead-squeezers dare to believe in real, supernatural miracles, direct actions of God that break all the rules. Catholicism without miracles, starting with the Resurrection, can be nothing more than pop psychology and advice-columnism. Or worse: politics.

We see in the lives of the First Tier Saints that the key factor is the love of God, who is waiting to shower His gifts of grace on anyone who shows the slightest interest or puts in the least effort. Even the greatest sinners — prostitutes and profligates (St. Mary of Egypt), murderers and thieves (St. Moses the Black, St. Vladimir), apostates and demon-worshippers (St. Bartolo Longo), adulterers and fornicators (St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Margaret of Cortona) — have been completely changed by seeking this union. In mystical theology, it is called the “Transforming Union” for a reason.

Reading these lives, we see immediately that sanctity of the highest order is rare and extraordinary, yet we are effectively commanded to achieve it. This apparently impossible conundrum is solved by a single line of the Gospel: “With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” We are not called to barely make it into Heaven. The imperative “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect…” is not something to be passed over lightly. Nor is it an unjust, impossible demand. Therefore, the question “how?” takes on an immediate urgency. But it is also at the same moment solved by the lives of the saints. What did they do? Do that.
Hilary White How to Become a Great, Wonderworking, Levitating, Bilocating, Ecstatic-Vision-Having Saint (May 2, 2019)

Beauty and Education

This brings us back to Confucius. A broad classical education is fundamental. We must encounter all the great cultures — Pericles’s Athens, Justinian’s Constantinople, Song Peking, St. Louis’s Paris, Medici Florence, Muromachi Kyoto, Counter-Reformation Rome — not merely as tourists or historians, but as lovers of culture. Yet our study of the poetic world must extend beyond the study, the museum, or the classroom; poetry must permeate our daily lives. Insofar as possible, let us expunge from our lives everything that is base, trivial, and ugly and embrace all that is noble, significant, and beautiful.

None of our aesthetic apprenticeship, however, will have any lasting fruition if we do not also become disciples of the incarnate Beauty of God, Jesus Christ. When our lives are permeated by liturgical beauty, where above all we encounter the Incarnate Beauty, we become beautiful. This transformation is supernatural — the sanctification of our souls — but it ennobles even our natural sense of order and decorum. Authentic liturgy trains us to give form to our passions and to the material world, ordering the jungles of our hearts and of our surroundings. There have been real and even sublime cultures without real Christian cult, but they are either preparatory to the reception of true religion (like Periclean Athens) or the afterglow of its banishment (like Elizabethan and Jacobite England). In the latter case, they are doomed to die unless they recover their ultimate source: authentic divine worship.
C.A. Thompson-Briggs Two Hundred Years of Strangulation: Reviving Form in a Formless Age (July 16, 2019)
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Bishop

 Jesus also gave the apostles the power to forgive and not to forgive sins (Jn. 20:23). This is an extraordinary amount of authority to give to human beings, as Jesus Himself was criticized for offering forgiveness because it was believed that “only God can forgive sins” (Mk. 2:7). In granting the apostles the authority to forgive or retain sins, Jesus gave them divine authority.
Brian Newberry The Biblical Roots of the Office of Bishop (March 11, 2019)
Brian is also the author of two Christian fantasy-apocalyptic novels, The Battle of Pneumatika and Sage against the Machine.

Books

So for the past three years I have been immersed in this book and have been to each of its 700 pages innumerable times, scanning, correcting the scan, re-typesetting, formatting, correcting, re-formatting, checking for errors, hunting images, editing, inserting images, designing the book, replacing images, designing the cover, etc., etc. The conveniences of modern technology notwithstanding, I am convinced that I have spent far more time in the production of this book than Rancé and his translator, Dom Vincent Ryan, combined. Actually, it is precisely the conveniences of modern technology that have made this process so lengthy.  But I am not complaining! Not at all. I am practically pickled in this book at this point, and it has done me a world of good.

Over at the blog New Liturgical Movement some time back, Peter Kwasniewski lamented what he termed spiritual illiteracy among so many Catholics. Who can argue? I think most Catholics, myself included, feel they have an inadequate knowledge of the Faith. After 19 years of Catholic schooling, I have only recently discovered some of the totally amazing facts about St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Vincent Ferrer, yet at least I knew something about them. Yet there are other great saints such as St. Colette, St. Basil, and St. John Climachus who until very recently were totally unknown to me. Thanks to de Rancé’s introduction to him, for my seventy-fourth birthday, I asked for St. John Climachus’s Ladder of Divine Ascent — a bracing book if ever there was one — so that I will not arrive in Heaven a total ignoramus about the desert fathers or their view of the spiritual life. One doesn’t want to come clodhopping into eternity a total ignoramus on Who’s Who in Heaven.
Lee Gilbert Maybe the Trappist Option Can Revive the Church (October 15, 2019) 

Those old sayings stay with us for good reason. Our bones absorb them in childhood; we can never outgrow them. Later, as adults, we find ourselves forever surprised by the truth of them. No small part of our initial moral education is owed to Aesop. His bestiary brought warnings against all kinds of vanity, thick-headed mischief, and unkindness. His dictums came to us together with our first prayers.

Let us not fret here over his status as an historical figure or, as some surmise, a legendary one. What matters is that, writing three centuries before the author of Ecclesiastes, the creator of these tales remains our first catechist.
Maureen Mullarkey To The Point With Aesop (May 28, 2015)

Sentimentality can be dangerous. Emotionalism can be dangerous. But so too can be a faith without beauty, a faith without wonder, a faith that does not allow for silly songs to be sung or epic tales to be told. A faith like this will never produce another Adoro Te Devote or Sistine Chapel.

There is nothing more awe-inspiring than the story of salvation, it’s true, but it does not follow that we must cast aside those stories that lead us to live our parts in it with a deeper devotion and love — be they found in books, art, film, or song. If we wish to restore Catholic culture, if we wish to change the world, we need to fill ourselves with wonder and allow our children to see it, too. They will — if we don’t get in the way with our utilitarianism and coldness. We need to take the time for thick blankets and hot mugs of tea, lazy Saturday afternoons spent poring over pages, wasting away hours on joys so many of us have forgotten.

I will kneel before the altar of God, I will receive my King upon my tongue, I will offer my oath of fealty in coins and candleflame, and I will read a good book on the car ride home.
Stefanie Nicholas Catholics Should Read Good Fiction, lest They Dry Out (December 17, 2019)
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Catechism

I would also argue that the Baltimore Catechism should not be the sole means of formation at any stage, because a family’s living out the faith in prayer, sacraments, devotion to the Saints, growth in virtue, and participation in a parish community are all essential for rooting the faith deep within our children’s hearts. But for the early years of development, around ages 8 to 11, we are robbing our children of lifelong support if we do not build up in them a solid foundation of knowledge for engaging the faith in later life, and the Baltimore Catechism is an ideal tool for this process – no ruler-slapping required.
Suzan Sammons Revisiting The Baltimore Catechism: A Neglected Style of Learning (March 16, 2016)

Catholic World View

To the Catholic mind, not only can earthly, physical things be turned by the agency of God into channels of divine, invisible grace (as we see with the seven sacraments), but all creation is a sacramentum, or “divine sign,” pointing to the luminous goodness of God. Like William Blake, Catholics see a world in a grain of sand and a Heaven in a wildflower. And they even get a foretaste of that Heaven in the simple pleasures of table and tavern.
Michael P Foley, Drinking with the Saints: The Sinner's Guide to a Holy Happy Hour (2015-05-04). 

Christianity’s great truths come to us through a Nazarene carpenter—a tekton, a builder—whose handiwork we have no clue to. Neither do we have the faintest inkling of his response to Herod’s monumental temple complex. The whole of it, with its plaza, porticos, columns, and stairs was a glory of limestone, marble and gold. Yet Jesus directed eyes to the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, to bread, weeds and mustard seeds.
The greatest cathedral of all, the only one capable of rising to the Paraclete, is the suffering human being next to us. Until we can worship on the crosstown bus, we have yet to greet the living God.
Maureen Mullarkey Cathedrals And The Crosstown Bus May 8, 2014

The highest, the very highest, number I have ever seen cited for Catholics who accept and obey the Church’s ban on artificial contraception is 5 percent.

On a grave moral issue where several popes have invoked their full moral authority short of making an infallible declaration, 95 percent of U.S. Catholics (the number is surely higher in most of Europe) have rejected the guidance of Rome. They are not “bad Catholics” so much members of a new, dissenting sect – which happens to occupy most of the seats in most of the churches, and many of the pulpits and bishop’s offices, too.

We need that other 95 percent. And given that the key issue on which most dissent hinges today is contraception, we need to do a much better job conveying the Church’s position to ordinary people. 

Many Catholics oppose abortion, and treasure the sacraments, and love their spouses, and even have decent-sized families – all of it without understanding or accepting Humanae Vitae. Millions of psychologically normal, hard-working, well-meaning people have blundered into dissent, and ended up in the same camp with bitter heretics like Charles Curran, over this single issue. That single dissent softened them up to drift away from the Church on other issues, as well. 
We shouldn’t count these people out of the Church as we would those who willfully accept abortion or polyamory. We need to listen to their real questions and objections and do a much better job explaining ourselves. Or else that’s who we’ll go right on talking to – ourselves/

It isn’t normal for the Church to consist just of saints and zealots, ascetical future “blesseds,” and Inquisition re-enactors. Faith is meant to be yeast that yields a hearty loaf of bread.
John Zmirak The Shame of the Catholic Subculture (February 1, 2014)

Christ

My fear is the domesticated Christ, which my generation got after the Council, and which the modern world is happy with. You know, Christ who is defanged, who is a bland spiritual teacher… a teacher of “timeless truths.” That [last part] is fine and true, but it’s domesticated. The Gospels rather present this ferocious figure, meaning “The New Lord.” He’s Jesus Kyrios, “Jesus the Lord,” which means that He has supplanted all the other Lords. His cross and resurrection is something that demands a complete conversion on our part. If He’s the King, then my entire life has to change. I wanted to recover that edgy, challenging, and deeply Biblical Jesus.
Father Robert Barron In Pursuit of the Imago Dei: An Interview With Fr. Barron Mark Nowakowski  (December 2, 2014)

Christmas

There is more to Christmas than just Christ’s birth. It serves as the beginning of an epic, and Advent is the prologue whereby we prepare for the first spellbinding chapter. There’s a thread running through Christmas that ties into so many other Christological elements, including Christ as Divine Lover, in concert with the poetry of St. John of the Cross, whose feast aptly coincides with the Advent season on December 14.

But I feel that this depth and dimension often gets overlooked in the over-sentimentalized secular seasonal hype. It is a 3-D sort of depth, set against the backdrop of darkness and death and a frozen landscape. It is brittle bleakness in the bleak midwinter, bearing up against the frosty wind, iron ground, and stone water. The elements have given up their ghosts and seem to be suspended in a state of waiting – waiting for the light, the breath, the rush of some solitary stirring that speaks of life’s return.

The heroes of their epics, their royals, their romances…and coming forth through an infant who has started the adventure. They could understand only by the things they knew best, the stories they had told for generations. But Christmas holds within it antithesis of some of their stories as well.

Often enough, their heroes would be born through bizarre sexual escapades between flawed humans and the mischief-making gods. Christ is born of a Virgin by an overshadowing of the Holy Spirit not to cause mischief, but to save humanity. Indeed, Mary is the epitome of “the pure vessel” because she is conceived free from the stain of original sin and submits herself as “the handmaid of the Lord,” recognizing that her soul “magnifies the Lord,” Who will fulfill His promises to the Children of Israel. She took up the mantle of her heritage, and all humanity, when she aligned her will to that of the divine through that incarnate Logos: “Be it done unto me according to thy Word.”
Avellina Balestri And Thy Word Broke Their Swords: The Empowering Depth and Dimension of Christmas (December 19, 2016)
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Christmas of 1223 witnessed one of St. Francis of Assisi’s greatest flashes of poetic brilliance. “To excite the inhabitants of Greccio…to commemorate the nativity of the Infant Jesus with great devotion,” St. Bonaventure tells us, St. Francis thought of setting up a scene outdoors like that of the shelter in Bethlehem: they would fill a manger with hay, bring an ox and an ass, and celebrate Midnight Mass there.

Papal permission was obtained, and Franciscan brothers flocked from near and far. “The men and women of that town,” wrote Thomas of Celano, “with exulting hearts prepared tapers and torches … to illuminate that night which with its radiant Star has illuminated all the days and years.”

It was a beautiful Christmas night. The faithful sang jubilantly, and “the woodland rang with voices.” St. Francis was the deacon; vested in his dalmatic, he sang the Gospel and preached with great tenderness and eloquence about the “Child of Bethlehem.”

Yes, let us be in Mary's Army!
Let us take joy that so much truth is being spoken these days, that new voices are being added to the ongoing witness of faithful Catholics – such as the 26-year-old convert Alexander Tschugguel – and that the movement goes toward the sacred, the awe, and the honoring of God and His Mother. This wave does not come from us. It is a gift from God who plants the seeds of truth and who raises the faithful who then may become His instruments of grace.
Therefore, let us again have joy that a Child is born unto us, into a world of darkness. And this Child is still the King of this world, Christ the King.
Yes, in light of these developments, we do not feel abandoned. We feel Christ's light coming into our midst, and this will surely give us a special resonant gratitude this year when we hear once more the song:
“Long lay the world in sin and error pining, 'til He appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. Fall on your knees, o hear the Angel voices!....”
 Maike Hickson The light of Christ is coming to us – on some signs of hope and encouragement (Tue Dec 24, 2019) 

Bypassing dry theoretical argument, nativity scenes expressed the truth about the Incarnation with an immediacy and an effectiveness that went straight to people’s hearts. Their wordless tenderness made it plain that human nature, family life, motherhood, and babies are divine creations of beauty and goodness, loved and redeemed by God.
Jane Stannus Christmas and the Modern Gnostics (December 24, 2019)

In this Christmas season we are invited to worship the Divine Word, the invisible Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who is made visible. “He has come to lift up all things to himself, to restore unity to creation” (Preface of Christmas II).
Veni, Emmanuel, performed — almost an organ — by flute and bassoon at a distance of two octaves, is a beautiful French Advent hymn of the 15^th century, popular in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where it is sung as O come, O come, Emmanuel. The verses are based on the O Antiphons, the seven major antiphons of Advent, which are sung at Vespers between December 17 and 23, and all begin with the vocative “O” (O Sapientia, O Adonai, O Radix Jesse, O Clavis David, O Oriens, O Rex gentium, O Emmanuel — that is, O Wisdom, O Lord, O Rod of Jesse, O Key of David, O rising star, O King of the nations). The lyrics of the refrain prepare for Christmas: “Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel shall be born for you, O Israel.”
Massimo Scapin The Magi Visit the Christ Child in Art and Music ( January 2, 2020)

As we proceed through the Christmas season, the meanings of the colors that have been part of the past several weeks help make the point. The seasonal colors of green, red, and gold represent life, death, and glory. More specifically, they represent the crib, the cross, and finally the crown that awaits those who adhere to the Faith. In short, these colors are not arbitrary, they are not random, and they can’t be changed without changing what they represent. To decorate one’s home in purple, baby blue, and orange would not only seem strange to one’s neighbors, but ultimately begin to sever the relationship between decorating for the Christ Child at Christmastime and ultimately worshiping the Word made flesh over the course of a lifetime.
John Schroder Words Have Meanings — and So Do Actions (January 13, 2020)

Christ has been present on Earth since the Annunciation, hidden in the womb of His Mother. That day, 25 March, was for centuries the start of the English financial year; it is also the date JRR Tolkien chose for the final destruction of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is, in truth, the date of the Incarnation. In His birth, however, Christ is revealed to us: He becomes, as a man, a public person. It is now possible and appropriate for Him to be venerated by the shepherds and the Wise Men. In His birth He becomes subject to the Law of Moses, at least apparently, though really He is the Lord of it: it pleases Him and His Mother to fulfil the Law scrupulously. In His birth He also becomes vulnerable, and He must be carried into safety from the wrath of Herod. We might say that in His birth, the logic of the Incarnation is worked out more fully.

The logic of the Incarnation is that God has a human mother, that He eats and sleeps, that He forms human relationships, of blood, place, and acquaintance, that He can be publicly disgraced, suffer, and die.

If God became Man, then He had a language of His own, fellow countrymen, customs, and traditions, and all the particularities of place and ancestry. These were not chosen at random. They had been carefully prepared since the time of Abraham: approximately two thousand years of human history had been crafted and shaped by Providence to create a fitting religious and cultural community to give a home to the God-Man. It is tempting to dismiss many or even all aspects of Christ’s culture as an unfortunate distraction from the message, but culture and message cannot so easily be separated.

We are the heirs to that culture also, and we must seek to understand it not in order to disentangle Christ’s ‘real message’ from the ‘cultural forms’ in which it was expressed, but in order to grasp the concepts Christ used to express that message, and the cultural references which give it meaning.
Joseph Shaw  The logic of the Incarnation: Don’t dismiss the culture Christ lived in Tue (Dec 24, 2019) LifeSite
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The secular world wants us to pursuit happiness in life; Christ wishes us to find joy in life, even in the most mundane aspects of our vocation and duties. Hence, we as true Christians can find more joy in Christmas, in Christ’s birth, than any non-Christian ever could.
For Christians, Christmas (literally meaning Mass of Christ) is fundamentally the celebration of Christ’s birth. For the true Christian, Christmas is not simply an exterior festivity derived from an all-encompassing spirit of goodness. Rather, Christmas has a profound and real religious and spiritual significance only his like can fully comprehend. The true spirit of Christmas finds itself kneeling by the crib of the Christ child, God incarnate, with serene joy in His coming to us, in Him Who will one day pay the price of His passion and death for our eternal salvation. The observance of this holy day is done justice by the Christian who delights in finding joy in the spirit of humility, of poverty, and of lowliness. No person can truly celebrate or appreciate this holy day like the Christian.
Edward P. Shikles Don’t Pretend Christmas Can Ever Be a Secular Holiday (December 17, 2018) 

Now, you can be Catholic according to whichever calendar you prefer. But I offer here a suggestion, having tremendously enriched my family’s faith life by following it myself: remember Christmastide, and celebrate it. Keep your Christmas tree decked out, lit up, and glowing until February. Hold off on “merry Christmas” until 25 December, and then bust it out ’til Candlemas for everyone you meet. Buy your Christmas cards “late” for a bargain and send them out on the Epiphany. Defy the radio stations and blast Christmas music through January. This Faith, for which we so often are called to suffer terribly, also provides a treasure trove of joys, even in its glorious and venerably longstanding calendar. Don’t turn your nose up at the opportunity to celebrate.

One other thing: Pick a calendar and stick to it. In this long haul of miserable confusion emanating sixty-plus years from the Vatican itself, it’s more important than ever to fight disorientation, inconsistency, and personal hypocrisy. “You can’t go to both.” Guarding your integrity in small things, like keeping consistent track of whose feast day it is, will steel you for bigger things, like when your Catholic cousin invites you to witness his invalid underwater destination “wedding,” and your whole extended family threatens no more Christmas presents if you don’t go.

But how to resolve the January 1 issue?! As for me and my house, we get ourselves to Mass on 11 October…and we acknowledge that the Feast of the Circumcision happens to be a very, very good day to assist, too.

For now, merry Christmas – yesterday, today, tomorrow, and on and on for a good long while. Sing another round of “Adeste, Fideles,” and bake more cookies.
Drew Belsky Hold That Tree: Christmas Ain’t Over Yet (December 26, 2019)
Drew Belsky is the senior editor of 1P5
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Clerical Sex Abuse

Clerical sex abuse is soul murder. The body and soul are violated by the predator priest. Nothing remains but a brittle and broken shell of a person.
Child advocates and law enforcement who have investigated know that clerical sex abuse is unique from all other abuse. Clerical sex abuse leaves its victims with physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation. So devastated are clerical victims that they more often turn to suicide for relief from the shame and memories of their assault.

The effects of sexual abuse on the victims vary, but the impact is long lasting and may result in sexual depersonalization, depression, sexually acting out, and suicide. When a child has been victimized by a priest, the impact of the abuse effects how the child perceives God, the Church and the clergy. The abuse also raises the question as to how these institutions will view the victim.
Australia, Ireland, and America seem to be especially vulnerable to the suicide ticking time bomb among clergy abuse victims.
Elizabeth Yore Clergy Abuse Is Soul Murder (October 17, 2018)

Chant

I am promoting these antiphons now as one small step toward the restoration of Catholic culture. Catholics need distinctive and shared practices to bind us together as Catholics. Prayers in Latin achieve this in a particular way because they allow Catholics from around the world to pray together; they also unite us with Catholics from ages past. Chanting prayers in Latin goes farther by uniting Catholics in both word and song, thereby giving us a shared musical heritage and a foundation for our culture. Therefore (although it is routinely ignored), it is unsurprising that Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy described Gregorian chant as a “treasure of inestimable value” that is to be given the “first place” in our liturgies.

The four seasonal Marian antiphons are ideal Gregorian chants for all Catholics to learn. The melodies are simple; the texts are short; they don’t take long to sing; they can be learned one at a time as each new liturgical season commences; and both children and adults can easily learn to sing them by heart, i.e., without hymnals, music, or accompaniment. And let me stress the importance of learning these chants by heart. The chants should reside within you, where they will become part of you–and not just part of you personally, but also part of your family members, friends, and fellow parishioners. Not only does this give you something in common with all of these people, which is itself beneficial, it also allows for the singing of these chants at any time or place: in our homes, churches, and schools; in processions through our parish neighborhoods; and even abroad as we travel.

Salve Regina
Alma Redemptoris Mater
Ave Regina Coelorum
Regina Coeli

William Bloomfield Four Marian Chants Every Catholic Should Know (June 5, 2017)

Charity

It cannot be denied - even by her fiercest critics - that the Catholic Church has a long and glorious history of caring for the weakest members of society - the poor, the sick, the disabled, the orphaned, the widowed, the aged, the imprisoned - in obedience to the word of Our Lord: "Amen, I say to you: as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me." Countless holy men and women have dedicated their lives to the service to these "least brethren", with most of their personal sacrifices being known to God alone. It would not be an exaggeration to say that these individuals made - and continue to make - the project of Western civilization possible. Even today, in her greatly diminished earthly state, the Catholic Church remains the largest non-governmental provider of health care services in the world.
Matthew Karmel Papal Flashback: Quod Apostolici Muneris ( November 3, 2014)

Now, don’t get me wrong – I do not, in any way, condone calumny and slander against a priest of Jesus Christ (or any Christian, for that matter). I am not supportive of hate speech in the slightest. But there is a major difference between hate speech and truth-telling. The Gospel demands that we admonish the sinner and call out error, while, of course, remaining charitable.

I wish Fr. Jim well, and I pray for him. I hope numerous Catholics come upon his earlier writing and enjoy an introduction to Ignatian spirituality as I did. But I warn my fellow Catholics: read and follow him at your own risk. He relishes ambiguity, and he will lead you down a path of heterodoxy and heteropraxis.
Feel free to respond to this. Just remember: two post limit, and no ad hominem.
-Felix Thompson Why I Left the ‘Cult of Jim’ October 3, 2017 215 Comments

Children

I’ve been cleaning up after them since they were born. It is part and parcel of my vocation whether I knew it from the outset or not, and some days it’s easier to accept than others. Some days I sigh and say to myself, “I can do this out of love. Even the angel hair noodles on the carpet, I can clean those up out of love.” Some days I just want to holler, “I didn’t make this mess either! I didn’t spill anything, or break anything, or smear sauce on the table! Yet here I am, the only one who cleans it up!”

The messes I make, He cleans with His own blood. Messes I’ve made as predictably as a toddler eating pasta. My “messes,” my sins—impatience with my kids, laziness toward the duties of my vocation, pride in the humility with which I accept the burden and clean up after my kids (ironic, that). He wipes off my soul with the grace of the confessional, wrings out the washcloth for me to go back again and start all over.
That is what the Incarnation is all about — only God could repair what Man had sundered. Meanwhile, I become so full of my own importance that I forget why I’m really here. Do I have something more important I should be doing? I’m not curing cancer, writing the next great novel, devising new economic schemes that will pay off our national debt. I’m caring for the souls God has seen fit to gift me with, and cleaning up after them is a daily  — sometimes hourly — task.

How often do I forget Who cleans up my  messes? How often do I forget I even made and left them? Why can’t I grow up and learn to stop making them in the first place?

But there’s a lesson in all this seemingly aimless cleaning. Just like a child who knocks over a large glass of milk, spills the sugar bowl, or breaks a glass, there are some messes that are too big for us to handle.

Luckily, we have a God who loves us so much, He came to do it for us.
-Heather Price Other People’s Messes (May 18, 2015)

Church

I once heard a homily where the priest said, “We know the place where God wants to be worshiped when the Church consecrates the ground.” Think about that: God wants to be worshiped in certain places. For reasons that may seem inscrutable to us, Divine Providence has chosen some of the most unlikely places for His most faithful churches and communities – not only unlikely, but for many of us, these places are simply undesirable. We can’t imagine raising our families in such places. And indeed, we still need to be prudent and to make sure our children are as safe from violence and other evils as possible. But if God wants to be worshiped in a certain place, it follows that He wants His people to be there, too, and I think it’s fair to say He wants to capture the surrounding territory.
Jeff Culbreath Finding the Catholic Village in the Big City (September 27, 2018)

One of the aspects of the Catholic Church that was most strongly emphasized up until very recently, by her enemies and by her children, by converts and by opponents, was the sternness and consistency with which the Church insisted on absolute adherence to precise doctrinal formulas, in contrast with the freedom of thought enjoyed by Protestants. On the Protestant and freethinking side, it was condemned as obscurantism and dogmatism; on the Catholic side, it was hailed as the only guarantee of certainty of faith – of knowing what a Christian ought to believe.
Spencer Hall The Church Must Again Become a Sign of Contradiction (September 4, 2018)
Bacon Bridge

I walked into the parish not knowing what to expect. A large silver bowl filled with water sat in a wooden pedestal in the center of the foyer. As people walked by it, they dipped their fingers into the water, then with a single dab they touched their foreheads, their chests, then each shoulder. Feeling perplexed about this ritual, I gave that bowl a wide berth and made my way to the end of a back pew.

Looking around, I noticed all kinds of people there. I saw white, middle class people, of course, but also people with different skin colors than mine, such as Black, Latino, east Indian, and Asian. There were also people who appeared to be from different income levels, poor and rich alike. I surmised this by their clothing, jewelry, and hair. I also noticed a variety of ages, from the very old in walkers and wheelchairs all the way down to babies. The priest spoke with a heavy Asian accent.

Thus one of my first impressions of the Catholic Church was that everybody is drawn to it, everybody is welcome. I saw with my own eyes that the Gospel really is for everybody. Up to that point, I had heard that the Gospel was for everybody, but my past experiences suggested that only upper middle class, or upper class, white people were drawn to the Gospel.

Standing in the long line for confession, I looked around and noticed the same thing. All different skin colors. All different apparent income levels. All different ages, minus the babies and toddlers. The man in front of me turned around to ask me a question. He had a thick Irish accent.

I saw how repentance is the door to a relationship with Jesus, and every person desiring a relationship with Jesus must pass through that door, regardless of skin color, income level, etc. Of course I already knew this on an intellectual level, but seeing it in action made the intellectual ideal very real to me.

Jennifer Johnson, Reflections on Christian Equality (Monday, June 22, 2015)

Director of Finance and Advancement for the Ruth Institute

Church and State

More was not a theologian, but a lawyer. For him, law was not an end in itself, but an indispensable aid in assisting individuals and societies to attain their proper temporal and spiritual ends. He believed – consistent with the Gelasian theory of the two swords – that the Church and the State had different roles and different jurisdictions. More understood that harmony between the two was essential and that if the balance were disturbed, man would suffer evils to body and soul.
C.T. Rossi The Modern Church: A Synthesis of Martin Luther and Henry VIII,  (January 13, 2017) 
Author of Seeking More: A Catholic Lawyer's Guide Based on the Life and Writings of Saint Thomas More Hardcover – November 11, 2016

Colors

No, no, the eggs are not mad. I only mean the color.
Madder red is the older term for alizarin crimson, known to the pharaohs and the residents of Pompeii. A crucial coloring agent for textiles during the Industrial Revolution, it was also the first plant-derived pigment to be produced synthetically in the nineteenth century. As splendid as it was ubiquitous, it became the most popular color for Easter eggs in European folk traditions. Madder was cherished throughout the Czech regions, in Hungary, even into northwest England where eggs were dyed by being wrapped directly in the plant leaves. Madder was the traditional choice for dyeing Easter eggs in Greece, Russia, and Cyprus. A Macedonian children’s rhyme asks: “Oh when will Easter come, bringing red eggs?”

European folklore is drenched in madder red, believed to avert harm, ward off evil. History gives us the witness of one Nicholas Kirchmeyer-Naogeorgus, writing in 1553 of Alsatian parents giving their children a red egg on Easter morning to insure rosy cheeks, a promise of long life. Scandinavian and Transylvanian legends testify to madder’s more cosmic protective powers: red Easter eggs are a stay against the Antichrist who seeks the end of the world. Earthly love gets a boost from madder as well. “The Heavens are blue, The eggs they are red, And I will love thee, Until I am dead!” So goes an old German pledge.

Association between divine love and the color red existed in ancient Roman. It was said that a hen laid a red egg when Alexander Severus, last of the Severan emperors, was born. The egg signaled Alexander’s claim on divinity in death. Christian lore, with its magpie genius for appropriation, adapted the symbol to its own purposes. In parts of Austria, they say that while the Easter Hare, a famously randy little fellow, produces eggs in a promiscuous range of colors on Easter Sunday, it only lays red ones on Maundy Thursday in honor of the Passion of Christ.
Maureen Mullarkey Madder Eggs (March 27, 2013)

College

A faithful Catholic education reinforces the fundamentals of the faith and forms students for sainthood as well as earthly success, with Christ at the center. The spiritual difficulties facing young Catholics today are enormous, but there are places where college students can love and adore Jesus Christ in the Eucharist while preparing for life and the challenges ahead.
Kelly Salomon Holy Eucharist Adored at Faithful Catholic Colleges August 16, 2019
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Being able to set aside time to pray the Rosary, reflect on Scripture, or even just attend Adoration on a constant [weekly] basis, helps to ground us in our Faith.
When praying the Rosary, divide it up throughout the day. If you can’t pray the Rosary in a single sitting, do so in multiple, shorter sittings as you go about your day.  If  

As Christians, we should familiarize ourselves with the Sacred Scriptures, especially even more so, knowing St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ”. Praying with Scripture, or Lectio Divina (literally “divine reading”), involves four steps: lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), contemplatio (contemplation), oratio (prayer). Being able to spend time with God in asking Him to reveal to us the Word of God in reverence and openness is truly a beautiful thing.

Don’t let the anxieties and tensions of university and college life get to you. Just stay calm and ground yourself before you embark on an educational journey. The strains of study can be exhausting, so don’t overwork yourself.
Luken Stitzel A Catholic’s Guide to Surviving College (December 13, 2018) Catholic Connect

Columbus

In Quarto Abeunte Saeculo, Pope Leo XIII shows us why the voyage of Christopher Columbus stands in a class by itself. There is simply no way of comparing the Genoan’s landfall in the Americas with any other feat of discovery – the 1969 lunar landing, say. Capable and courageous as astronauts may be, and impressive a feat as it is to send a man to the Moon and return him safely to the Earth, it must be conceded that the Apollo program was the bureaucratically-directed and carefully managed exploration of an airless and lifeless desert. By contrast, Columbus’s very personal quest led to a multitude of tribes and peoples being brought into the Christian fold.
As the pope observes, one of the central objectives of Columbus’s expedition was to “open a way for the Gospel over new lands and seas,” to “extend the Christian name.”

Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum, and also the manner in which he endeavored to execute the design, it is indubitable that the Catholic faith was the strongest motive for the inception and prosecution of the design; so that for this reason also the whole human race owes not a little to the Church.
Jerry Salyer “Columbus Is Ours” (October 8, 2018) The Dispatch 9

Communion

Communion on the tongue is recommended and considered the most consonant way to receive the Eucharist, while Communion on the hand is permitted, provided that certain precautions are observed, such as checking to see if any fragments of the Host remain on the palm of the hand.
Luisella Scrosati The True Story of Communion in the Hand Revealed (May 8, 2018)

When I received my First Holy Communion, there was a group of children, and the priest arranged everything in a very beautiful way. With a candle in hand, we went through the Communion rail to the high altar, to the highest step, and there
we received Holy Communion from the high altar, kneeling, as the deacon kneels on the top step: there I received my First Holy Communion. It was so beautiful for me—and unforgettable. My mother and the priest gave us a beautiful instruction. They said, “You will receive your Savior and God in this little Host. And He is living there.” And this I remember: “He is living. Be careful, He is living, and this is your Lord!” Since then, it has always been so for me: He is living there! I thought, when I received the Lord, He is living and He is entering into me. For me, the Host is so holy because there is my God, as both my mother and the priest had told me.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider -Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age 

In the first Christian communities it was normal to receive the Body of Christ directly in the hands; in this regard there are numerous testimonies, both in the Eastern and Western Church: many Fathers of the Church (Tertullian, Cyprian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil, Theodore of Mopsuestia), various juridical canons during synods and councils (the Synod of Constantinople of 629; the Synods of the Gauls between the 6th and 7th centuries; the Council of Auxerre which took place between 561 and 605), all the way to the testimonies of the 8th century of St. Bede the Venerable and St. John Damascene: all of these attest to the same widely-practiced tradition. And it was certainly useful to recognize this practice. But at this point one must ask what happened – in terms of theological and liturgical legitimization – as the next step taken by the faith of the Church. When, in the Medieval period, certain schools of theology began to discuss the modality of the Real Presence of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament – some ending by defining it only as an empty sign which recalls from a distance the substantial reality of the Lord present among us [only spiritually] – the reaction of the ecclesial community was to greatly emphasize the veneration and adoration given to the Eucharistic Species, to the point of introducing the new rite of receiving Communion directly in the mouth while kneeling, precisely in order to emphasize the greatness of the Real Presence of the Body of Christ. If there had not been such an intervention, there would have been the real risk that the Eucharist would have been completely profaned.

We would like to add, humbly, that also from a hygienic point of view it is much better if the host is only touched by the priest and does not pass through hands that perhaps have not had the chance to be washed before Mass. Hands, like my own, which [on the way to Mass] have been handling a bicycle, or driving a car and dealing with keys and locks, all of which are certainly not the most hygienic things.
Marco Tosatti A World-Wide Petition to the Bishops: We Ask for Kneelers for the Faithful Who Want to Receive Communion Kneeling (January 31, 2018)  

Communion of Saints

We are never truly alone, as God and all His angels and saints are with us always, and God’s hosts, like our friends and family, can pray for our intentions.  For the praise and glory of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we are joined in prayer no matter where we may be, be it our bedside, a secluded wood, or the busy streets of our cities.  These men and women who live in Christ, are a part of our spiritual family, with God being the head. Like any family, to develop and keep a healthy relationship, it is necessary to keep in touch with one another and pray for one another.
Luken J. Stitzel - All Saints’ Day & Intercessory Prayer (November 1, 2018)

Confession

If we have any sense at all, we should earnestly strive to make a Good Sacramental Confession a frequent and integral part of our Christian life. The Church clearly states that the faithful are obligated to confess all known mortal sins at least once per year:

Can. 989 After having reached the age of discretion, each member of the faithful is obliged to confess faithfully his or her grave sins at least once a year.
Let me pose a question at this point: if dying outside of the State of Sanctifying Grace means eternal life in Hell, and that all it takes is one Mortal Sin to remove Sanctifying Grace from the Soul, are you content with waiting a whole year between Sacramental Confessions? Rolling the dice, so to speak, on whether or not you are going to die (even suddenly) prior to that year passing?

Those who think in such terms are content to confess once a year at some penance service, either during Advent or Lent, and then forget about Confession for the other 365 days – even if they committed a mortal sin (or, many, many, mortal sins) within a few weeks of their last confession! If one makes a minimum effort at something, then one should not be surprised with poor results. If one makes a minimum effort at the Spiritual Life, then one will end poor in Spiritual Life, and the consequences of that can be eternally catastrophic. Luke 12:16-21 comes to mind:
Father RP Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned – Part I: Why Confession? (March 9, 2016)

Lions size up a herd to find the weakest and easiest target. Once we are detached from God and His supernatural grace, we are powerless to defend ourselves from the tactics of the devil.

Our ancestors and all of the saints knew all about this supernatural power and strength and that being in a state of grace was the armor of God that was to be treasured and protected at all cost. Sacred scripture sees this Divine Life in God (state of grace) as the “hidden treasure” and the “pearl of great price” (Mt 13:44-46).

In his Prayer of Surrender, St. Ignatius of Loyola identifies this as the only meaningful treasure:
“Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess You have given me: I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will. Give me only Your love and Your grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will desire nothing more.”

I believe our first priority, as priests, is to help people to put on the armor of God … to be in a “state of grace.”
Father Richard Heilman Making Confession More Available (April 22, 2015)

My confession finished, I waited for my penance and the sweet sound of  the ancient formula, “Ego te absolvo.” There was a brief silence on the other side of the screen. Then came: “Is that all?” It was a practical question, a commonplace prod to swing open some door I might I have left shut. But in that instant, on that day, the brevity of it struck me differently. Why so brusque? Almost curt. Had my confession bored the man?
That must be it, I thought. Here I had taken the witness stand against myself in matters of no compelling interest. None of those great engrossing sins—the towering ones with names—were relevant to my case. At least not full strength. Not now, not this time. Suddenly I felt sorry for my confessor. The poor man. He has to sit in a stuffy box, year after year, listening to a repetitious stream of three-Hail-Mary lapses that leave both priest and penitent with the feeling of being eaten alive by ants.
Not wanting to disappoint him further, I did a split-second inventory to see what could be gathered up from my apparently colorless soul. Out of an unholy urge not to be judged dull, I added: “Well, yes, Father. There is one thing. It’s the never ending, chronic tension between the command to love my neighbor and the fact that there are so many people I just don’t like.”
In a heartbeat, the priest responded: “Welcome to the club.” He absolved me.
Maureen Mullarkey Confession & Love of Neighbor: A Ramble (December 1, 2019)


The pillar of Catholic doctrine on sacramental confession, which holds that what is said by the penitent in the confessional — including whatever the penitent says about his own life — remains forever secret, because the priest represents Christ and he may reveal nothing of what is said to him, on the pain of excommunication. But this question also concerns the ministers of other religions.
Antonio Socci Why Even Secular People Should Defend the Seal of Confession (August 6, 2019)

Conversion

It is not too difficult in the case of some conversions to know which humans God principally employed to contribute to the change. We know that St. Monica’s prayers played an important role in the conversion of St. Augustine. We know that St. Thérèse’s prayers and sacrifices were instrumental in the conversion of Henri Pranzini. When it comes to the conversion of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, anyone who reads her life can easily discover that two persons were especially chosen by God to lead Elizabeth to the Catholic faith: Antonio and Amabilia Filicchi.

The prayers, penances, and exhortations of Antonio and Amabilia proved fruitful. On March 15, 1805, Elizabeth made her formal profession of faith and abjuration of heresy. She received her first Communion ten days later on the Feast of the Annunciation. It is beyond the scope of this article to relate all of the good that St. Elizabeth did once she became a Catholic and founded the Sisters of Charity in our country, but needless to say, the good was immense.
John Henderson Lessons from the Conversion of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (January 6, 2020)

Conscience

Saint Bonaventure’s view of conscience is akin to Newman. For St. Bonaventure “conscience is like God’s herald and messenger (emphasis added); it does not command things on its own authority, but commands them as coming from God’s authority, like a herald when he proclaims the edict of the king. This is why conscience has binding force.”
Newman believed that conscience and truth must form a partnership, that they must support and enlighten each other and that obedience to conscience leads to obedience to the truth. The relationship of conscience to truth is the fundamental element of Newman’s teaching on conscience. Any discussion of the rights of conscience has to take into account its duties as well and the duties of conscience lie in the responsibility of the creature towards its Creator. The right of conscience  
In the formation of conscience, the Word of God is the light for our path. We must examine our conscience before the Lord’s Cross, assisted by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness and advice of others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church.[15]
Roy Heusel Conscience – the “Aboriginal Vicar of Christ” February 24, 2017
He and his wife Karen celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2016. They have four children, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Suzy, as well as 14 living grandchildren along with 2 in heaven. Their second son, Mark Daniel, is a priest in the Diocese of Steubenville.

Culture

Of those who are willing to speak to the world through culture and the arts, it must be conceded that their message is often the last thing the world needs to hear. That’s why it’s so important for the faithful to once again inspire and create culture, not only in an explicitly religious sense, but through the wider lens of the Catholic worldview. This is the worldview that encompasses both sinners and saints, that professes belief in a God made Man who ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, and died on a cross. Catholicism encompasses the breadth of human experience, from the height of ecstasy to the darkness of death. We have something to say because our Faith does not find hope in the notion of sinless man, but in the recognition of fallen man redeemed.
Steve Skojec, The Well-Sheltered Catholic, May 5, 2012 Crisis

Chapel Veil

Here is what we all need to realize about the chapel veil: it is a form of devotion to God that is only open to a woman. This means that it is a strictly feminine form of prayer that excludes men. Men who cover their heads during Mass signify a rejection of Christ; it is to dishonor His spiritual head.  Even a priest who wears his biretta will remove it when in prayer: he never wears it while kneeling or while standing at the altar reciting the prayers of the Mass. Women, however, may veil at all times when in the presence of the Lord because they have a sacred role that demands their dignity be acknowledged.

The Church, in her traditional liturgical practice, adorns things that are sacred. We veil our altars, decorate our tabernacles with gold and jewels, and robe our priests in beautiful vestments to signify the dignity of their office. It is certainly not sinful to do away with these things, but the outward acknowledgement of the dignity due to them is laudable and conducive to humility. As St. John Chrysostom said, “Christ appears when the Priest disappears.”
Paul states in I Corinthians 11:10-12: “That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.” (RSV)

Modesty, chastity, dignity. This is what a chapel veil represents, and it belongs to a woman in respect to God, not only to man. It is a symbol of her authority and of her right to communicate with God in a specifically feminine form of devotion.
Really, who are you to judge?
Rebecca DeVendra The Chapel Veil and a Woman’s Rights (February 4, 2015)   
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Daily Duty

Our Lady of Fatima’s message to the children in 1917 was, Sr. Lucia later explained, was not primarily about the First Saturdays or the rosary or the brown scapular, important as those devotions are. It was “the faithful accomplishment of our daily duties.” The world would be converted if Catholics performed their daily duties more faithfully. That is why the enemies of the Church have attacked precisely those daily duties. For most Catholics, online zealotry is easy, or at least appears so; it is being a good Catholic father, mother, husband, wife, son, or daughter that has become extraordinarily difficult, not to mention being a good Catholic employer, or employee, a good Catholic citizen, or a good Catholic public servant. One might say, perhaps, that being a good Catholic public servant — an elected representative or career civil servant — has become impossible in some places, and that this kind of public engagement is best avoided. We wouldn’t dare say that it has become impossible to be a good Catholic spouse or parent, though, because that would imply that we could not have families at all. Somehow, we have to face the difficulties and overcome them.

So we should learn to cook. Because the only thing that is going to make possible the survival of our families is a Catholic culture, a culture that has been transformed by grace. A culture cannot be transformed by grace if it does not exist. Fundamental to the culture of the family is the home, as a place where family members can be at their ease, surrounded by familiar things that remind them of the family’s history and values, where they can find the wisdom of the older members and the energy of the younger, where they can find rest and nourishment — where they can expect and find good food, food that has been cooked there.
-Dr. Joseph Shaw  To restore a healthy, Christ-centered culture, learn to cook  (Jan 3, 2020) LifeSite
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Death

The concept in the title isn’t only a Christian thing to do. It’s a human thing to do.
In the Phaedo, Socrates famously encouraged reflection on your own personal mortality, and what kind of life you are living: just or unjust. For if life continues after death, and if perfect justice really exists, a “settling of accounts” will have to take place: ultimate justice in another world. It is obvious that justice does not exist in this world; people die “ahead” and “behind” all the time.
What could be more important than to have a clean soul and to have paid your debts before you die? You only get one shot. Good old-fashioned “Catholic guilt,” has its place and purpose then, because guilt is real, like justice and mercy. But if you think God’s mercy means that he is not also just you’ve misunderstood how they relate. Mercy is precisely what God does not owe anyone, justice is.
Jon Haines  Memento Mori! (Remember your Death!) Catholicism
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Depression

Jesus himself must have experienced depression while being famished for forty days and nights in the wilderness, praying while his disciples slept, and descending into hell.
He also spent many years hidden from public view, his mission kept secret, his life so obscure that the Gospels tell us nothing about them. He had a long time of waiting, and he knew what awaited him. It is this time of hiddenness, I think, that most captures the depressant’s emotional state. The depressed wait for the long nights to end and the anguish to subside. The depressed, like Jesus during his so-called lost years, are hidden from sight, waiting for their lives to begin.
Stephen H. Webb God of the Depressed (2 . 19 . 16) First Things
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Development of Doctrine

What we learn about God in our spiritual lives should influence how we understand doctrine. As described above, many people believe that the Church imposes extrinsic “rules” onto peoples’ lives; these rules become particularly troublesome for people in the realm of marriage and sexuality. Nevertheless, if we know that God’s nature is love (1 John 4) from praying with the Scriptures, encountering Him in the liturgy, and spending time in meditative prayer, then should this not also influence how we understand doctrine, which comes from God? The idea that the God of my prayer is “nice” while the God of doctrine is “mean” is untenable. God is the author both of our spirituality and of doctrine; both flow from the same source, which means we should approach doctrine with the firm conviction that God is love, and that everything within doctrine is for our benefit and salvation.
Veronica Arntz God’s Love Revealed: The Intrinsic Connection of Doctrine and Spirituality (March 13, 2018)

No council will ever be able to change Divine Revelation.  But it can be deepened.  Jesus Christ gave the Deposit of the Faith once and for all to the Apostles.  A council should grow the understanding of the deposit of the Faith.  For example, the Council of Chalcedon gave new depth to the already revealed truths of Christology, now buttressed by new parameters on the wording of Christ’s hypostatic union.  Councils should offer organic additions to or extrapolations upon the Sacred Scriptures to meet new social needs or tackle new heresies.   

There have been some extremely beautiful and powerful movements in the Church since Vatican II.  These lay movements are analogous to collateral circulation.  Collateral circulation is when blood finds new routes through smaller arteries to perfuse the tissue with oxygen – despite the fact that there are still occluded larger arteries, originally intended for the bulk of the work.  The smaller arteries in my analogy could be things like FOCUS, the Augustine Institute, Theology on Tap, and even the charismatic movement (outside the Mass), where I have seen the hand of God work miracles.

 I don’t want us to return to the 1950s, as some angry people do.  My proposal is simple: let the Church move forward with all of her great lay movements, but have all bishops and priests offer the timeless 1962 sacraments.  We can keep “the New Evangelization,” but let’s be careful against modernist doctrine.  Then we will see a new wave of inspiring priests come from believing families.   
Father David Nix Back to the Four Marks: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic after Vatican II  (July 6, 2016)
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Devotions

The great saintly mystics and masters of the spiritual life tell us that one of the surest means to advance virtually by light years is by frequent meditation on the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, on His love and sufferings, and on the heroic pains He endured for us.

Thus, St. Louis Marie de Montfort says, in Secret of the Rosary, “Blessed Albert the Great who had Saint Thomas Aquinas as his disciple learned in a revelation that by simply thinking of or meditating on the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a Christian gains more merit than if he had fasted on bread and water every Friday for a whole year, or had beaten himself with his discipline once a week until the blood flowed, or had recited the whole Book of Psalms every day. If this is so, then how great must be the merit that we can gain by the Holy Rosary which commemorates the whole life and passion of Our Savior!” The rosary is therefore a priceless treasure for us all, as it beautifully combines vocal and mental prayer.

St. Bonaventure tells us this, as related by St. Alphonsus: “He who desires to go on advancing from virtue to virtue, from grace to grace, should meditate continually on the Passion of Jesus.” And he adds that “there is no practice more profitable for the entire sanctification of the soul than the frequent meditation of the sufferings of Jesus Christ.” St. Augustine also said a single tear shed at the remembrance of the Passion of Jesus is worth more than a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or a year of fasting on bread and water.

St. Paul of the Cross states, “”The remembrance of the most holy Passion of Jesus Christ is the door through which the soul enters into intimate union with God, interior recollection and most sublime contemplation[.]”
Nishant Xavier The Benefits of Meditation on the Holy Face of Jesus (December 18, 2019)

The matchless and mighty name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ works countless wonders whenever it is invoked with living faith; deep devotion; genuine reverence; and, above all, deepest love. The Great Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ means “God our Savior.”
First Point: The Holy Name of Jesus obtains a treasury of graces for us.

St. Paul urges us to sanctify daily duty by offering up everything we do in the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ: “All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Col. 3:17).
There can be nothing easier and also hardly anything better than to lovingly and devoutly repeat the Holy Name of Jesus Christ, God who became our Savior, many times every day.
Nishant Xavier The Wonders of the Holy Name of Jesus )September 25, 2019)  

Divorce

In every age, the Church deals with issues and pastoral situations so murky that a solution to a member’s situation may seem impossible. In the modern age, very few Catholics understand the importance of the Church’s precepts. These precepts bind each member of the Church to certain obligations in order to direct the lives of the faithful to the Church’s good.

They must understand that this path of mercy for the sake of the children is not a free pass for them to engage in the marital act. They must live in separate rooms, observe the norms of chastity, and do nothing that would intentionally arouse the other, the end of which is the marital act. Thirdly, they must be committed to an intense daily prayer and a frequent reception of the sacraments to sustain them in this sacrifice. Along with this, they must allow the Church to accompany them through the direction of their parish priest. They must be honest and transparent about their struggles and temptations.  

Different couples revealed their situations to me, stating that they had lived apart chastely but in the same house for 3, 10, even 20+ years in order to provide for their children. While sadness can creep into their relationships when they think of what they have sacrificed, the grace of that sacrifice in their children almost immediately eliminates that sorrow. While the pleasure of the marital act is good, they recognize that a voluntary sacrifice of that good is redemptive. One couple’s child spoke to me in my office and said that she had known for a little over a year about the sacrifice her parents make every day for her. She smiled and said, “Because of their purity, they understand modesty and chastity in such a clear way that they can teach me well. I don’t need to look it up in my Catechism. They are a living catechism.”
 Father Noah Carter Love, Mercy, Justice: Communion for the Divorced and Remarried (May 16, 2016)


Let me again be clear: what the kids on the playground or the old ladies in the neighborhood say is the least of a child’s concerns when their parents split up. A child is the physical embodiment of the love of his parents. Because of this, a truly existential crisis ensues when a child realizes his parents no longer love each other. Love, remember, is an act of the will, not a fluffy feeling. Love requires work. Effort. Selflessness. There are few greater violations of love than when parents can’t even bring themselves to make the effort to work through their problems, stay together, honor the covenant they made with God, and the fulfill the duties they owe to their children.

If the home is the domestic church, then divorce is a Great Schism.
Gemma Flyte Millstones and Missing the Point: Divorce, Remarriage, and Children (August 11, 2015)  

Easter

The Resurrection of Christ is the most important event in history, both world history, and our history. Without it, our lives are hopelessly confined to this world. But with it, this world can become the beginning of a life of eternal happiness with God in heaven. This is the good news; this is what we need to emphasize in our evangelization. Like St. Peter and St. Paul, we must make the Resurrection the central focus of our preaching, and of our lives. The Resurrection and Evangelization
The Resurrection must be the central focus of our preaching, and of our lives
-Eric Sammons, The Resurrection and Evangelization (4/29/2019)

Eastern Church

When one enters a church of the ancient Byzantine tradition, either Eastern Orthodox or Catholic, one is struck by the multiplicity and variety of icons or images. These icons, often hauntingly beautiful, have deep theological meaning. They are windows through which the imagination can be brought into the presence of those whom they represent in the heavenly court. Their placement in the church building is not arbitrary. The plan follows and reflects the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Christ, Pantocrator, lord of all, looks down from the gilded cupola and blesses the faithful. The Blessed Mother stands in the apse offering her prayers along with ours to her Son, and the saints stand guard in adoration on the altar screen, Iconostasis, placed before the sanctuary or Holy of Holies.
 Hamilton Reed Armstrong, Art, Beauty & Imagination - A Catholic Perspective
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After the formal schism in 1054 between the Western Church centered in Rome, and the Eastern Church centered in Constantinople, due to the brewing tensions over cultural, political, and theological differences, relations between the two have shifted back and forth for the near millennia that has passed since. During this span of time, some of the Eastern Churches reunified with Rome, whereas others (like the Italo-Albanian and Maronite rites) never left, with all keeping their sacred traditions.  

As the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, it is not simply just the Latin Church and its affiliated rites; the Church is composed of six traditions, containing twenty-four autonomous churches; although in union with Rome, they still preserve their traditions, instead of becoming latinized and part of the [Western] Latin Church. These rites originated from the ancient holy sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Armenia, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Rome.

With a better understanding of how large the Catholic Church truly is, and how diverse it is, we must acknowledge that there is no “right” or “wrong” tradition or rite in the Church. Despite our differences, our brethren have as much a right to their traditions as we do in the Latin rite. Without the Eastern Churches, we are but a piece of the Mystical Body, as the same goes for the East if we were to be absent.  

Let us pray for our Eastern brethren, so that we may one day see the East and West reunited in perfect communion, offering up our prayers of intercession for great Eastern Saints like Cyril, Methodius, and Josaphat, as well as Our Blessed Mother, the Theotokos.
Luken Stitzel The Importance of Eastern Catholic Churches (November 22, 2018) Catholic Connect

English Language

In our time, English has become the first truly universal world language. This is startling when you consider that for most of its history, it was spoken in one part of one island on the fringe of Europe. It owes its current prominence to both the British Empire and the United States.

So it is something of a humbling moment for English-speaking Catholics when they realize that for centuries, their language did not merit an afterthought in the life of the Church. Sure, there were the occasional towering figures like Reginald Cardinal Pole, but after 1558, England passed out of the patrimony of the Faith, and English Catholics became a persecuted, dwindling minority. Thus, the Empire that exploded onto the scene after the death of Queen Mary I was officially and fiercely Protestant.

To be sure, the brave men of the English College at Douai kept the flame lit, and many martyrs would bear the ultimate witness at Tyburn. But the harried condition of Catholics in the British Isles ensured that the contributions of English-speaking Catholics to the greater Church were limited. And the small number of English-speaking Catholics also meant that there would be little demand for translating Catholic works into English.

Until the turn of the 20th century, the Church in Britain, North America, and Australasia needed Bibles, catechisms, hymnals, and prayer books. Sure, the occasional high-powered Catholic convert made an impact, with the mid-19th century seeing John Henry Cardinal Newman in England and Orestes Brownson in America. Neither had trouble publishing.
Dale Price Buying Used Catholic Books – A Newbie’s Primer (January 15, 2019)
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Eucharistic Adoration

Perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was introduced a little over a year ago at St. Catherine of Siena parish of Franklin Square, Long Island.
The parish had already had adoration for a few hours a month, but then pastor Msgr. Rick Figliozzi expanded it to perpetual adoration (24 hours a day).

The chapel of a former convent was updated to become a dedicated adoration chapel, and a committee was formed to spread the word and enlist a schedule of regular adorers to cover every hour of the week.
Since then, the adoration chapel has had a constant stream of worshipers.

About 50 people are committed to an hourly schedule, to ensure that the Blessed Sacrament is never alone. Adoration “captains” are notified if someone isn’t able to make his scheduled hour, so someone can fill in. Other people come by for a few minutes to a few hours. Over the course of a week, there are now about 350 people visiting the Blessed Sacrament.

I’d heard the saying, “once you start going, you just have to go back.” I thought, really? Yes, it’s true! The Real Presence is like nothing else, and the peace is undeniable.
There’s a wide range of people on their knees before the Blessed Sacrament. Older couples, businessmen in suits stopping by before or after work or at lunchtime, entire families, a young guy in painter’s clothes, a woman in tears, a 20-something guy with tattoos and a sweatshirt, a priest from a neighboring parish. One couple come regularly with their adult disabled daughter. A dad brings his three sons straight from school. They follow him right up to the Blessed Sacrament and kneel beside him with their backpacks. A family of four generations came to pray together.
Patty Knap How Perpetual Adoration Is Transforming My Parish (May 20, 2019)   

Early in his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI called for the spread of perpetual Eucharistic adoration (March 2, 2006). Leading by example, Pope Francis, early in his pontificate, called for people everywhere to join him in Eucharistic adoration on the Feast of Corpus Christi, June 2, 2013. Our Holy Fathers have been following in the steps of their predecessor, John Paul II. Due in large part to the latter’s efforts, Eucharistic adoration spread like wildfire in the 1990s and has only increased since.

Rooted in the Mass and oriented towards it is Eucharistic adoration, a silent but most vigilant, most active, gaze upon the host “containing” the uncontainable. The silent gaze allows a penetration of the mysterium fidei. The power of adoration derives from the same Spirit in whose power Jesus the High Priest offered himself up on Calvary. In Eucharistic adoration, the same Holy Spirit is present, stirring up sighs “too deep for words” (Rom 8:26) and ushering Christians into that “groaning” for the revelation of the sons of God (Rom 8:19-23).

The Eucharistic invitation to peace indirectly draws attention to the full parameters of this conflict: not merely national and international conflicts, but, more radically, pride, envy, sloth, lust, avarice, despair, enmity, … and even the demonic elements (Eph 6:12). It is primarily in these latter vices, and not primarily in the former physical threats, that the great drama of human life plays out, for it is out of the micro-dramas of many lives that the macro-drama of the world stage emerges (Ja 4:1-2). This, of course, does not exclude reciprocal influence, for social structures and actions do affect individuals.
Dr. Christopher J. Malloy Eschatology and Eucharistic Adoration (May 23, 2014)  
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This world is crazy and painful and scary and dark. The Church often seems similar. We can get caught up in debating and arguing and fighting uphill battles and get overwhelmed by confusing news and become discouraged at the current state of things. But in the midst of this chaos, God still speaks; priests still stand in persona Christi; Sacred Scripture remains; and lives are still changed by the overwhelming, never-ending, sacrificial love of God. This Church is the fullness of truth, beauty, and goodness, and amid scandal and heresy, it is still the bulwark and pillar of truth. May we never forget this. May we never forget the power of Our Lord in the Eucharist.
Paul de Partee The Magnificent Experience that Brought This Ex-Protestant into the Church (July 2, 2019)

Ecumenism

Does Vatican II adopt a "lowest common denominator" approach to "balance" unity and truth? Not at all. Unitatis Redintegratio 3 affirms that while the separated brethren have many elements of truth, God's will is that they all come to that plenitude which can be found only in Catholicism:

For it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone . . . that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic College alone, of which Peter is the head . . . that we believe the Lord entrusted all the benefits of the New Covenant in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ, into which all those who already in some way belong to the people of God ought to be fully incorporated. (UR, 3, emphases added)

The Decree also recalls that while there is a "hierarchy" of Catholic truths, insofar as these vary in "their relationship to the foundation of the Christian faith," this does not mean that the less "fundamental" Catholic beliefs — those not shared by Protestant or Orthodox Christians — are "negotiable" or can be swept under the rug. (The revealed truths about our Lady, for instance, derive from the Incarnation, not vice versa.) On the contrary, "It is of course essential that [Catholic] doctrine be presented in its entirety. Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism which harms the purity of Catholic doctrine and obscures its genuine and certain meaning" (UR 11).
Rev. Brian W. Harrison, O.S., M.A., S.T.D. Is Ecumenism a Heresy? Catholic Culture

Evangelization

The apostles, who were revitalized after Pentecost, went out to evangelize in every direction from Jerusalem. St. Thomas went to India, St. Peter traveled to Rome, and St. Paul traversed the entire Mediterranean. Within a generation, the message of Jesus had spread throughout all of Western civilization.
The history of Catholic Church from the apostles to the present day is marked by bursts of missionary activity, and often, the vibrancy of the faith coincides with missionary activity. Great saints fearlessly brought the faith to distant lands, and with this new-found religious zeal, the newly converted regions underwent a flowering of Catholic culture, such as with St. Patrick in Ireland, St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Eastern Europe, St. Boniface in Germany, St. Francis Xavier in India, and so many others.  

If we love a new restaurant, then we tell our friends about it. If we see a cool video on YouTube, then we share it on Facebook. How much more should we share our faith, which is so important to us and is a part of every aspect of our life. How could we not want it to shine through our daily encounters? We should have an eagerness, a constant itch, to share the faith with everyone! 

A missionary outlook should be central in the mind of every Catholic. We should seek opportunities to share our faith. We need to emphasize the work of missionaries, pray for them, and support them financially. We should utilize the internet and social media as part of the missionary effort, or join a local church group tied to evangelization.   
Hanael Bianchi Preach the Gospel at all times (and without any exceptions) (October 27, 2017)   
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How best to foster Catholicism among the Pan-Amazonian region is a valiant pursuit, to be sure: Christ commissioned the faithful to spread the Gospel across the Earth, and the Amazon presents evangelization challenges that warrant attention. For example, lack of priests means administration of the sacraments in some areas is devastatingly scarce.

In the past, when similar obstacles presented themselves, the best missionaries doubled down on virtue, calling on Christ to strengthen them in compassion, chastity, and humility so they might best serve their flocks. Many even shed their blood, dying as martyrs and saints. One imagines that a renewed emphasis on such heroic selflessness could help the Vatican fulfill its goal of spreading Catholicism in the Amazon. After all, we’re seeing evidence that young people in the Church are responding to challenges that entail rigor, intensity, and zeal. They like the traditional Latin Mass, incense, and veils. They’d probably like legendary missionaries like St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, too, if they had a chance to get to know them.
Honora Kenney Amazon Synod Reveals Vatican Bureaucracy Nightmare (October 15, 2019)

Family Life

Before we begin again, I need to ask you, my children, did we create enough new memories for you? Will you look back fondly and remember the sweet, cold ice cream cones before bed? Will you remember the way the setting sun turned peach and then dark pink as you ran along the sidewalk with the neighbours in your bare feet? Was it enough that we had lots of friends over and good food on the barbecue? Did the breeze on your face make you feel alive as you sped down the streets, newly liberated from your training wheels?

Do you recall running through dandelion fields, pulling that giant kite that looked like a bird? Do you remember how your father chased that kite, through front yards, over fences after it slipped free from your grasp? He caught it, but you knew he would: “Don’t worry,” you said to the boy next door, “My dad will get it! He’s a police officer, he can do anything!”

Lindsay Murray Before We Begin Again (August 31, 2016)
https://myfourcrowns.wordpress.com/

Fasting

Few Catholics abstain from meat on Fridays or embrace any voluntary penance. Few Catholics fast–either throughout Lent or at any other time of the year. So let us heed the Bishops’ call and return to Friday penance–to make every Friday “something of what Lent is in the entire year,” i.e., a day of fasting, abstinence, and other mortifications and devotions.

By fasting and mortifying ourselves through other penances, we do penance out of justice for the guilt of our sins. We should do so out of love for Jesus Christ, in imitation of His own fasts and mortifications, in adherence to His counsel which encouraged self-denial and fasting, and in union with his sacrificial Passion and death. Countless saints have embraced this ascetical path and their witness confirms for us that His yoke is easy and His burden light. The examples of these saints also show that the heights of prayer cannot be reached if we are in love with the world and its pleasures. Rather, we need fasting and mortifications to help break the world’s hold on us, to aid our prayer life, and to increase our love of God and neighbor.

So this liturgical year, let us embrace penance–and particularly during Advent, Lent, Vigils and Embertides, and Fridays
William Bloomfield A Return to Penance and Abstinence (December 13, 2016)
www.SacredArtSeries.com.
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Faith and Reason

In many ways, the current crisis in the Church represents the lack of balance between love and reason. Many Catholics today are poorly formed and fail to accept basic doctrinal positions. Today, about 37% of Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week do not believe in the Real Presence. Because so many have not been properly catechized, they lack the knowledge and understanding needed to accept the teaching. If they do not believe the Church’s teachings on this and other things (an overwhelming majority of Catholics also reject the Church’s teachings on contraceptives), one must conclude that their continued attendance at Mass is based on a sentimental, emotional attachment, rather than a rational belief, followed by an assent of the will to faith.

Faith and reason are both important aspects of our Catholic life, and they reinforce each other. Reason brings us to faith, and faith allows us to believe things that are beyond our reason. Without reason to ground our faith, our faith becomes weak and unarmored against challenge. Without an understanding of the spiritual, faith becomes an exercise in sentimentality instead of a proper reaction to the fact of God’s existence. We must continually strive to gain a greater understanding of the Faith and engage in continual study. Understanding of our faith forms part of the good soil that allows us to be as the seeds that produced grain, growing and increasing thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.
Dan Banke  Can a Catholic Have Faith without Reason? January‎ ‎28‎, ‎2020
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Feminine Genius

The “order of love,” noted Pope St. John Paul, “takes first root” in women. We see this played out in Our Lord’s ministry on earth, at the incarnation, at the cross, at the Resurrection. Our Lady is the preeminent example of womanly strength
Suzan Sammons I Am Woman, See Me Love: What Is Feminine Strength? 9 January 24, 2017) 

Filmmaking

Whether it is the stunning cinematic techniques and profound story told through The Passion, the grand and noble-minded masterpiece of LOTR conveying the nature and reality of good and evil, or the subtle techniques of the almost inspiring Breathe, something can be drawn from each of these films to inspire Catholic artists to create edifying and beautiful cinematic works of art. There is a vast, beautiful world for Catholic filmmakers to open up to audiences if only more would use the resources of inspiration and creativity available and apply them to Catholic thought.
There is a reservoir of Christian influence largely left untapped – and thus unable to nourish the human spirit, which so desperately needs God. Catholic artists can be the ones to tap into it.
Edward P. Shikles Film and the Art of Evangelizing (June 26, 2018)  

Grace

Gratia non tollat naturam, sed perficiat: Grace does not eliminate nature, but rather completes it, Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us, thereby marking the metaphysical and theological divide of modernity. On one side of the divide, we find the Catholic tradition, which has always taught that the power of the sacraments heals human nature and bring it to its rightful state of perfection as an image of God.
Jerry Salyer Catholic Tradition and the Patriotic Question( September 7, 2018)

One has to wonder if Elton John has ever heard of St. Augustine and his famous line from Confessions: “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, O Lord.”
While the movie intends to celebrate someone who appears to have overcome a lot of obstacles, it actually shows the enormous gap between worldly success and praise and God’s plan. God’s plan includes parents who actually love their children and who behave in a way that conveys that love. When that breaks down, such as in Elton John’s case, the results are often disastrous, especially in a world where there are plenty of people who will celebrate the brokenness instead of helping the child or the young adult address the wound in a way that is psychologically, physically, and spiritually sound. If Rocketman is at all close to the reality of Elton John’s life, he has not been offered anything close to this, and the result has been disastrous. Yes, he has fame, fortune, and a life full of privilege, but it is obvious that he still needs more, and then comes eternity.
Robert Sullivan Rocketman and Vatican Financial Scandal (December 16, 2019)
www.bsullivan.org.

Halloween

Nestled as he is at the heart of holy mother Church, this church of bone chapels, cadaver synods, the fresco of the Last Judgment, and monks who sleep in coffins lest they fail to memento mori, the modern Catholic Gentleman may observe the present hubbub and think to himself, “this lot are off their trolleys”.

He knows that if his children are to be any use to themselves or their families, our people, the church, or the world, they need to engage in the powers of imagination. They need also to know what evil is; they need also to know fear.
Halloween, the Catholic Gentleman knows, in all its spooky goodness, serves a pressing need in children. Cloaked in merriment lest children lose heart, the great parental conspiracy of Halloween induces kids to imagine some of the most terrible (and terrifying) facts of human existence. This darkness, juxtaposed with the light of All Saints, is no more a thing to be missed than is all the candy he will steal from his children as they sleep.
And when his Buzzkill Catholic friends inquire as to which saint his kid will dress up as for All Saints Day, he replies with courteous zeal, “That freaking awesome Saint who’s also a ninja!”

The Catholic Gentleman and his children do not fear Halloween. To fear it is to give it a power it does not possess. Prayers said, his little sugar-addled minions will be tucked snugly in their beds, and he will rummage through their bags, seeking his tithe.
His duty done, he may retire for cocktails.
 John Carriere A Modern Catholic Gentleman’s Guide to Halloween (October 28, 2016)  

Hell

All Catholics sin (some, like myself, are intimately familiar with the experience), and are taught as a matter of doctrine that anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic, who dies conscious of unrepentant mortal sin will be eternally lost in the age to come.

The Catholic Church (at least prior to 1965) has been acutely aware of perdition, damnation, and moral recompense. Can a Church that today has constituent congregations filled unapologetically with long communion and short confession lines adequately deal with a sex abuse crisis that challenges the moral foundations of Church authority?

The Catholic Church isn’t broken, insofar as it has yet to renege on its guarantee of perpetual existence, but it is wounded.
John Hirschauer   A Church That Won’t Talk About Hell Stares Evil in the Face DailyWire.com
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History

The entire Christian worldview rises or falls on a simple matter of historical fact: Whether a Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead to vindicate His claims to divine personage. Without the resurrection event, Christ’s moral teaching, while perhaps still of interest to the anthropologist or the charlatan, ceases to become a divine command levied under pain of eternal damnation. It is impossible to be too “hung up” on whether that specific event happened or not, because,  “if God is real, then that fact is the most important fact in the universe, something that should be perfectly obvious even to a committed atheist.”
Perhaps Shankar Vedantam wishes the stakes of this question were not so high. Sometimes, so do I. As the essayist wrote, however, the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
John Hirschauer ‘If It’s Only a Symbol, to Hell with It’ (February 4, 2020)

As has always happened in history, a period of crisis in the Church was followed by one of florescence. The late fourth and early fifth centuries were adorned by such figures as St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. It was the period when the foundations of monasticism were laid, under the example of St. Basil in the East and of the monks of Gaul. Charitable works sprang up such as the pagan world had never known; hospices for strangers in bishops’ houses began the long tradition of shelter to travelers; and the Christian invention of the hospital for the sick was a product of this age.
Henry Sire -Phoenix from the Ashes: The Making, Unmaking, and Restoration of Catholic Tradition (2015)

Holy Family

Today is the day we celebrate the Feast of The Holy Family, given to us by God as The example to model our lives by and for the young to aspire to begin families in their image. In a world gone mad the Holy Family’s example deservedly shines as a beacon to illuminate this age of familial sacrilege. I have spoken of the fact that the entire civilization of Man can be brought into existence and made to flourish through the Divine prose of the 4th Commandment, that is the Family, made Holy by God’s Grace, contra the example of the Prince of this world.

The story of the Feast of The Holy Family becoming a traditional part of our Catholic lives and thus into the Liturgical calendar, passes through Canada and the noble, humble service of French Catholics to convert the native inhabitants of this continent. Barbara d’Hillehoust, and her husband Louis, had ventured from France to Canada in 1643 to work among the Indians. After her husband died, she was invited to Montreal, Quebec, where she founded an Association of the Holy Family in 1663. She received the encouragement of Monsignor François de Laval who was to become Bishop of Quebec. In 1675, Bishop de Laval had a little book printed in Paris instructing the members of the confraternity as to virtuous practices and established The Feast of the Holy Family, and had a mass and office drawn up which were proper to the Diocese of Québec.

Later Barbara d’Hillehoust’s work received the attention of the saintly Pope Leo XIII, who raised the Association to the rank of an Arch-Confraternity. On October 26, 1921 the Congregation of Rites (under Pope Benedict XV) inserted The Feast of the Holy Family into the Latin Rite general calendar and was thus extended to the entire Church.

Mike Church The Stable Genius And The Feast Of The Holy Family The Mike Church Show
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Holiness

Holiness may be understood in three sharply distinct senses: the ontological, the moral, and the ritual. The one definition that is critical to all three is this: holiness is the clear distinction of one from many. To be holy is to be unique, to be set apart from what is common, imperfect, or wicked.

Ontological holiness is fortified by the other sacraments – namely, confession, unction, and matrimony, and the Holy Eucharist is He Who is its end.    
Moral holiness is goodness in human acts and is a result of ontological holiness.    
Finally, there is ritual holiness, which is the consecration of people, places, and things exclusively to God. Consecration imparts an invisible character and signifies that character by physical means.

In baptism, all three senses of holiness are present: the catechumen is ontologically changed; he is infused with the charity whereby moral holiness arises; and, importantly, he is consecrated in the sight of all as the temple of the Holy Ghost.
Jonathan Cariveau What Holiness Means to a Catholic, and to the World ( November 29, 2017)
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Fr. Treco’s motto is just two little words: “Get holy.” It’s clear to me that this has been his goal in all my interactions with him. Get holy. You’re worried about the state of the world? Get holy. You’re worried about the state of the Church? Get holy. God ordained that you be born in this time for a specific purpose. Get holy. You struggle with a sin? Get holy. You suffer from depression and anxiety? Get holy. God needs saints. So get holy. The Scripture that reads “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” is something never taken as hyperbole by Fr. Treco. Jesus said to do it, so Father encouraged us to believe it’s possible, because Jesus said so.
-Jonathan Schwartzbauer O Father, My Father! The Story of Fr. Vaughn Treco (February 15, 2019)

Human Interaction

Could it be that the beginning of countering this culture of miserable narcissism, and thus the culture of death and even the world culture steeped in strife, starts with setting aside time to encounter the other? Could the world be impacted by such a simple act? Of course, there is also the risk that “other” may not be receptive. That’s fine—the lovely thing about freedom is that one has the ability, sad as it is, to reject what is good. The fact that you make the first step outside yourself will result, inevitably in others responding in kind. Consider the phenomenon of “paying it forward”. A simple scenario could very well occur: I can choose to pay for the order of the person behind me at Dunkin Donuts, and the result may well be that this person, in the good mood such an act produces, chooses not to react angrily at an employee’s mistake. This employee may, in turn, recognize a major error in the way the business is being done that saves his and his coworker’s livelihood, which could very well impact the education of their children. This may, as a result, educate the future doctor who discovers the cure for cancer. All from a cup of coffee. Too farfetched? 
Bree A. Dail Revisiting the Lost Art of Human Interaction (Oct 24, 2017)
https://www.breeadail.com/

Humor

Humor makes a thick and tasty sauce to flavor the rather pungent meat of Catholic metaphysics and morals – which is hearty, low-fat, and nutritious, but you must admit has kind of a "wild" taste, like deer meat or turtle. Sometimes joking about such things is useful and truthful. A humorless Faith is stereotypically brittle or repulsive, raising the obvious question: "If believing all this stuff will make me a prig like you, do I even want to consider it? What I've learned from secular comedy's counter-apostolate is this: People's hackles go up when you attack them and drop when you tickle them. Get someone laughing – as the best Catholic authors knew how to, from Waugh and Chesterton to Percy and O'Connor – and his barriers collapse.
John Zmirak A Spoonful of Splenda –(Mar 30, 2011)

Internet Stuff

‘The Language of Religious Affiliation Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Differences’ to give its full name, was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

They found that religious people were more likely to use words in the religion, positive emotion, family, social processes, and achievement language categories. Those categories include words like love, good, happy, family, mom, we, they, better, and best.

However, nonreligious individuals were more likely to use words in the anger, swear, death, and money categories. They include words like hate, lying, bad, cried, heck, die, dead, free, check, worth, and spend.
But let’s not get puffed up with pride, or rush to banish those without faith and more inclined to pessimism and trigger warnings.

It is a reminder that social media is another opportunity to share our faith, in a positive way like St. Francis de Sales and St. Maximilian Kolbe – there are lots of people like Bella Dodd, Douglas Hyde, Bernard Nathanson, Leah Libresco, Holly Ordway and Roger Buck just waiting to hear it.
Daniel Blackman Why Christians are More Positive on Facebook (Sep. 1, 2017)  National Catholic Register
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As an ordained minister of the Church, I have a very straightforward purpose of my life: adoring God and saving souls. Nothing else matters. I proclaim and defend the doctrines and the disciplines of the Catholic faith because they have been entrusted to the Church as the means by which souls attain their supernatural destiny of sharing in “the good things of God that utterly surpasse the understanding of the human mind” (Vatican I, Dei Filius). It’s rare to hear nowadays, but I seek to cultivate in myself and others a “passionate zeal for souls.” Of course, zeal for souls involves zeal to save man in his totality, body and soul, as expressed in the practice of the corporal acts of mercy, combined with spiritual acts of mercy.

Pope Francis said earlier this year that the salus animarum (salvation of souls) is the highest law of the Church, which he describes as helping people hear and live the universal call to holiness.

There is a lot of rage out there in the blogosphere, social media and online Catholic media among Catholics who clearly love the Church and take seriously the obedience of faith. I’ve even read comments wishing ill towards other Catholics, including physical harm. The most shocking example I’ve come across was a Catholic tweeting the hope that Pope Francis’ refusal of security during his U.S. trip would result in a successful attack on him! One of the dangers of social media is that anonymity often encourages some individuals to gravely sinful thoughts and expressions.

Dissenters, and those who don’t want to face reality in the Church, often make accusations of anger, ad hominem attacks and “lack of charity” against faithful Catholic bloggers when their dissenting and erroneous arguments and dubious decisions are critiqued from the perspective of faith and reason. By so doing, they seek to portray robust argument and rational challenge as “sinful” in order to avoid answering just criticisms. Criticism that is fair and reasoned cannot really be mistaken for rage.

It is incredible now to see the same spiteful expressions of disrespect being written and spoken by some “faithful” Catholics against Pope Francis. It is common to read on Catholic blogs that Pope Francis is referred to as “Bergoglio,” “Frank” or “Frankie.” And like the dissenting opponents of Pope Francis’ predecessors, such Catholics are signaling that they reject Pope Francis’ authority and role in the Church as the Successor of St. Peter.
This is a totally bizarre attitude for Catholics who seek to be faithful to Scripture, Tradition and the magisterium to adopt towards the 266th leader of the Catholic Church and Successor to St. Peter. The basic attitude expected of faithful Catholics towards Pope Francis is first and foremost one of respect and reverence. The Second  

It is clear from the Catholic understanding of the primacy of the successor of St. Peter that it is contrary to the faith handed down to us from the apostles to express disrespect towards the pope. Having said this, showing respect and reverence towards the office of the Roman pontiff does not exclude critical engagement with Pope Francis’ teachings and judgments. In fact, Pope Francis has gone out of his way to signal that much of his teaching, such as his daily homilies during Mass at the St. Martha guesthouse and even some of his apostolic documents, are not to be treated as magisterial.
 Deacon Nick Donnelly How to Tell if You’re Rightfully Zealous for Souls or Just Plain Angry (Oct. 27, 2015)
https://www.ewtn.co.uk/

When a group confuses its politics with moral doctrine, it may have trouble comprehending how a decent human could disagree with its positions. This is probably why people confuse lecturing with debating and why so many liberals can bore into the deepest nooks of my soul to ferret out all those motivations but can’t waste any time arguing about the issue itself....

And religious "discussion" is poisoned by the same problems. I'm no stranger to hyperbole, but I can't run on it 24/7. Port is an excellent beverage, but I don't pour it on my Honey Nut Cheerios every morning.

And it doesn't take a flashcard from an a-hole to prompt it--most comment threads in Zuckerbergia that involve politics or religion degenerate into a Two Days Hate worthy of the Cultural Revolution. When such tactics and "thinking" become a staple of self-identified Christians--and they have--it is gruesome. It was one such thread that became the pile of anvils that broke the camel's back for me, when the questioning of a fellow Catholic's sanity was met with baying approval. 
-Dale Price, The age of argument is dead.
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Try to pinpoint the last time you took a purposeless walk through the late spring breeze, when there was no itch in your hand to reach for a mobile device, and you felt like the wind and sky around you had nothing to disclose to you other than the vast and mysteriously sympathy of existence itself. Was it 2007? Or as far back as 1997? Does just asking the question make you feel ill?

The internet doesn't coddle you in a comforting information bubble. It imprisons you in an information cell and closes the walls in on you by a few microns every day. It works with your friends and the major media on the outside to make a study of your worst suspicions about the world and the society you live in. Then it finds the living embodiments of these fears and turns them into your cell mates. And good heavens it is efficient.

Compare 1997 and 2017. It's ugly. If you're a human American, you're more likely to live alone or with people who aren't related to you than you were in 1997. You're less likely to belong to a church, a bowling league, or a civic association. You're less likely to subscribe to periodicals you like. You're more likely to report a shorter attention span. You're far more likely to have a problem with addiction, whether opioids, porn, or just the flickering screen.
Michael Brendan Dougherty I write on the internet. I'm sorry. (May 1, 2017)
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Jesus

Our Lord went into the air and went to Heaven, and we’ve been waiting for His return ever since. A door into another dimension did not open for Him on the ground. A spacecraft did not descend from the sky. He, Himself, went up into the air and into the clouds. So where shall we conclude is the home of Jesus Christ?
Let us consider the different clouds. The lowest clouds are at 6,500 feet. Did our Lord enter the doorway to Heaven through a puffy cumulus cloud? Was He welcomed into Paradise by puncturing a dreary gray sky filled with fog-like stratus clouds? Or did He disappear into a forest of stratocumulus clouds? Surely the door to Heaven is not in any of these clouds, for they are too low to the ground, and we would’ve found the gateway to Heaven by now. Perhaps the entrance to Heaven is higher. Did Christ go as high as ten thousand feet and disappear into a “sheep back” altocumulus cloud? Surely, Heaven’s door doesn’t reside in a nimbostratus rain cloud, does it? Where would be the dignity in that? Did Jesus go as high as twenty-thousand feet and disappear into an icy cirrus cloud?
Or maybe Jesus Christ went cosmic instead. Did He continue beyond the orbit of the Moon? Did He suffer from Van Allen Belt radiation? What were the effects of gamma and galactic radiation on His cellular structure? Did the absence of gravity begin to warp the shape of His eyeballs, confuse His vestibular system, and eat away at His bone density?
Laramie Hirsch The Theatrics of Christ’s Ascension( May 19, 2018)

 Joy

joy and sorrow proceed from love, but in contrary ways. For joy is caused by love, either through the presence of the thing loved, or because the proper good of the thing loved exists and endures in it; and the latter is the case chiefly in the love of benevolence, whereby a man rejoices in the well-being of his friend, though he be absent. On the other hand, sorrow arises from love, either through the absence of the thing loved, or because the loved object to which we wish well, is deprived of its good or afflicted with some evil. Now charity is love of God, Whose good is unchangeable, since He is His goodness, and from the very fact that He is loved, He is in those who love Him by His most excellent effect, according to 1 John 4:16: “He that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him.” Therefore, spiritual joy, which is about God, is caused by charity.

The more we grow in our exercise of charity, by loving God and our neighbor as Jesus taught us, the more firmly we will abide in His love and be filled with His joy. Our lives on Earth will still involve suffering, for it is “through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:21), but the same Lord Who commands us to take up our cross daily and follow Him (see Luke 9:23) also says: “Come to Me, all you that labor and are burdened: and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart: and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is sweet and My burden light” (Matt. 11:28-30).
Matt Gaspers Joy, Peace, and Patience: Keeping Our Catholic Cool in Tough Times (November 3, 2017)

Language

Regarding the translating of “adelphoi genesthai.” I am admittedly no Greek scholar, although I did teach myself to read Greek. But we can as lay people deduce the following: first, that “adelphoi” is the common Koine word for brother or cousin, as has been explained by others in their defense of the perpetual virginity of the Theotokos as regards the “brethren” of the Lord debate. Second, genesthai, according to a quick Google search, appears in the New Testament 37 times, where it is most often translated as “becoming, occurring, belonging, or joining.” St. Paul makes use of the word in Romans 7:4, where he says: “Therefore, my brethren, you also are become dead to the law, by the body of Christ; that you may belong (genesthai) to another, who is risen again from the dead, that we may bring forth fruit to God” (Douay-Rheims Bible).

Clearly, the inspired author of this text is referring to the bond by which the Christian belongs to Christ and not by that which the wife is bonded (genetai) to her husband, as is used in Romans 7:2–3. While the words genetai and genesthai share similar roots (think “genesis”), the two are not used interchangeably, and only genetai is used in reference to marriage, as it is in Romans 7:2–3. I bet Boswell sure wishes he had the power of Google back in 1994!
L.S. Predy Adelphopoiesis: The Myth of the “Gay” Byzantine Marriage Rite (March 4, 2019)
https://thebyzantinelife.com/

Last Things

Death can be scary, for sure, and I resist and avoid pain as much as the next wimp. But for as long as I can remember, a quick, unsuspecting, and painless death is the specter that haunts my dreams. I cannot count how many people I have heard express the wish, “I hope I die in my sleep.” When a Catholic expresses this wish, I shake my head and offer a prayer that their wish will go unfulfilled.

For my part, I have always hoped to suffer consciously at my death, suffering sufficiently for the expiation of my many sins. To wish otherwise seems to be a denial of the need of expiation or presumption upon the mercy of God.  That is not the way I wish to die.

Patrick Archbold The Grace of a Slow, Painful Death (March 13, 2015) 

The moment we die and pass from this world to the next to be judged by Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will determine our destiny for all eternity. Really there are only two possibilities: salvation or damnation—rejoicing in the Presence of God, His Blessed Mother, the angels and saints, or suffering the pains and torments of the damned for all eternity. Even though very sober, very serious, possibly even a bit frightening, this reality should loom before our eyes as the minutes, days, weeks, months and years evaporate before our eyes.
We should prepare for this encounter with the Lord Jesus with great calmness and peace but also with serious efforts on our part. We should beg the Lord Jesus that He be our Redeemer rather than our Judge.
Father Ed Broom, OMV , YOUR LAST AND FINAL WORDS??? WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THEM TO BE??? (Feb 10 2020)
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The great glory of the saints is the burning charity they hold toward the wayfaring soul — even us sinners. They have not ceased to yearn for your salvation since before you called upon them for aid. They still labor — if it can be called labor — for your eternal felicity and joy. At one with God, their only longing is to share this peace with more souls. Our Blessed Mother above all tenderly desires your union with all the saints in Christ. As the perfect mother, she burns with love for your soul.

Consider the sound of their chorus to which they invite you, rising infinitely in praising the mercy of God. The most beautiful and exquisite music you have ever heard is like foul noise in comparison. Once, St. Francis heard the sound of an angel playing an instrument, and he nearly died for joy [5]. Consider the beauty of the voice of the Virgin Mother above all the rest. De Sales says, “even as the newly-fledged nightingale learns to sing from the elder birds, so by our sacred communing with the Saints we shall learn better to pray and sing the praises of the Lord” [6].

Consider, too, the hope of finding in that heavenly country the loved ones we have lost. The baptized children who were lost before the age of reason will run to you. Perhaps others whose loss you have suffered will greet you — a departed father or mother or even a spouse. If they have gained eternal life, then without a doubt they have longed for you and prayed for you as all the saints. Consider the love of all the saints, beckoning you to lift your heart to paradise and come.
Timothy Flanders A Reflection on the Glory of Paradise (December 30, 2019)

Well-meaning but hasty thoughts about me being in Heaven are not going to help my soul in the slightest.  Instead, I’m asking now — and will repeat this plea as many times as I have to, until I die — that everyone who remembers me assume that I am in Purgatory.
And that means I will need prayers, and lots of them — not pronouncements of canonization, including ones that are meant to make me wife feel better, assuming that I “check out” before she does.
It’s a grave mistake to automatically assume that someone who’s died is definitely in Heaven now. That may seem unkind or heartless, but in fact, it’s uncharitable to assume that someone is already “set” eternally and that he doesn’t need our prayers anymore. That’s what “canonizing” someone by saying “he’s in Heaven” or “he’s in a better place” amounts to. It’s an act of concluding that we don’t need to pray for him.

So there it is — Purgatory, not Heaven, is what we should be thinking about first when someone we know passes away, even a close family member or friend, because there’s every good chance that his soul will be in need of purification there. Just as we should not implode an old building until we know absolutely that no one is inside, we should err on the side of caution when we are not sure that someone who has died is in Heaven. Souls in Heaven don’t need our prayers, but those in Purgatory do, and that’s where we must presume a departed soul is — again, absent a clear-cut case of martyrdom for the Faith or miracles due to the person’s intercession.
So when I die, please pray for me — don’t canonize me. Do I hope to go straight to Heaven after my time on Earth runs out? Of course I do, but unless they know for sure that I have, I hope people don’t bet on it. That’s why I offer each of the individual prayers in my rosary for one soul in Purgatory. I ask that others pay it forward after I die — or in this case, maybe I should say pay it backward — by assuming the very real possibility of my being in Purgatory, and thus praying for my soul’s release into the eternal glory of God’s Presence.
Ken Foye My Dying Wish: Don’t Canonize Me at the Funeral (January 27, 2020)

As I lie dying, surrounding me in the room are a handful of persons softly murmuring the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary in Latin (because I will die a stickler for Latin, and they will lovingly accommodate my wishes in hora mortis). In the present moment of daydreaming about this, I’m not sure who they are, though I see them as my family, either by blood or because we are members of the same Church Militant. Are they my future husband, future children, future grandchildren? Parish friends? Sisters in Christ whose babies I’ve held, tears I’ve dried, and with whom I’ve traded many a phone call over the hectic cacophony and quiet stillness of the unfolded tale of my life?

Or are they strangers?

Naturally, the presence of my future husband enters my consideration here. But I’m not sure. Is he here, praying for and with me, holding my hand with the unwavering softness and steadiness that comes from a lifetime of knowing, loving, and forgiving me in the Sacrament of Marriage…or am I without his physical presence? Have I already helped him in his own death, and am I now suffering mine alone?

If I must choose this detail, I would  choose for my future husband already to be gone (although this is one of the countless reasons I am so very thankful Our Lord is in control, and not me – I won’t have to actually decide!) – first, because he is, hopefully, praying for me with a power he could not have possessed on earth; second, that I could offer up my loneliness without him as another sacrifice to God for reparation; and third, because his physical absence would remind me all the more sharply that my approaching death is completely between God and myself alone.

Mary Jimenez Peering toward the End: A Short Daydream about My Death  (November 8, 2017)

marydonellan.wordpress.com.
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WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR LAST WORDS ON EARTH TO BE? I have thought of this question with a certain frequency and come to this conclusion. I would like my heart in those last moments to express three sentiments in these words: 1) “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a poor sinner.” (A humble recognition of my status as a sinner in desperate need of God’s forgiveness). 2) “Jesus, I trust in you!” (A limitless TRUST in Jesus’ greatest attribute—His Mercy! 3) “Jesus, I love you!”  The great Doctor, poet, Mystic and saint, Saint John of the Cross, expressed this perfectly: “In the twilight of our existence on earth, we will be judged on love.”
Cornelius Pulung Reviving the True Meaning of Death (November 18, 2014)  

“Every moment of our lives we stand on the brink of eternity.” – Dom Lorenzo Scupolli

It is unclear why white vestments may be worn at funeral Mass or Masses for the Dead, since the traditional usage for those occasions before the Second Vatican Council was to use black vestments. It seems improper to wear violet or white vestments in Masses for the dead because violet is a color for conversion and penitence, hence its focus is on a living person. White is a color of glory and joy, and thus not suitable for sorrow. As the Mass for the dead focuses on the faithful departed, it is theologically more appropriate to wear black vestments. Traditionally, black represents the mourning for the deceased, the somberness of the tomb and the sorrow of death (cf. Catholic Encyclopedia: Liturgical Colors).  

It is essential to remember that Catholic Church teaches us about the grace of a happy death, which means dying in a state of grace. This grace is closely associated with the gift of perseverance. Because it cannot be obtained by our own merit, we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). We need to remind our Lord about his promise (Mat 7:7), that if we ask humbly what is necessary for our salvation, it will certainly be given to us.

What should we do to prepare the hour of our death? The answer leads us to basic traditional practices: daily examination of conscience, frequent reception of the sacrament of Reconciliation and Eucharist, praying unceasingly, doing penance, cultivating virtue and rooting out vice. For our time spent in this world is continual warfare against the powers of darkness, so we should have a strategy to enter this battlefield.
Cornelius Pulung The Cure of a Soul (November 6, 2014)  

Finally, and most importantly, as Catholics we should always be ready to die. It is very easy to get caught up in the scandals and gossip of Church politics. What is needed most at this time are Catholics who have deep interior lives, or what has been called "the soul of the apostolate." 
What good would it be to have a well-prepped house and a rock-solid and unified community if one dies in the state of mortal sin and loses his soul? 
We should be in a state of grace at all times, for even if an apocalypse does not come in our lifetime, we should be ready to meet Our Lord, Who will come, as He Himself said, like a thief in the night.
Jesse Russell   What to Do When the Apocalypse Hasn’t Happened (Yet) (November 16, 2019) ChurchMilitant.com  

Lent

Although St. Benedict’s Rule was written for monks, his wisdom can radically change our Lenten approach from a miserable season to a joyful time of prayer and works of mercy. Besides challenging his monks to a life of prayer and self-denial, St. Benedict’s following words are a Lenten paradigm shift: “Let each one deny himself some food, drink, sleep, needless talking and idle jesting, and look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing.” Nowhere does St. Benedict say our Lent should include complaining and sadness. Yes, joy is our Lenten challenge. Along with joy, St. Benedict calls his monks to “compunction of heart” and “prayer with tears.” Yes, sorrow for our sins and joy go together, for only the person who recognizes that he needs a Savior can be saved. On the other hand, sadness and joy are incompatible.
In the midst of our Lenten journey, we can easily miss the heart of Lent because we are puffed up by our own sacrifices, irritable over what we have given up, or sad over our perpetual sinfulness. And as a result, we become too focused on our own wounds and forget the wounded one, Jesus. The great Cistercian monk St. Bernard, who followed The Rule of St. Benedict, offers a splendid piece of advice to live our Lent joyfully: “We should stop thinking of our own sufferings and remember what He has suffered.”
Patrick O'Hearn St. Benedict’s Lenten Paradigm Shift (March 12, 2019)
Nursery of Heaven: Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss In the Lives of the Saints and Today’s Parents
by Patrick O'Hearn and Cassie Everts

Lent has always been exciting for me. I’ve never been one to make New Years Resolutions because I usually give up after the first week, but Lent is different. There is something about giving up something for the glory of God that inspires me to continue and persevere. I admit that come Easter Sunday, I usually over indulge on whatever it was that I gave up, but the sacrifice has taught me that I didn’t need whatever it was that I was giving up. After all, if you can live without something for 40 days, there is a good chance that you don’t need it to live at all.
Jeff Stempel A Penitential Season Traditional (February 10, 2016) Roman Catholic Thoughts.


No, this Lent, my biggest spiritual practice will be to do less. To offer to God those treasures I have hoarded up — writing projects, exercise programs, healthy eating habits, journal-writing, stacks of books read, rosaries prayed, Marian consecration meditations completed, Masses attended, intentions prayed for — and to entrust them to His care. To sit with God, to pray, and to not worry about all of the boxes I am not checking off. To let go of doing, to stop for more than a breath, to let the thoughts racing in my mind do their worst and to keep turning back to Christ with each distraction, even if it takes me one thousand tries. To give the Holy Ghost time to enkindle my heart with the fire of His love.
This Lent, I resolve to give up time. In exchange, I know that God will give me eternity.
Stefanie Nicholas The Sin of Pride and Doing Less for Lent (February 26, 2020)

Liturgy

As I walked out to my car, trying to make sense of what happened, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “What was the point of all that? I could not understand a word of what the priest said. No readings that I could hear, no homily, not even any hymns or prayers of the faithful…”
Being ignorant of the Low Mass at the time, I have since learned that it is a spoken form of the traditional Latin Mass (TLM). In contrast, a Solemn High Mass is a sung TLM. Many of the other artifacts of the Mass were completely new to me, having been born after the Novus Ordo had saturated the Catholic world. Aside from the Latin, ad orientem and communion on the tongue at a communion rail were both new to me.

In the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body. The lives of the faithful, their praise, sufferings, prayer, and work, are united with those of Christ and with his total offering, and so acquire a new value.
This is the essence of the Mass.
This is why we show up every Sunday.
This is our act of worship.
Quality of the music, inspiration of the homily, and beauty of the sanctuary are all good things and have their appropriate place in the liturgy. However, once all of this was stripped away, I was finally able to see the true purpose and beauty of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The beauty of a church made by the hands of men led me to visit St. Francis de Sales. But I left with a profound appreciation of a liturgy made by the divine.
Randy Beilsmith What I Learned at My First Latin Mass October 22, 2019

Archbishop Sample tells us that principally, Christ works in the liturgy and that we are simply instruments, and that the Mass happens even if the faithful are absent from Mass. Every Mass “is an act of Christ and of the whole church.” Then because of this, the Mass is not ours, but it belongs to Christ and his church. Sample writes, “Jesus Christ determines the meaning and purpose of what we celebrate in the sacred liturgy, we do not.”

Furthermore, every Mass, regardless of where it is celebrated, is at the foot of the cross, but also present at Christ’s tomb. Pope Benedict XVI encourages us to turn to the east because, like the second reality of the Mass, “The Son of God will come riding on the clouds of heaven and we symbolically look east for his coming. With our feet firmly planted on the earth, our eyes and our hearts turn to the Lord, anticipating his return in glory.”

Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Ecclesia Eucharista confirms the belief that the holy sacrifice of the Mass is a mystery, and this is because Christ’s Paschal Mystery includes His resurrection besides His passion and death. That is to say, “[t]he Eucharistic Sacrifice makes present not only the mystery of the Saviour’s passion and death but also the mystery of the resurrection which crowned his sacrifice.”

Moreover, the pope tells us that the sacrifice of the Eucharist strongly unites us to Heaven by its celebration, and from this, we see a glimpse of Heaven on Earth.
Sam Beurskens Mass Hysteria: What the Mass Is and What It Is Not (July 18, 2019)   

More and more young people are creating a buzz about ad orientem worship, in which the priest and people turn toward the Lord together during the Eucharistic prayer, in a renewed push to recover the sacred and cast off the tired and broken stereotypes of the 60’s. One of the places where this buzz is evident is among the numerous educated and loquacious young Catholics on the blogosphere, Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

In our time of abundant information, of news good and bad about the Church and her members, is there any need more urgent than to emphasize that Jesus Christ alone is Lord and Savior of every human person, and that our priests need to prioritize prayer, their own as well as that of the people gathered for the liturgy? Our faithful young people with their zest for life and instinct for its beauty will no doubt help to lead us in this journey “toward the Lord” for many years into the future.
Father Kevin Cusick Turning “Together Toward the Lord”: Why My Parish is Facing “East” Together at Mass this Lent (March 10, 2015)
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Many of those who grew up in the pre-Vatican II era can’t understand why anyone born after, say, 1970 could possibly be attracted to the traditional Latin Mass. After all, they reason, who wants to go back to the days when the priest “turned his back to the people” and “mumbled in a dead language,” when only a “few old women” went up for Communion and most of the congregation “daydreamed” while these same old women said their Rosaries.

My experience We used missalettes that weren’t easy to flip back and forth fast enough between the opening prayers and the readings for the day. The pastor would call out sarcastically, “I can’t hear you!” if the congregation didn’t make the responses loud enough. Some congregants talked all through Mass. People wandered in late continuously almost up until Communion time. Everyone received, no matter how late he came in or how little he paid attention to what was going on. The music was always either Peter, Paul, and Mary-style folk tunes or selections from Marty Haugen and Dan Schutte.  the Sign of Peace because, inevitably, a person with a cold or what sounded like tuberculosis would come to Mass halfway through, sit in front of me, and thrust his hand out.

When I was 15, I found out through watching shows on PBS such as David Macaulay’s Cathedral and Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth that there was this thing called the Latin Mass that, until 30 years earlier, was the ordinary way most Catholics had worshiped for century after century.
Eastern Catholics call Mass the Divine Liturgy because it has divine origins.
People who attend the Novus Ordo can still be devout and serious, and priests can celebrate the New Mass reverently,
A sung High Mass is the norm, and the choir more often than not knows how to sing Gregorian chant.

Why do so many of us who were born after Vatican II prefer the traditional Mass and devotions that those in charge of the Church then, and who still run the Church now, disparage and oppose? I’ll mention a few reasons from my own experience. The first one is that everything about the Mass – the Latin language, the vestments, the rubrics, the celebrant’s orientation – points to God. The Mass is not about you; it’s about God. Eastern Catholics call Mass the Divine Liturgy because it has divine origins. Every prayer, gesture, and ritual action comes from Our Lord himself, the apostles, or other saints throughout the centuries. Each addition deepened our understanding of the Mass’s purpose and ends.  
Jeff Dahlberg Why Do Novus Ordo-Raised Catholics Migrate to the Traditional Latin Mass? (November 26, 2018)

Anthony Esolen argues that Christianity as a form of religion is unique in that it never distorts or disrupts the cultures into which it enters. Rather, he rightly maintains, Christianity refines and completes them, bringing out their unique goods, rendering them more fully true to themselves.

I approached their ranks and entered a Catholic church for the first time in my life in November 2015. Its architecture was modern and somewhat peculiar, like many Swedish churches from the ’60s onward, and the liturgy I encountered was at once exotic and familiar. But here was a reverence unlike anything I was accustomed to, with parishioners actually genuflecting and praying intently in the pews before and during the Holy Mass. While the ceremony progressed, I stilled myself, hoping to receive whatever He deemed fit to give me. And then, as silence engulfed and I joined the parish on my knees, silently praying that I might somehow be near to His glorious presence together with the others, in spite of my unworthiness and inability to partake in the Communion, there He was.

Before my naked heart came the Spirit I had known since long before my earliest memories — a Person of complete and unconditional love, reaching out His hands for me to touch His wounds, to find that He has truly risen. My Lord and my God.
Johan Eddebo A Barbarian Philosopher Crosses the Tiber (January 30, 2020)  

What is the purpose of the Mass? The worship of God.
What is the best way to worship God? With lifted voices.
The timelessness and unique artistic treasure of Gregorian Chant, the cyclic propers, and the unchanging ordinaries provide what Laszlo Dobszay called “universality,” ”stability,” and “reverence.” There is a great psychological consolation in hearing the same Gloria melody from Sunday to Sunday, in knowing that the Rorate coeli has been and will always be chanted at the beginning of the fourth Sunday in Advent.
Sharon Kabel ‘Virtually Impossible with an All-Latin Liturgy’: A Brief History of Active Participation (October 3, 2019)

Christianity began when God became flesh. Without ceasing to be God, the second Person of the divine Trinity was born of the Virgin Mary and personally entered the life of man to bring him home to the Father. Most of us are content if we are able, after many years of trial and error, to make ourselves at home in our own little world. Imagine, then, the unique position of Jesus Christ: He was and is fully at home in two worlds—the limitless world of God and the troubled world of man. In Him, divine and human life were fused together forever. Through Him, God’s life flows to man and man’s life rises to God. That two-way traffic between God and man is an everyday occurrence. Christ Himself forever remains the traffic circle through which all activity between heaven and earth must pass. Only now, the access lanes to that circle have been multiplied over and over so that many persons can come through Christ to God at the same time. He has multiplied His points of contact with the human race by enlarging the “body” through which He operates. In other words, He formed the Church. In the Church, Christ extends Himself by calling people of all places and times to enter the life of His Sonship as God’s adopted children, partakers of the divine life (2 Peter 1:4).

Consider what we do in the liturgy. Immediately, the Mass comes to mind: that sacrifice of praise offered by Christ and His Church to God, in which the Lord’s Sacrifice on Calvary is made present daily on our altars, placing at our disposal everything that He merited by His Passion. When together we eat the sacrificial meal, His Body and Blood under the appearances of bread and wine, we are drawn deeper into Christ and one another. But the liturgy is bigger than the Mass; it includes also the other sacraments, the official daily prayer of the Church (the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours), the rites of Christian burial, and the various blessings, exorcisms, and sacramentals. The Eucharist brings us Christ in person. The other sacraments are channels of grace, which is our entry and growth in the life of Christ. And the sacramentals, when used with faith, enable us to recognize Christ’s saving presence in the familiar surroundings of everyday life.
Father Thomas Kocik Traffic Worth Getting Caught In: The Liturgy as the Place of our Personal Salvation (August 1, 2016)

The purpose of the school is to educate the students; the purpose of the Church is to sanctify the laity.  A complete Mass, whether in the OF or the EF, provides worshippers with the ultimate expression of multi-sensory learning, because it includes all the bells and smells, liturgical gestures, liturgical vesture, plus sacred music, art, and architecture.  Spaced repetition reinforces multi-sensory learning: the people repeat important sensory experiences in a variety of ways.  In the complete Holy Mass, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts; beauty unites the parts and gives form to spiritual feeling.  No one thread can be pulled out without weakening the entire fabric.  When a pastor provides his people with the complete Holy Mass, he exercises a high level of pastoral care and sows seeds that will bear wonderful spiritual fruit
Linda Graber Focus vs. Blur: Multi-Sensory Learning, Motivated Focus, & The Mass: Pt. I ( January 15, 2016)

A ponytailed, purple tennis–shoed altar girl rings the bells in her hand. “Rings” is the wrong word, really; this is more of a jingle. These aren’t the antiquated, clanging, resounding, piercing-through-the-night sort of bells — nothing quite so brash and determinate as all that. They are more akin to wind chimes, really. There is no clear-cut beginning or ending to their evanescent tinkling. They sort of muddily fade in and fade back out again — irregular, shiftless, ever changing. Bells for the modern era — for the new and improved Catholic Church. These are the bells that might indicate that a person is in the presence of Tinkerbell, or perhaps a mystical, shimmering butterfly has floated gracefully through the sanctuary. Maybe Santa has arrived early. Possibly the bells were intended to alert the congregation to the consecration of the Eucharist. You know, something along those lines.
Meghan Froerer Greenfield Disinclined to Believe: Profile of a Communion Line  (December 10, 2019) 
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On the first Sunday of Advent, 2011, I began to attend a local Catholic church and fell in love with the liturgy from my very first Mass. The vestments, the candles, the incense, the Eucharist as a sacrifice — all resonated with me and it became obvious the Mass is the fulfillment of the Old Testament’s temple worship. I was fascinated by the resemblance between what takes place in the Mass and the description of the liturgy in heaven, particularly in the Book of Revelation. The incense (Rev 5:8), vestments (Rev 15:6), lampstands (Rev 1:12), an altar (Rev 6:9), the Sign of the Cross (Rev 7:3), and liturgical chant (Rev 4:8) were all in St. John’s vision of worship in heaven, and are all in the Catholic Mass. I became intrigued with the fact that what I was participating in, though not fully at the time since I was not able to receive the Eucharist, was heaven on earth — a real participation in the worship that takes place in heaven.
Additionally, I became fascinated by the fact that the Catholic Church is truly catholic (universal). It has over twenty different rites from all over the world; each with its own way of celebrating the liturgy, yet all in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
Michael Lofton Within the Gates of Jerusalem – Conversion Story of Michael Lofton (April 2, 2015)


Because the Mass is not just words, but also incense, solemn movements, eye-catching vestments, etc., it should come as no surprise that followers of the Latin Mass sometimes do a poor job “evangelizing” and bringing others to the Mass. Typically, we end up “telling” people how great it is rather than living our lives in way that “shows” them how great it is. My experience has been that those who know the least about the Mass are often the ones showing up for Mass with their neighbor who hasn’t been inside a Catholic church in twenty years. While my observation hardly qualifies as a scientific finding, there is something here that all in the TLM camp need to understand: it is not our ability to wax poetic about the merits of the Mass that typically draws people to it, though of course there are writers, professors, and priests who have been able to do so. Rather, for most of us, it is the manner in which we live our lives that draws or repels.
John Schroder Words Have Meanings — and So Do Actions (January 13, 2020)

You see, the active participation that occurs currently is focused on outward signs and physical gestures. But this is not what active participation is meant to be. The true meaning is for the persons spirit to be actively involved in the mass, not though superficial things like carrying the offertory gifts, but to carry out our Baptismal ‘priestly’ role by offering our entire lives to God as Christ did on the Cross.
Of course it was never explained to me as a kid – or even as an adult that we are actuallypresent at Calvary in real time during Mass. I never knew that. I also never realised that the Mass is something that is directed at God – not at the people. I never knew. The first time I realised that was during my first ever Tridentine (Traditional Latin) Mass where the priest had His back to me. When he lifted up the consecrated host with his back to me, I suddenly realised that Mass was not all about me. It was all about God.
We all face God. The priests offers the sacrifice on our behalf. Man is not the centre of the liturgy – Christ is.

During Mass, by right and duty of my Baptism, my job is to offer my whole life – joined to the eternal sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, to God.
Why oh why did no-one ever tell me this? How can anyone possibly be luke warm during Mass armed with this knowledge? THIS is the active participation that we are meant to be carrying out during Mass – not joining the priest on the sanctuary or clapping during the Gloria.
I can see now that all those external participations actually served as distractions that drew my attention away from what I should really have been concentrating on internally. Even the priest himself can become a distraction during Mass – especially if he is young and handsome (yes, this has happened to me before during Mass *cringe*).
So to cut a very long argument short – I can totally see where Cardinal Sarah is coming from. He is trying to move the focus of the Mass back to where it should be – onto Christ, and eliminate the many distractions that have crept into the liturgy over the years. He is also trying to educate us as to the real meaning of “active participation”.

There is one last thing…
Offering Mass this way would also be a wonderfully unitive thing to do with the Eastern Churches. They all offer Mass with the priest having his back to the congregation – they never changed. And as with everything in Catholic culture, this posture is highly symbolic.
Clare Short The Problem of Zombie-Robot Parishioners and ‘Active Participation’ (July 19, 2016)
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The most important reason is that the Magisterium has made it very clear that there are two forms of the same Roman Rite and that both are equal in dignity. If all priests of the Latin Rite have the right to celebrate both forms, it follows that seminaries should train all priests in both forms. Then, they will be ready to fulfill the requests of those faithful who desire the Extraordinary Form and they will broaden their own pastoral horizon.
The enthusiastic welcome of the Extraordinary Form into seminary life will also unmask the tension that has been growing over EF-friendly seminarians in houses of formation. If they are not formed properly in the seminary to be able to offer the Extraordinary Form, many will embark on an auto-didactic parallel formation which will keep their minds, hearts and often their bodies out of the seminary formation environment. When seminarians begin such an autodidactic parallel formation, the tendency is to develop a form of duplicity to be able to engage in such formation. And given the state of the clergy in today’s Church, no seminary can afford to give seminarians a blank check to get their formation elsewhere.

Many seminaries, in an attempt to prepare their men for the reality of life in the parishes to which they may one day be destined, offer Spanish masses or folk masses or other kinds of “liturgical styles” for seminarians to participate in. Whether or not this is a good type of formation is not the scope of this article, but it also brings up a question: If Ordinary Form and Extraordinary Form are two forms of the Roman Rite existing side-by-side, for the universal Church, how can they not both be celebrated side-by-side in the seminary? For the community Mass of a seminary, one wonders why Low Mass, Dialogue Mass, Sung Mass and Solemn Mass cannot be part of the weekly rotation of types of Masses celebrated in seminary communities.
Father Christopher Smith Why Are Seminaries Afraid of the Extraordinary Form? (March 4, 2015)
 http://www.chantcafe.com/

Though I am convicted that all people long for the sacred, and that the sacred is present in Eucharistic liturgy in a way unlike anywhere else, I do not believe that there is any one form or style that will allow all people to access an experience of the sacred.

It is true, of course, that the sacramental and supernatural graces are freely bestowed on — and received by — all who participate in the sacrifice of the Mass, whatever their personal experience or perception of it may be. But it would be inconsistent and reductionist to rely on this aspect of God’s grace without being concerned for the social, emotional, educational, and psychological impact that the liturgy has on those present for it.

Neither the casual English of The Message nor ancient Greek are appropriate or effective languages for most people to encounter the Word of God in scripture. Ideally, we move back and forth, between linguistic study and modern translations, combining practical “life application” reflections with deeper explorations of the history and theological significance of the text. We sing the scripture and read it at home, and break it open in sermons and Bible study. So it must be with the liturgy.
Adam Michael Wood  Liturgy, Adaptation, and the Need for Context  January 28, 2015
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Beauty might not save all men, but awe will.
Amid the distractions of smart phones, blogs, cars, skyscrapers, mass industry, and constant marketing, we must get back in touch with The Real. This is what the traditional Mass affords us to do. This Mass tells us that electric light bulbs are not the same thing as candles, guitar is not the same as chant, and business casual is not the same thing as vestments.
The modern world has rejected both the natural and the supernatural; the traditional Mass helps us rediscover both.
Carl Wolk Nominalism and the Possibility of a Modern Liturgy (January 30, 2015)

Liturgical Language

These three languages are also mentioned by name in the St. Luke Passion, which in Ordinary-Form Latin Masses was read yesterday (Palm Sunday, Year C):
“And there was also a superscription written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.” — Luke 23:38 (DRV)
We use these languages in the Latin-Rite liturgy not only because they have been handed down to us via the sacred tradition of the Rite but also—and most importantly—because we believe that Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity entered human history, and that the historical reality of his Passion, Death, and Resurrection has eternal ramifications for every human soul.
Use of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in the Ordinary Form of the Latin Rite is not an outdated practice that points to the so-called Dark Ages. It is a liturgical, linguistic practice that points to the Cross of Eternal Salvation.
Aristotle A. Esguerra · The Cross of Christ and Liturgical Language (March 25, 2013)
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Liturgical year

My appreciation for the sacredness of time has developed significantly since I started fasting and abstaining again on Fridays for the sanctification of the Church. By uniting myself to Christ’s passion through penance on Fridays, I feel a heightened sense of celebration and feasting on Sunday, with a consciousness that it is not merely self-indulgence, but glorying in the Resurrection. This weekly participation in the passion and resurrection of our Lord has given me a longing to make the same journey on a larger scale later this month, beginning with the penitential season of Advent and leading to the celebration of Christmas.
“Time after” certain feasts on the Church calendar, called “ordinary time” in the Novus Ordo calendar, is supposed to create this same anticipation. “Ordinary” in this sense does not mean “common” or “usual”; rather, it comes from the Latin “ordinalis,” implying the counting down of time. This is life immersed in the liturgy: one is in a state of penance, in a state of feasting, or counting the time in anticipation of the cycle beginning again. An individual week is a microcosm for the broader liturgical calendar.
The liturgical rhythm of penance, feasting, then counting down conforms perfectly to our human nature. Acts of self-denial and delayed gratification help us to grow in virtue and direct our attention to the goods beyond this world. Celebrations and feasting fulfill a human need given to us by God for joy and happiness. Finally, the forward-looking nature of the rest of the year reminds us that we are pilgrims always looking forward to our true home beyond this life. Like the Incarnation and the sacraments, the rhythm of the liturgical life fulfills a deep human desire, which God our Creator foresaw and for which He providentially provides.
For those you know, like my students, who need to have their sense of the liturgical cycle of life awoken, start small. Encourage fasting or penance on Friday followed by feasting on Sunday to celebrate the Resurrection. With habituation to that weekly participation in the Paschal Mystery, one will be well prepared to entered into the broader rhythm of the Church’s liturgical life and all the other feasts and memorials that accentuate it. Renewal in the Church will come through restoring the liturgical cycle as the heartbeat of the spiritual life.
Shane Ball Fasting and Feasting: Winning Back the Catholic Calendar (November 7, 2018)

We can start making a bigger deal of name days. Have a party for your saint day just as you would for your birthday, and send cards to friends and family members on theirs. Certain saints are also associated with certain foods (there is a tradition of eating goose on St Martin’s Day, for instance). Children are always happy to receive sweets in their shoes on St Nicholas’s Day. If you fancy celebrating All Saints’ Day in an autumnal way, why not invite people round for pumpkin curry and apple pie? These are all ways in which we can feast with the Church.
Something I have found helpful in the last six weeks is praying with my housemates: waking each other early in the morning to pray the Angelus and Lauds, dragging each other to Confession on a Saturday morning and having breakfast together afterward, and praying Compline before bed. We learn to be less selfish and more obedient. A communal prayer routine gives us a taste of monasticism.
When facing specific struggles in life, making a Holy Hour and praying Lectio Divina often provide answers; consolation; and sometimes sudden, unexpected solutions.
Most importantly, we must keep our interior lives in good condition. Keeping close to the sacraments, confessing regularly (before we fall into mortal sin), praying the rosary, reading the Bible, meditating on psalms, and doing penance will keep us close to God. And God will strengthen us.
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.–2 Corinthians 12:9
Jenny Roberts  When Catholic Culture Flags, Let Us Restore It Ourselves (October 31, 2017)

To persuade Western culture to realign itself with the Catholic liturgical calendar, we must make that series of liturgies seem attractive again, reversing the watering down of it – the banalization of it – that followed the Second Vatican Council. We must bring back the smells and the bells, the rituals that appeal to all the senses in welcoming us to a reality transcending all the senses, a reality tantalizingly out of reach. In short, we must bring back the sense of mystery and enchantment. The more everyday and ordinary the liturgy seems (as it has since the Second Vatican Council), the less it will stand out from the surrounding culture, and, consequently, the less it will attract people to itself. So it must regain its sense of extraordinariness, of otherness, in order to regain its grip on the cultural imagination. Only thus can it reshape the lived rhythm of our culture here in the West along its own lines.

That is precisely why the liturgical calendar is so essential: it ritualistically – and thus physically – maps the mysteries of the Church onto the lived rhythm of a community’s annual cycle. For instance, Sundays’ breaks from work become Masses of spiritual recharging, December’s winter darkness becomes infused with Christmas’s promise of divine light, and spring’s resurrecting vegetation becomes supercharged with Easter’s hope. But the liturgical calendar covers so much more than just Sunday Masses and Christmas and Easter, so much that has been largely forgotten since the Second Vatican Council: Rorate Masses, Candlemas, Septuagesima, Shrovetide, Tenebrae, Rogation Days, Michaelmas, All Souls’ Day, etc. Such days and periods can instill spiritual significance into the communal calendar, consecrating the year’s seemingly senseless series of events by mapping a sacred story onto it.
Keith Simon Catholicism’s Narrative of the World, and How to Rebuild It (March 6, 2017) 

Loneliness

The religion of God, the Christian faith, is not for wimps. As Christ Himself said, the path to salvation is narrow (Matt. 7:14), and only he who endures to the end will be saved (Matt. 24:13). We must (not should) take up our crosses daily (not just once) if we wish to be saved (Lk. 9:23). These reminders serve as an introduction to the nature of the loneliness of Catholicism that many people find today.

What is meant by the loneliness of Catholicism? It is the realization that comes to many that once they have accepted all of the teachings of the Catholic Church, and wish to fully embrace the Christian faith, they will find themselves alone, even while surrounded by family and friends. While there can be familial love and affection, there is a foundational and fundamental disconnect in how each sees the world and life.
@FergusFSU. OnePeterFive The Loneliness of Catholicism (February 25, 2020)

Loss

I wonder at the unfathomable, unparalleled mysteries of the One Who is our King — the Lord giveth, and the Lord hath taken away — though before we see Eternity, we will not know why.

I pray. I stagger and land on my knees at the foot of the cross; I stand, breathless and awed, before the steadfast belief of these parents, mothers and fathers who love the Lord still, even as the hands of true evil wrought agony on them, and tore apart their lives.
Jessica Rose Cusato On Advent, Suffering, and Sandy Hook (December 13, 2019)

Mass

The Mass is such a masterpiece of God’s wisdom and mercy. In it, Our Lord makes present His sacrifice on the Cross by the offering of the same Body and Blood that were offered up to the Father for our salvation. He collapses the 2,000 years that separate us from Calvary and brings us right to His Cross, His holy wounds, His precious Blood, His pierced Heart.

Since the Mass is a true and proper sacrifice infinitely pleasing to God in itself, to assist at it, joining one’s interior homage to the work of the priest, is a perfect exercise of the most excellent of all moral virtues, the virtue of religion, which honors God as the First Commandment bids us do — and since the Lord Jesus Christ is really, truly, substantially present under the forms of bread and wine, we are also brought into the throne room of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, to pay Him the homage of adoration He deserves (and rewards).
Peter Kwasniewski Holy Mass: You Cannot Do Anything to Glorify God More (February 19, 2020)

We tried to go to this Mass this morning, but once again were stymied. It was a restless night, as all nights are before driving 2.5 hours to the city for Mass. It turns out that the “flurries” which were supposed to end by 10pm Saturday continued to “flurry” all night. I shoveled for 10 minutes just to get the van ready to leave. We hauled out the kids and hit the highway at 6:15am. It was surreal driving by businesses that were having their parking lots plowed - though the businesses were closed on Sunday - while the highway never had a single snow plow touch it. That’s the difference between public vs. private companies. Well the highway was treacherous, and so we returned home.

Last week there was freezing rain. The week before had -35 temperatures. The week before that we had company. It seems impossible to attend a traditional Latin Mass. Our oldest son hasn’t been to a catechism class there in two months. He’s supposed to receive First Communion and confirmation in April. Overall, it feels at times like we’re gasping for the clear air of tradition, beauty, and liturgical sanity. Hence, a bitter rant today. But I really shouldn’t. I’m called to be light for the world, after all…

Later, I pray, I will shake the cobwebs of tiredness and disappointment and render due thanks to God for all our blessings.
Dan Millette CandleMiss Sunday (That's Right)  - February 02, 2020

You will find in the traditional Latin Mass a shelter from the storm, a place to rest from the turmoil. The traditional Latin Mass is a grotto of sanity, where the holy angel from Heaven guards, cherishes, protects, visits, and defends all who are assembled in that place.

You consult Catholic blogs like this one, where you can calibrate your own perceptions. 

Don’t worry that you do not know Latin. The priest does all the work. The altar boys make answer to him on your behalf. There will probably be something like a “missalette” available for your use. It will have the English translation of the Latin that is being said and instructions for when to sit, stand, kneel, and genuflect. At first, all you have to do is follow along.

This is the worship of the ages, the usus antiquior. Every word of the Mass, every gesture, every vestment of the celebrant, every position of the celebrant at or near the altar, every candle, every item used during Mass, has meaning rooted in antiquity.
The grotto has many chambers and passageways in which to take refuge from the storm. In addition to the Low Mass, there are High Masses, Solemn High Masses, Solemn Pontifical High Masses, and Requiem Masses. There are deacons, subdeacons, acolytes, and choirs who have roles to play in them. There is much richness to discover, much peace to be had.
Go to the grotto. Be refreshed; be strengthened. 
Raymond Kowalski Go to the Grotto of Sanity (January 8, 2019) 

The modern mind might not be always ripe for conversion, but when it happens, it will be not a reformation, but a revolution. Let us give him the ancient Mass, which was once a sign of order, but is now a sign of revolt. Countless modern men and women peer across the cultural landscape searching for “a way out.”  They have tried dozens of solutions, and they have learned that the familiar cannot save. Let us give them the unfamiliar, the sign of contradiction, the cross. Let us give them the Mass of the Revolution, the liturgy of the God who stepped into his own creation as a rebel against the false prince of this world. Now, more than ever, the false prince rules in his territory. Now, more than ever, is the Mass of the Revolution is needed.

In every traditional Mass that is celebrated, Eternal Rome cries out to modern men,

“Courage, you who wander in search of a way out! You can hold nothing back from Christ. Here, you see it. You see that this is the definitive split with the world that you must make if you are to cling to eternity. You see it, somewhere in some corner of your heart, you see it. Take courage and come take part in this Sacrifice of the Revolution. The choice is yours. Come join the strange company of the saints and the even stranger company of God.

“You have a seat between the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas, the passion of St. Francis, and fierce eyes of St. Pio. Together you can peer into mysteries unthinkable as the priest elevates the chalice towards the Eschaton, the servers drawing back his chasuble, the angels on either side of the altar adoring the Incarnate Christ, and the faithful with eyes wide open. Surely this Mass is beyond you, surely it is incomprehensible, foreign and strange, but, you see, it must be so. For it is Christ come into His Kingdom as a rebel. Rejoice that you are owls in the daylight, not because you ought to be blind, but because you are meant to see – and how glorious that must be!”

Carl Wolk The Flight to Eternal Rome and the Mass of the Revolution (June 11, 2015) 

Marian

Here are the facts concerning the Assumption. Pope Pius XII wrote to all the patriarchs, cardinal bishops, and so on to ask them if they agreed that the understanding regarding Our Lady’s death – namely, that Mary was assumed into Heaven, body and soul – is what the whole Church has always believed. They responded by saying they agreed that this had been “received” and handed on from one generation to the next. (I suppose the Feast of the “Dormition of Our Lady” in Eastern Churches is a good example of this. If I remember rightly, from the sixth century, this feast was observed to have spread far and wide in the Greek Church.)
Fr. Antony Brennan A Simple Priest’s Guide to the New Morality: I Receive, You Receive April 21, 2018 

In a remarkable series of apparations in the 19th century – in Rue du Bac, in Rome, in La Salette, in Lourdes, in Pontmain, in Knock – the Mother of God made herself known. The Blessed Virgin Mary left her mark not only through private encounters or spiritual messages, but in a tangible way that tens of thousands of people had seen and could believe.
She left the Miraculous Medal and its thousands of miracles at Rue du Bac. St. Catherine Labouré’s incorrupt body, another miracle, is entombed there to this day. She converted Alphonse Ratisbonne, an anti-Catholic Jew, in Rome. She appeared in La Salette to warn the people of rotten harvests, temporal and spiritual, and how to overcome them. She left a miraculous grotto and tens of thousands of healed people over the centuries at Lourdes. She appeared with St. John and St. Joseph to an entire village of people at Knock to testify to the living nature of the Saints in Heaven.
Evolution, wars, communism, secularism, liberalism, materialism, and apostasy were to come in ways that no other generation ever had to face, so He gave us His Mother in a way that no other generation had received. God knew that His sheep needed help, and He sent us His Blessed Mother to stiffen our resolve and show us the way to defeat these forces of spiritual death.
In subtle ways, she was reminding us of a simple truth: when you took up your cross and followed her Son, where else did you think you were going but Golgotha? Prayer, penance, fasting and glory in Heaven await.
James D   The Virgin Mary and the Woman Drunk with the Blood of the Saints  September 18, 2018 

Throughout history the Church has championed the education of all boys and girls, offered positions of unprecedented authority and responsibility to women around the world, and reminded us constantly that the pre-eminent example of every virtue, aside from Our Lord and Redeemer, is a woman. In fact, without her cooperation, there would be no Lord and Redeemer!
Now as we reflect on our own lives and the opportunities that this society offers to each of us, how do we determine what is authentically Catholic and what is specifically feminine? What actually sets us apart?
The criterion is not a dress code, nor a certain number of children, nor whether she stays home or works outside of the home. It is not whether she goes to daily Mass or marches in pro-life rallies. There are only three things we need in order to live as authentic daughters of the Church: we must be obedient to the Holy Father and the Magisterium of the Church; we must be open to life according to our state in life; and finally, we must be close to the Blessed Mother. It is that simple, for remember, God is simplicity itself.
Genevieve Kineke  The Lost Essence of Femininity
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Catholic theologians throughout the life of the Church have elucidated, analyzed, and protected the doctrine of Christ’s incarnation. But few have captured this mystery in so arresting, direct, and radiant a manner as the sacred arts. In her literature, hymnography, paintings, and gardens, the art of the Catholic Church guards and illuminates the complex doctrine of the Incarnation by depicting this simple image: a mother nursing her baby. A contemplation of literature, music, and imagery bearing the Maria Lactans message will bear fruit for all Catholics in every vocation today, just as it has across cultures for nearly two thousand years. For Our Lady is, as our Eastern Christian brethren say, the Galaktotrophousa, or, “Milk-Giver” and “Nourisher of Life,” still providing for us the physiological and mystical nourishment she gave to her Son.
Throughout Holy Scripture, milk symbolizes richness, fertility, purity, maternal consolation, abundance, and eternal bliss. The luxuriant Promised Land, replete with pastures for goats and other prized sources of milk, illustrates both literally and mystically the object of Israel’s hope:
The image of the Blessed Virgin Mary nursing the Infant Christ substantially influenced Medieval Christians due to their understanding of vision. For medievals, vision was literally a ray extending out to the perceived object and traveling back to the viewer to leave an “imprint” upon their soul.[
Elizabeth Lemme Maria Lactans: How Our Lady Feeds Her Son, and Us (November 12, 2019)

Marriage

Never underestimate the power of laughing together.
A funny thing happened the last time I was in labor. My ever-serious husband, one whom prefers reading books to watching TV — books about light things like politics or religion or rocket science, books written by dead people, often in dead languages – this husband of mine, he started … laughing. Hard. And loud. Like spit your soda at the nurse, loud.

Sure my husband smiles and chuckles at our kids every day, but I hadn’t heard him wheeze and turn red and slap his knee and gag and guffaw in forever and ever. Truly, it was such a beautiful sound, I paused mid-contraction to glance up at the TV where a comedian I lost touch with in the ’90s was dressed in a piratey-looking puffy shirt. And here’s the best part: even though I was pushing out a kid with a head the size of a mango … I started laughing too. 
At first my doctor thought we were nuts. “Seinfeld?” he said in his Brooklyn accent, which was incredibly appropriate for the moment, “Didn’t you watch this like two decades ago?” 

But then my doctor glanced at the screen … “Oh, the puffy shirt!”

A simple formula to rejuvenate your marriage in 2 days
She went on to explain how she’d recently come home from a stressful day to find my dad watching this classic ’80s movie. She described how the sound of his laughter was like good medicine. Joining him on the couch, they shared a glass of wine and all their stress from the day evaporated. [Note: The TV shows and movies mentioned in this article contain adult situations and should be watched with a remote control in hand – go ahead and fast forward if it gets too lewd. “Eat the fish and spit out the bones” – that’s also some advice from my mom. Of course, none of these programs are appropriate for children.]
Lately, my husband and I have had date nights watching reruns of Seinfeld on Hulu. The “Buttershave” episode, where Kramer decides to shave with butter, is a gem and typifies the sitcom’s brilliance – a comedy about nothing.  

Because Jerry Seinfeld is my marriage therapist, and there’s something really awesome about a husband and wife simply laughing together.
Sarah Robsdottir | Jerry Seinfeld is my marriage therapist (Apr 14, 2018)
https://www.sarahrobsdottir.com/my-articles
Pathos Writer

Miracles

The spiritual world has perplexed people from the beginning.
The Protestant communities I grew up in were completely lacking in spiritual depth and understanding. They had a knowledge problem: they “knew” without understanding. Angelology and demonology were never spoken of. Saints were never spoken of. Miracles were actively attacked if acknowledged at all. Most miracles were simply hidden, and members of the churches were discouraged from seeking out any context on their religion and its history, modern or ancient.

People are hungry for miracles in this life. Sorrow and misery abound while God is mocked throughout the nation. One can imagine how shocked many converts, like me, are when we encounter the stories of transubstantiation, Fatima, the Shroud of Turin, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and so many others. I remember asking when I was little: “Why aren’t any miracles happening today like in the Bible?” The answers were always, more or less, “because God wants us to have faith, and we do not need miracles to have faith.”

The miracle I found while browsing around Church history that terrified me was the Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano. The more I looked into the confirmed miracles in the Church in general, the more afraid I was. I had no idea that this stuff was going on in the world. I have not seen any of them in person (I can’t wait to), but the accounts and photos are compelling. Researching these accounts of miracles made the whole concept of God solidify in my mind. I felt the need to find out everything I could about the Catholic Church and contacted my local parish about RCIA classes. This was late 2015.
Jon Frodin On Protestantism and a Life Devoid of Miracles (February 22, 2018)

I often ask Mike what kind of evidence he would need that would convince him that a leap into faith is the right thing for him. He would probably say something like this: “Show me scientific proof that a being such as God exists!” The problem with this is that God, as we know him, creator of the universe CANNOT be in space and time. Do we see the problem with what Mike is asking? The scientific method measures, quantifies, shows us truths about what is situated IN space and time. No discovery from the scientific method could ever provide proof of God, per se.

But what if God reveals himself to us and makes himself known in time and space? Would that convince Mike? I hear all the Christians right now screaming; “God revealed in space and time? Duh! Jesus!” I doubt that Mike believes that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Jesus might have just been a nice guy that lived 2000 years ago right? (Wrong, but let’s move on) What if God revealed himself, though subtly, in a way that is verifiable with the senses and quantifiable by the scientific method? Yes, I’m talking about miracles.

Yes I believe in miracles. From my point of view, it seems that God gives them to us to provide a twofold benefit for our lives. First, they seem to be a way to replenish faith in those who already have it. Also, for those who don’t have faith it provides evidence of supernatural realities.
André Levesque What about miracles? Solo Loqui A layman's blog on issues of faith and reason (November 16, 2017)
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Moral Rigorism

In the modern world, moral rigorism is not the scourge it once was. Yes, we all must guard against it, for it is easy to fall into, especially for pious practicing Catholics. However, the opposite vice, moral laxity, is alive and well today. It is, in fact, flourishing so abundantly that Catholics don’t feel any need to go to Mass or practice their faith, let alone share the Gospel with others. Relativism of religion reigns supreme and can be best described as indifferentism – that all religions lead to the same place, either universal salvation or universal annihilation. As grave as the error of indifferentism is today, most pastors stand silently by while their flocks are infected with it.
Zane Williamson Moral Rigorism and the Jansenist Monster under the Bed (January 23, 2017)

Muslims

It is no coincidence, says Archbishop Sheen, that Our Lady chose to appear to three shepherd children at Fatima: “I believe that the Blessed Virgin chose to be known as ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ as a pledge and a sign of hope to the Moslem people, and as an assurance that they, who show her so much respect, will one day accept her Divine Son, too.” He goes on to write,
Missionaries in the future will, more and more, see that their apostolate among the Moslems will be successful in the measure that they preach Our Lady of Fatima. Mary is the advent of Christ, bringing Christ to the people before Christ Himself is born. In any apologetic endeavor, it is always best to start with that which people already accept. Because the Moslems have a devotion to Mary, our missionaries should be satisfied merely to expand and to develop that devotion, with the full realization that Our Blessed Lady will carry the Moslems the rest of the way to her Divine Son.
Trent Auguston A Fatima Novena for the Conversion of Muslims (May 4, 2015)  

Catholics are mandated to witness to people of all religions in the context of each man’s particular vocation. Muslims are no exception. It is not hateful to disagree with or criticize Islam, for if a man believes in the Catholic Faith, he likewise testifies against Islam and Muhammad’s claims. Muslims are, as the Catholic Faith teaches with all men, made in the image and likeness of God,[ 3] and thus possess the same intrinsic human dignity that is inherent to all men.[ 4] The Church’s criticism and rejection of Islam speaks to the erroneous and misguided theology that constitutes Islam, and not the Muslim people. Likewise, the Muslim people, as with all men, possess the same conscience and ability to choose good or evil of their own free wills.
Andrew Bieszad Lions of the Faith: Saints, Blesseds, and Heroes of the Catholic Faith in the Struggle with Islam (2015)

Nasty Internet Stuff

While the debates rage on about liturgy and clergy sexual abuse and social justice and the struggle for religious liberty (all valuable debates), I question why we do not pay similar attention to rebuilding a sense of Catholic interconnection in our parishes and neighborhoods. If we are to recover the beauty in the liturgy, we must first have families who are able raise their children to recognize Jesus in that beauty. The obstacles to family formation are manifold, and I do not wish to dwell on them, instead offering my paltry anecdotes as an introduction.
A priest friend once quipped that the clergy cannot be counted on to create great parishes. This responsibility lies firmly with the laity. Despite how loudly we may murmur about bishops or liturgy translations or the lack of new vocations, our parishes will not improve unless we change how we relate to one another. Pride convinces us that we can go it alone as individual Catholics without relying on the rest of the Church, including our neighbors, priests, the saints, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Desert Fathers chose lives of asceticism and hermitage, yet they placed a higher priority on hospitality and kindness toward travelers than to their personal spiritual devotions — traveling through any desert is exhausting and dangerous. St. Benedict’s Rule 53 integrates this sense of desert hospitality into a way of life, based on Psalms 47:10 and  Our Lord’s words in Matthew 25:35. The Rule of St. Benedict and the writings of St. John Cassian both indicate that hospitality toward guests is to be prioritized higher than personal devotions like fasting because the former is a Christian necessity, while the later is a useful spiritual choice.
Scott Broadway Murmuring in the Desert (August 1, 2016)

Matthew 23 deals with Jesus being nasty to the leaders of the pharisees.  If Jesus can do it, I can do it as well, right?  This is one chapter.  We have to take it into account but it’s one chapter.  The four gospels contain a total of 89 chapters and in one of them, Jesus is exceptionally harsh.  In the other ones, He is mild, calm, articulate, firm, and even mildly angry.  Still, 1 out of 89 is 1.1% of the time.  Taking the words of 1.1% percent of the gospels and applying them to 80% of your behavior is not following Christ, it’s an excuse to act how you want, when you want.

The same case could be made with St. Paul.  He has one chapter that’s extremely harsh and in the other chapters, there is a range of ways that he articulates his message.

here are a number of saints who are known for their harshness and even nastiness.  We must remember that saints, being holy men and women are still flawed.  No saint is perfect.  

St. Thomas More argued against Luther, Tyndale, and other Protestants quite viciously.  It’s almost painful to read at times.  St. Francis de Sales was the exact opposite.  He was gentle, mild mannered, but firm and spoke the truth when he needed it.
-Allan Ruhl  Nasty Internet Stuff (October 9, 2019)
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Notre Dame

I've been remiss in updating my blog since Holy Week of last year--but I simply couldn't let the catastrophe of this week go by without comment! In 2011, I had the privilege of touring the great cathedral of the archdiocese of Paris: Notre Dame. Here, at the starting point of every major road in France, where Saint Louis commissioned the southern rose window and where Napoleon was crowned emperor, I marveled with my own eyes what I had previously idealized in books or New World imitation. True, I was annoyed by the chattering of tourists and the dust collected atop the many neglected side altars. Nevertheless, the faith of many generations before my own was still palpable. I imagined the thousands, or even millions of souls washed clean in baptism at the font. During Vespers, I had trouble following the French service, but when it came time to sing the Magnificat, we did so in Latin, and I sang it as well as anyone else in the congregation that evening. The canticle of Mary has special significance for this church dedicated to Our Lady. In 1944, French and American soldiers were led here by Charles de Gaulle to sing the Magnificat in thanksgiving for the liberation of Paris from the Nazis.

The Internet never lets us forget that the barbarians will always be with us. Hopefully you, dear reader, didn't find yourself subjected as I did to as many outrageous comments--whether by gloating Calvinists or leftist iconoclasts--rehashing the same clumsy attacks thrown by their ideological forebears of times past. They are the lashings-out of small minds, altogether less worthy of our notice than that of a single firefighter daring to answer the call of duty, to say nothing of a single peasant laying a brick of the original foundation as a labor of love and devotion, knowing he would never see the fruits of his work in his own lifetime. The naysayers' only purpose is a reminder for the rest of us to be vigilant. The gifts of civilization are not easily understood, much less appreciated, by everyone.
James Griffin (The Modern Medievalist) Notre Dame: the power of a "mere building" (Thursday, April 18, 2019)
Modern Medievalism.
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It was a video that brought so many of us to tears: a crowd kneeling and singing “Ave Maria” while Notre Dame burned. “Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,” they beautifully sang as the camera panned to a shot of raw fire.
The juxtaposition between the two images was surreal: at the very moment when devastating flames scorched the body of the cathedral, the bystanders seemed to snatch up its soul with their heavenly song to Our Lady. In that moment of recourse to Mary, they salvaged the faith symbolized by the soaring stones; their song seemed to rise above the fire, in place of the now collapsed spire.

And yet the residual symbolism of the blazing Gothic cathedral remains deeply haunting. As Fr. Kevin Cusick put it: “Today God has allowed us to be reminded of what can be taken away, a symbol of something far greater and infinitely more precious that many have voluntarily forsaken or rejected: our holy Catholic Faith.”
It is a profoundly painful image: a soul’s voluntary torching of a treasure even more exquisite than a rose window or Nicolas Coustou’s Pieta. We in postmodernity have set fire to faith itself — and it is hard to hear an ethereal, imploring “Ave Maria” amid the flames. A brilliant golden altar cross may have glowed intact, transcendently, in Notre Dame’s interior — but that is no guarantee of what will be left when we survey our own wreckage.
Julia Meloni The Ave Maria of Notre Dame (April 16, 2019) One Comment

The Catholic Church is certainly an integral part of Western civilization or the Judeo-Christian tradition, but to say only this seems to miss the point. The Church also stands beyond it and indeed beyond history. That Notre Dame continues to be a church to this day (and that, each November, young women dressed in Roman garb do not dance around a Goddess of Reason sitting atop its altar) should be regarded as a monument to the Church’s continuing fortitude in standing athwart precisely this Western civilization so often lauded in modern politics.
Notre Dame, above and beyond ‘Western Civilization’
 Wojciech Owczarek Notre Dame, above and beyond ‘Western Civilization’ (April 23, 2019)

 Objections

Finally, the Church needs to face up honestly to people’s fundamental objection to the Catholic faith. It has very little to do with sexual scandals or styles of worship. The problem is that doctrines such as transubstantiation and the Virgin Birth are hard to believe. These teachings are not negotiable — but, at the same time, they are less plausible to modern people than they were to our ancestors, whose imaginations were formed by societies that were naturally receptive to miracles and metaphysics.

It’s my impression non-Christian readers have little trouble believing in the Virgin Birth; or, rather, in believing that a woman who has not had sexual intercourse can give birth. With today’s daily reports of medical marvels and prodigies, human parthenogenesis can’t seem especially amazing.
Of course, that Jesus was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and not from some crude First Century form of IVF, atheists don’t believe by definition. Atheists and agnostics would, or should, acknowledge that if God existed He could very well impregnate whomever He chose; so that saying “I don’t believe in the Virgin Birth” is little different than saying “I don’t believe in God.”
William M. Briggs People’s Fundamental Objection to the Catholic Faith July 28, 2017
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Order of Malta

THE AGE OF software, economists and pocket calculators has been caught napping; that of chivalry has crept up behind it and taken it unawares. A hundred years ago the Order of Malta appeared a more honorific memory of the crusades; it’s Grand Master was an Austrian nobleman treated as a sovereign prince only by his own Emperor and the Holy See; it numbered little more than a thousand knights drawn from the innermost circle of the European aristocracy. Today the Order exchanges ambassadors with nearly sixty governments; it has more than ten thousand knights in thirty-nine national associations throughout the world; it’s decorations have been proudly accepted by republican heads of state from Africa to the United States; and above all conducts an international Hospitaller activity with few equals in size, modernity and efficiency.
Henry Sire The Knights of Malta: A Modern Resurrection (Jun 30, 2016)

Papacy

It was the dawn of the 20th century. The hedonism of the Belle Époque whirled through Europe’s capitals; like Poe’s raven, the precursors of civilizational decay tapped at the windows of the West. The ideologies originating in the Age of the Enlightenment were nearing full fruition in what American historian Lawrence Sondhaus would term the “global revolution”: the Great War, only a few years off.
An influential leader wrote in 1903 of the gathering clouds:

The leader in question was Giuseppe Sarto, better known as Pope St. Pius X, writing his first encyclical, E supremi apostolatus (1903). The cancer in society to which he traced all the ills of his time was quite simply apostasy from God.

Historian Yves Chiron points to E supremi apostolatus as a kind of manifesto. “We have no other program in our Supreme Pontificate,” St. Pius X proclaimed, “but that ‘of restoring all things in Christ,’ so that ‘Christ may be all and in all.’ … The interests of God shall be Our interest, and for these We are resolved to spend all Our strength and Our very life.”
How did he propose to carry out this program? Not by self-styled parties of order. 

Rather, it would be accomplished in “bringing back to the discipline of the Church human society, now estranged from the wisdom of Christ; the Church will then subject it to Christ, and Christ to God.”

A reformation of the clergy, that they might truly “bear stamped upon themselves the image of Christ
holy and well formed priests were to provide better and more thorough religious instruction for the faithful.

Pius X asked lay Catholics to offer every assistance to this work of religious education. He insisted that all lay Catholic initiatives keep as their primary goal the maintenance of Christian life among their own members.

The restoration of all things in Christ would mean that “the upper and wealthy classes will learn to be just and charitable to the lowly, and these will be able to bear with tranquility and patience the trials of a very hard lot; the citizens will obey not lust but law; reverence and love will be deemed a duty towards those that govern.” This was Pius X’s vision of peace.
Jane Stannus The Pope Who Taught Us How to Repair the World (August 29, 2019)

Pelvic Issues

These days, however, I wonder if true, authentic, platonic friendships in our society are even possible anymore. I mean, it is to the point where our society is imposing the questions of sexual identity onto nearly every person – not just children but also fictional characters, like Ernie and Bert. I wonder, is there anything that isn’t sexualized anymore?  Have we forgotten what friendship looks like? Have we become so entrenched in the sexually-focused mindset that the first assumption is that there is a sexual/romantic motive behind everything? Or that there SHOULD be? It seems that that is the case.
In fact, a friend recently posted on my wall:
“One of my [female] clients looked and sounded exactly like my youngest sister – same interests, same style, etc. I thought they could be BFFs! I told my client about my sister and my client felt the need to let me know she had a boyfriend. I was so shocked.”

Indeed, this is the world we live in.
Hudson Byblow Are Friendships a Thing of the Past? corproject.com
www.hudsonbyblow.com.

Persecution

The truth is that popes come and go. The sands shift, and moods change. Scandals are uncovered. What’s left standing is simply and gloriously the faith and its traditions, the saints and their sacred grit.
Saint Stephen preached the gospel until the last stone. Saint Peter, facing the terror of crucifixion, was more concerned about the manner of his being slain, so as not to insult his Lord by imitating Him in death. Pope Leo the Great faced down Atilla the Hun. Saint Joan of Arc, pierced by arrows and hailed with cannonballs, marched on. During Saint Isaac Jogues’s captivity, the Mohawks cut off his index fingers. After his escape back to France, he received permission to handle the Eucharist with his remaining fingers and returned to the same tribe that had captured him. And Saint Maximilian Kolbe offered himself up to the Nazi bloodlust in place of a stranger.
Our tradition of saintly grit extends even up to modern times.
Father Douglas Bazi was a pastor in Iraq when, one day, he was captured by ISIS, beaten, tortured, and starved. He used the links in his chains to pray the rosary, and he forgave his captors. When negotiations for his release were breaking down, he signaled to his negotiator that he was prepared to be a martyr of the Church.
This sort of saintly grit is hard to comprehend in our cotton-candy lives, and I certainly don’t claim to be a spiritual man’s man. But in knowing the Church’s historic cycle of persecution and triumph, my faith is strong. Armed with this strength of tradition, a Catholic can loyally endure the madmen at the helm, speak boldly against their willful shills, and joyfully pass through the gauntlet of the world.
Despite this strength, more hits may be coming — maybe even for the traditional Catholic community.  Perhaps for all our rooted faith, scandal, and catastrophic failures of leadership still lurk. And for all my confidence, I might find myself, again, on unsure footing and resigned to defeat.
I can only pray that in that terrible moment, when I’m walloped to the ground, dazed and confused, my guardian angel will be standing there, leaning over me, telling me to get my cotton-candy [rear end] off the ground, because this isn’t cotton-candy Catholicism.
Stephen DiJulius Cotton-Candy Catholicism (February 25, 2019)
All Posts https://writteninbloodhistory.com/
 https://www.stephenlynchdijulius.com/

Priesthood

In 1 Peter 5:1-11, St. Peter explicitly addresses himself as a fellow-elder to other elders in the Church.  In this passage the word “elder” translates the Greek word used by Peter, “presbyteros” and in this context, it signifies anyone holding an ecclesial hierarchical office established by Christ (that means bishops, priests, and even future popes).  First, he “exhorts” Church rulers to “tend God’s flock” willingly and eagerly, not for personal gain and not tyrannically (vv. 1-4).  Then he exhorts the other members of the Church to be subject to the elders (v. 5).  Finally, he commands everyone to be humble, to cast all their anxieties on God, to be sober and watchful for “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (vv. 6-8).  He warns that resisting the devil with a firm faith unavoidably entails suffering for a while, after which God “will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you” (v. 10).
In short, Peter insists that Church prelates protect God’s flock from the devil whose two principal means to “devour” souls consist in: (1) leading men into error – especially heresy –  and (2) into sin – especially the blasphemy of anthropocentrism: placing man at the center of life and unseating God from the throne of man’s heart.  This warfare demands holy prelates, strong and courageous men of faith.  Peter demands that all the faithful, prelates and laity alike, be humble, watchful, and prepared to suffer, knowing that the suffering will be temporary and that God himself will restore us.
Michael Sirilla Is Peter in Chains? August 1, 2016
Professor of dogmatic and systematic theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville
Took a Class with him but dropped out.

Politics

Blog, Fertile Soil

We have fallen into the same trap as the Zealots during the time of Jesus, waiting for a political leader to save them. Instead, God sent Jesus who began his life in a humble stable and ended it on cross. He largely ignored the political elite, and was never one of them.

The moment is right for Catholics to offer the message of Jesus as an alternative to the illogical ramblings of current political leaders.

I understand your dissatisfaction with the current political climate and the lack of a true Catholic candidate. The main political parties do not have policies that will solve our country’s current difficulties, for they are part of the problem.  

While we watch the political world crumble from within, I offer you another place and another person: our Church and the person of Jesus Christ. You will not find the money or power of politics, but you will find love, joy, peace, kindness and goodness.

In the coming weeks, we need to pray for our country, but not that the right person is elected. We need to pray that in midst of this political mess, we collectively repent of our mistakes and turn back to Jesus.
Hanael Bianchi Why having two horrible presidential candidates presents a golden opportunity for Catholics (October 7, 2016)
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Providence

The most virtuous thing we can do is to place ourselves in God’s hands and let Him direct our daily life as He wills it. This we can do with our patience, understanding, generosity, and unselfishness in our daily activities.

So, the next time you want to quickly get something done, so you can move on to what you want to do – stop for a moment, and realize that the moment you’re in, is the exact moment that God has placed upon you. There, in that moment, is your opportunity to want to do that task, and to do it as well as you possibly can.

And in this moment, you have the opportunity to please God, simply by giving your all to the task He has given you.

The more perfectly we can give of ourselves to the moment we’re in, so much the more perfectly we will find peace, and a true union with God – and happiness.

And who doesn’t want that?

Alan Scott The Moment We’re In  (September 9, 2016)
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Prayer

We need prayer more than anything.
We know not how to pray.
God responds by giving us Himself, the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost answers this request in the form of Sacred Scripture and the liturgical traditions of the Church.
If one is desirous of learning how to pray, look no further than the traditions of the Church: the calendar, the Mass, the Divine Office.
In the most literal way, the Church’s liturgy really is the fleshing out of Our Lord’s Pater Noster and Our Lord’s answer to our request to teach us how to pray.
“The prayer of the Church is, therefore, the most pleasing to the ear and heart of God, and therefore the most efficacious of all prayers. Happy, then, is he who prays with the Church, and unites his own petitions with those of this bride, who is so dear to her Lord that He gives her all she asks.”
— Dom Prosper Guéranger
Jacob Bauer Lord, Teach Us How to Pray September 30, 2019  

[A]t last, a place for those things that float around your house — the odd statue, the prayer cards, the icons, the rosaries. Gathering them into one place, you will find that they become more than the sum of their parts. They no longer are just things to look at (or, worse, to attract dust while we don’t look at them); they become a shrine.

God works with small and humble material to do great things. What we may experience in the life of prayer at home as barely detectable moments of consolation truly is the Kingdom of God breaking out in power on the world, redeeming it. These little, humble shrines in our homes, the ones with a few old funeral Mass cards and a flower that should have been removed two days ago, the ones under which the dogs sometimes lie and scratch themselves, these connect us and our children to the ongoing liturgy of the Church itself.
Michael Brendan Oratory: A Beginner’s Guide to Praying in the Home Dougherty (August 1, 2016)  

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First and foremost among them is the gift of prayer, the ultimate suicide hotline. It’s a direct link to someone who sincerely understands the nature of suffering, and has experienced intense distress—more so than any of us. Indeed, in the garden of Gethsemane, Christ was so anguished and anxious that He sweated blood. And the agony of His Passion is beyond anything anyone else has ever experienced. Tortured and mocked by His own beloved creations, abandoned by His closest friends—and betrayed by one of them—left to die like a common criminal in the most brutal and agonizing method imaginable, Our Lord has definitely trudged through the black chasm. When we pray, we are speaking to someone who knows exactly what we are going through—not merely because He is able to read our hearts, but because He has made His own journey through the valley of misery. He not only gets it, He also cares and wishes to help—and there is no one better equipped to do so.

Bettina di Fiore The Sleepy, Hollow Labyrinth Within, (October 27, 2017)  

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Now, what does praying for the intention of the Pope or bishop or anyone else mean? It does not mean that you are to pray for the Pope himself, but for whatever he is praying for or wishes you to pray for. For instance, on one day the Holy Father may be praying for the success of some missions that he is establishing in pagan lands; on another, he may be praying that the enemies of the Church may not succeed in their plans against it; on another, he may be praying for the conversion of some nation, and so on; whatever he is praying for or wishes you to pray for is called his intention.
  The Pope’s intention always includes the following objects:
i. The progress of the Faith and triumph of the Church.
ii. Peace and union among Christian Princes and Rulers.
iii. The conversion of sinners.
iv. The uprooting of heresy.
Whenever you pray for the pope’s intentions, you are praying for these extremely Catholic intentions. You are even praying for these intentions if you are praying in the sede vacante period between different papal reigns.
Finally, God is in charge. He knows that we intend only good when we follow the teaching of the Church to pray for the pope’s intentions. If His Church tells us to pray for the intentions of the pope, and the pope then fails to live up to his office in that regard, the responsibility for that rests with the pope creating those intentions, not with us.
Despite our misgivings, I believe that we can with confidence pray an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be for the intentions of the Holy Father whenever this is required of us.  We should do what the Church enjoins us to do to receive a plenary indulgence. If we do this with faith, and unite our will to God’s, only good can come of it.
Patrick Hawkins What We Pray For When We Pray For the Intentions of the Holy Father (January 12, 2016) 33 Comments
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The Christian people of the Middle East are the single most targeted demographic for persecution on earth. For years, immigrant Christian communities in America have been under the shadow of persecution too, knowing that at any moment their dearest and closest relatives and friends may be called upon to endure their own suffering and death, often as ghastly as Our Lord’s Passion itself
“For the persecuted Christians of the Middle East, and for all those under threat of Islamist tortures and martyrdoms throughout the world: May their enemies be thwarted, and may we be made worthy to stand in the presence of the Great Martyrs of the Middle East on the Day of Judgement. We pray to the Lord—Lord, hear our prayer!”
Stephen Herreid A Letter to Pastors Urging Prayer for Persecuted Christians (January 4, 2016)  

The breviary has been a tremendous discovery for our marital and familial life. My wife and I have rather different sentiments and tastes in our approach to religion but are thankfully within the same broad parameters of the traditional Mass and orthodox doctrine. In the Office we have found a common delight in the psalms, antiphons, and canticles of the Church. It is a bond that has proven to be of great comfort, for at the time of writing, we have been apart for several weeks as I try to establish a home in a new city close to a traditional parish. With no immediate end in sight, we have this prayer together. Father and son, mother and daughter, each evening, can unite together in the liturgical homage of the Church, regardless of time and place.

What can be said of the Church universal can be said of the Church particular. The families that make up the nucleus of the particular Church in a given place are often spoken of as the “domestic church.” This isn’t a quaint platitude. The family should seek to imitate the divinely instituted society proposed as our model.
The Divine Office being the prayer of that divine society — the Church — should then take a pre-eminent place in the lives of the faithful. It can be a daunting prospect to take on some small measure of the Church’s duty, but I can assure you, it really is not as complicated as it can appear at first, and we can always start small and slowly build up over time. Family Compline takes approximately 15 minutes, and we don’t always have to get it perfect. I struggle settling for what I consider less than the ideal, but the temptation to let the perfect be the enemy of the good should not be indulged. It’ll take a few more years and a few more children until I can arguably justify constructing a full choir stall in the family oratory to chant Matins and Lauds at four in the morning!

I leave the readers with this: a call to take up some part of the Church’s prayer and incorporate it into the lives of your families. I especially appeal to fathers. Let your children see you pray, and see you pray often, because you are the one they will follow most. Our sons learn the art of manhood at our knees, and our daughters learn what to expect of a man by the example we set them. We won’t be found negligent in teaching them the natural skillset they will need to thrive in life. We cannot be found negligent in providing them the skillset necessary to thrive in the supernatural life.
 J.P. Murphy May 21, 2019 A Special delight for Parents: The Family Breviary

This is the prayer {Litany of Humility} I said daily for a week, when I was taking the scapular. Perhaps I should make it a daily habit.
A preliminary remark: It is the “desire of being consulted” that really appeals to my particular worldly pride. It is hard indeed to pray to be delivered of this sweet, sweet temptation.
Pity poor Saint Augustine trying to pray for continence when he had a hot Mediterranean babe as a concubine! A philosopher’s craving to be seen as wise is just as potent and degrading. That is what makes we intellectuals so insufferable.
If you think it is hard for a rich man to get in the heaven, how much harder for those rich in book-learning and word-cunning.
John C Wright Litany of Humility (January 28, 2020)
www.scifiwright.com

Presumption and Despair

there are two spiritual and moral tendencies that must be avoided in order for true repentance to take place. The first is the sin of presumption, and the other the sin of despair. Presumption is when a person believes that God automatically forgives his or sins, simply because the person desires forgiveness, and that one does not need to actually say or do anything to repent of his sins. It is, in a word, a willingness to receive God’s mercy and forgiveness without the accompanying desire to repent.

God’s mercy cannot bring about true spiritual renewal unless we are willing to cooperate with God. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes how presumption – which it defines as a state in which the soul “hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it, or for pardon from his sins without repenting of them” – is born of a sense of pride.
The latter sin – despair – is a spiritual state in which one believes that his or her sins are so large that God is either incapable of forgiving or unwilling to forgive them, or that these sins exceed his or her own ability to overcome. Ironically, despair itself is an obstacle against the repentance of sin, since if one believes that his sin is too great to be forgiven, he will not seek forgiveness.
In a word, a despair is an obstacle to seeking God’s forgiveness – which one in a state of despair thinks is impossible – just as presumption is an obstacle to conversion or repentance – which one in a state or presumption believes is unnecessary or superfluous. Again referencing the Catholic Encyclopedia, presumption can be seen as a sin against the virtue of hope by way of excess, whereas despair can be seen as a sin against the virtue of hope by way of defect.
Cole DeSantis St. Cyprian and the Twin Sins: Presumption and Despair (March 14, 2017)

Priesthood

Let us begin with this certitude of Catholic Faith: anything—and I do mean anything at all—that harms the priesthood or the path of priestly formation in any way most definitely comes straight from the Evil One. Of this we can be quite sure. Why? Because the Catholic Priesthood is the sublime, sacramental participation of those men who are called to this vocation in the eternal High Priesthood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ – by which we are redeemed of our sins. It is precisely through the faithful exercise of the priesthood, that Our Lord makes Himself present in His Holy Catholic Church, particularly in His mysteries, that is, His sacraments, which He himself instituted for us and for our salvation. So, it should not be surprising that anything that serves as a stumbling block to the priesthood smacks of a malignant nature because it thus attacks the means of our redemption.

We must pray not only for vocations, but for good and holy priests to form and guide them. We must pray also for good seminaries, so that their vocations, delicate as they often are, will be nourished and allowed to grow, blossoming into the extraordinary state in life that is the Catholic Priesthood. And finally, we must pray for strong, holy, and courageous bishops, who will support their priests as the faithful are recatechized, with the aim of ending the identity crisis of the priesthood and once again carving out the essential distinctions between the roles of the laity and the ordained.
Fr. José Miguel Marqués Campo The Identity Crisis in the Priesthood: Diminution by Design? (February 12, 2015)

Last summer brought to light how terribly wounded the Church, the Body of Christ, is. As St. Paul tells us, “if one member suffer any thing, all the members suffer with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). When the Body of Christ is injured, we fall on our knees! We pray. We follow the example of the women at the foot of the cross. We follow the example of Mary in Bethany, sitting at the feet of Jesus. We answer Jesus’s request to spend an hour with Him in prayer.
Why? To strengthen our priests! We need to pray for our priests. As Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald (Founder of the Handmaids of the Precious Blood) said:

In strengthening the priest
you strengthen the whole Church…
Strengthen the priest and
you strengthen the whole foundation,
you strengthen everything in the Church
Valerie Giggie The Seven Sisters Apostolate: A Way for Women to Support Their Priests May 16, 2019  
She is the proprietrix of GGveils on Etsy.com, making and selling chapel veils for women to wear during Mass and at prayer.

Precepts of the Church

To better understand what is truly asked of us by God, and vicariously by the Church, it’s prudent to understand what is not asked of us. First, we aren’t asked to try to do as little as possible. Common sense tells us that effort and diligence bring forth better fruit. Second, we aren’t asked to disregard the precepts. They offer us a sense of direction and help to keep us on the right path. Finally, the precepts are not guidelines for salvation, as mentioned above; they are guidelines for our own protection, safeguards against one of the biggest problems we face: the growing problem of secular humanism – that is, the notion that humans rather than God have pride of place in the universe. The precepts, if followed, serve as an arrow that points us toward God and away from ourselves, but they don’t take us to the doorstep of God’s kingdom. For that to happen, we must abide by the whole faith in its holistic sense, not merely its parts.
This Lenten season, and beyond, each Catholic should make it his goal that we meet and exceed the precepts of the Church. In that way, we can honor God by acknowledging that His rule extends far beyond the five rules listed above.
Rules, guidelines, instructions, and the like permeate the entire culture of the Catholic faith. We have canons, doctrines, precepts, and commandments because they each serve different purposes toward the same goal: an eternity with God. If we seek to go above and beyond them, if we try to do what we ought to do, rather than just what is required, we will obtain the reward of Heaven.
Christian Patin The Precepts of the Church Will Not Save You (February 14, 2018)  
Cathlogic.com

Prolife

That is why to be pro-life in its most profound sense is to be pro-liturgical life. As the Second Vatican Council says about the baptized: “Participating in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the source and culmination of the whole Christian life, they offer the Divine Victim to God, and offer themselves along with It” (Lumen Gentium §11). “The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time, it is the font from which all her power flows” (Sacrosanctum Concilium §10). The font from which all her power flows ... The power to welcome children, to love them into the Church, to care for them over all the years; the power to value every human person, well or ill, hale or handicapped, conscious or comatose, embryonic or elderly; the power to build a culture of life, a culture of beauty, a culture of intellect consecrated to the truth—all this flows from the Holy Mysteries. Without the Church’s liturgy, we fail to grasp the infinite dignity God has bestowed on us in Christ. We miss out on the flesh-and-blood encounter with the Source of Life, Life incarnate, Life outpoured for eternal life.
Peter Kwasniewski Why pro-life Catholics should strive for a higher and deeper life, Mon Oct 9, 2017 Lifesite News

 Mothers bring their unborn babies to places to have them killed. Most of the babies die after being cut to pieces in various ways. Others have their brains sucked out first while they are alive, so that their undamaged organs can be “harvested” for research. The mothers of these babies spend the rest of their lives trying to forget what they’ve done to their unborn children and to get over the mental and physical harm done to them. All but a few of your friends and neighbors think this is just fine. Some of the few who don’t think it’s fine would prefer to believe that nothing can be done about it. This belief allows them to put the horror out of their minds and go about the pursuit of their happiness.
These pages are for those who can deal with reality, the ugly reality of abortion and the stupendous reality that no matter who or what you are, God, if you let Him, can make you into a mean lean baby saving machine and that this is a good thing.
Sidewalk counseling is not watching mothers take their unborn babies to abortion mills and praying that they change their minds once inside. Nor is it giving out leaflets to mothers with the hope the material will be read and cause a change of heart. It is crisis intervention. It is dialogue. It is conversation, interaction and persuasion based upon knowledge whose holy purpose is to save a baby’s life and a mother’s soul.
People are so different and varied that among the mothers and fathers who bring their children to the killing places there are those who will relate to you. They will listen to you even if you are awkward or shy and terrified and make all kinds of mistakes. You see, you will be the one whom God has chosen to help this mother and her child.
There are mothers too, who just want someone to be there. It can be anyone at all. They are the easy, “turn-arounds.” Many of them have told us that when they woke up on the morning of the appointment they said to themselves, “If someone is there and talks to me and tries to stop me then I’ll have the baby. It’ll be a sign for me not to go ahead with it.” If God is leading you to do this work then read these pages and print them out. Next put them into practice. Try to work with someone who has experience. But don’t learn bad habits. Especially don’t learn fear.
Jerome Lackner  Sidewalk Counseling (March 6, 2015) https://www.jeromelackner.com/

Put your screen down and love your children now. Don’t just tell them you love them. Show them with your hands.
Pause your ‘grown-up’ article reading and make a lego castle. Make them that dinner you know they enjoy. Meet their eyes. Smile at them with your heart. Ask them sincerely about their day. It may seem like a little thing here and there, but it adds up, hour by hour, day by day, year by year, until they are grown and having children of their own. Teach them about Christ’s love and they will understand it better, because they understand their Mother’s.
Teach them to love children and value them as the blessing they are. Teach them to use their strength to protect the weak. Teach them not to fear evil, for the Creator stands on their side.
It’s a high calling, parenthood. It’s not for wussies. To represent Christ that way is a huge responsibility.
But it is world-changing. Literally.

So let me say this one more time… Here is one thing you can do NOW.
Put your screen down, and go show your children the love of Christ.
And even the gates of Hell will not prevail.
Kelsey Shade  ONE Thing You Can Do NOW to End Abortion
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Profanity

In recent years, the use of profanity has spread like a virus in our society. Among those with weak or no religious affiliation, this is no surprise, but among devout Catholics who love traditional liturgies, it is a jarring reality. As Catholics who seek to uphold the traditions of the Church, we must, like St. Benedict, rise above the degradation of civilization around us.
So many of us, especially the Millennial generation, thoughtlessly adopt the customs of secularism. What tragic irony it is when the faithful sing the sacred words of the Holy Mass, only to utter profanity in trivial jests moments later! They utter profanity with the same tongues that have, by the benevolence of God, joined the choirs of angels in praising Him at Holy Mass.

The human tongue functions as a tool for us to praise God with “a good word” that bursts forth from our hearts. Another psalm says, “May my mouth be filled with praise, to sing Your glory, and Your grandeur all the day long.”⁸ Our mouths cannot at once be filled with praise and profanity. Good words will not burst forth from our hearts if we give quarter to vulgar words. Whether we speak about the Creator or only about created things, we must, in both cases, use reverent words – good words.

As Catholics, we have the responsibility of building up the kingdom of God. Our words function as bricks. We must ask ourselves what kind of structures we build with our words. The Incarnation of Christ revealed and honored so profoundly in traditional liturgies is the light that guides the faithful along the narrow way. It makes clear to us our relationship with the Creator and His creation. We begin to see with the eyes of Christ, and our understanding of who we are and how we ought to act in our daily affairs grows. The initial void we feel when we cast off vulgar expressions will quickly be filled from the outpouring of grace that the extraction of these words accommodates. Those of us graced with eloquence will use our words to speak ornately of Christ, like architects who built in the Gothic or Baroque style. Others of us may prefer simple speech more analogous to a simple Romanesque church. Whatever style of speech the Lord has bestowed on us, we may be sure we are called to use it to build up a beautiful edifice for Him.

When we refine our speech, even those who do not know God will desire to listen to us. Our words will draw them with the soft fragrance of a rose and the sharp clarity of a diamond. Although the beauty of a rose or a diamond does not speak explicitly about God, it points to Him unwaveringly. If we cultivate our speech like a gardener cultivating his roses, and polish it, like a skilled jeweler polishing his gems, then indeed we will direct the multitude who thirsts for beauty to the source of beauty. Little by little, they will seek no longer our voices, but the voice of the one of whom it is said, “[Y]ou spoke and they were made.”⁹ Eventually, these searching souls will yield to Him, the author of all beauty, fairer in beauty than all the sons of men with grace poured out upon His lips.¹⁰ Then we will say with Judith: “You sent forth Your spirit, and they were created, and no one can resist Your voice.” ¹¹

Anna Kalinowski Why Catholics Who Love Tradition Should Not Use Profanity (January 28, 2019)
Anna Kalinowski is a Catholic writer from St. Louis, Missouri. Recently, Anna’s main writing work has involved keeping up a feverish (mostly one-sided) correspondence with her siblings in religious life. When she is not writing in English, Anna writes in C++, C#, and Python.
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Rigidity

These communities look rigid and austere on the surface, yet the priests who watch over them are not distant. They may wear cassocks and hats in the shape of Saturn, but this does not prevent them from vigorously fostering the initiatives of their parishioners. Their rosary groups, potlucks, devotions, and homeschooling co-ops are not the substance of Catholicism, but they point to a community who knows how to live its demands joyfully. The rigid demands of the Catholic faith, expressed in unequivocal rubrics and precepts, present a challenge to the faithful. This is precisely what they are looking for. When given a challenge that seeks to honor God whatever the cost, Catholics flock toward the source and go out to meet the demands proposed to them. This is the same response that the apostles had.
David Dashiell In Defense of Rigidity (October 14, 2019) 

Roles

 As many saints and theologians have maintained, all Christians are, before God, symbolically in the role of bride and mother. Creatures are fundamentally receptive; and the Church is a bride, of which all of us are members (cf. Ephesians 5). Now, naturally, this symbolism is not going to be pressed into the faces of men in such a way that they are made to feel uncomfortable. For men, we need the language of fighting like soldiers, being carpenters and guardians, etc. But still, our fundamental identity as a Christian is one who receives grace and is made fruitful by it. This is why the Blessed Virgin Mary is not just a model for women but for all Christians as such.
Benedict Constable Male-Female Symbolism in Liturgical Roles: Not Bizarre, Just Catholic
Benedict Constable is the nom de plume of a noteworthy traditional Catholic scholar and author

Rome

I had been in Rome for several weeks before my roommate proposed walking the Seven Church Pilgrimage. I knew that the pilgrimage was an ancient tradition, and, feeling some modicum of piety, I decided to go along. The route ran thus: Maria Maggiore, Saint Lawrence, Santa Croce, St. John Lateran, St. Sebastian, St. Paul outside the Walls, and then St. Peter’s. For anyone familiar with the geography of Rome  (as I was), the route is daunting, covering around 14 miles and taking a pilgrim through much of Rome. We arrived at Maria Maggiore from the nearest metro stop without trouble, said a rosary, and headed to Saint Lawrence.
This is where our troubles began, and where I began to recognize the newborn ruins that dot Rome. We had made a wrong turn and ended up in the Verano Cemetery. The noise of the city streets soon faded away as we were enveloped by the silence of graves. A plethora of mausoleums and grave chapels in different styles rose around us. Looking at the weeds that blocked the iron doors and the vines that crawled across their edifices, the thought struck me that there was once a time when priests would come to celebrate Masses here. Was it that there were so many priests that such a feat was possible? Or rather, was it because the priests were educated enough, and cared enough, to come to a cemetery and offer a Mass for the dead? Perhaps both?
Jonah Michael Cloonan The Birth of Ruins (December 3, 2018)

Rosary

Those daily Rosaries, millions are now praying daily, are driving the demonically compromised nuts. Pedal to the metal, CRUSADERS! 
Mike "The KingDude" Church on Twitter


I stood and watched semi-concealed halfway up the stairway as a few small beads on a cord passed through my father’s fingers. As a child, I never knew how to pray the Rosary. Over the past few years, my only recollection of a Rosary was the one a young singer named Madonna constantly wore around her neck. In my mind, it had become almost a profane object, transformed from the sacred as the crucifix was always strategically situated inside her ample cleavage. But in the rough calloused hands of my father, the Rosary had been restored to its rightful meaning and significance. Like my childhood conception of Jesus Christ, there was more to my father than I previously believed.

All the time I thought my father detested me, he actually prayed and wept for me. And in that act, often performed alone and silently, there was compassion. While I danced in some gay disco, my father prayed. While I had sex with nameless men, my father prayed. While I tossed my life away, my father prayed. Every day He prayed the Rosary and I didn’t know it. In those long days of desolation, like on my deathbed, I wouldn’t have cared or thought that he was incredibly stupid. It must have appeared that his prayers weren’t working. I didn’t return home. But he persisted. And that took strength and determination, the same qualities that seemed offensive when I was a boy, were transformed into a means of my salvation through Christ Jesus.
Joseph Sciambra Seeing My Father Pray the Rosary Saved Me From Homosexuality (April 29, 2017) 

“The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.”
In my opinion, the above promise is one of the most important for us. Who could deny that we live in an age almost entirely consumed by hellish forces; superabundant vice; unbridled sin; and, almost most tragically of all; such a widespread diffusion of error and heresy that it is difficult to recognize where the truth begins and where it ends?
No one — without a miraculous grace from God — will be able to withstand the tides of error that clatter ceaselessly against our shores — unless he faithfully recite the rosary. This protection against heresy is surely one of the main reasons Our Mother insists that we cling to the rosary more than ever in these times. Let us not forget: the rosary (as we have it today) was given to Saint Dominic in response to the saint’s struggle against the Albigensian heresy. It was given as a weapon to destroy this error and all others. I think we should recall that Saint Dominic tried other means to quell the Albigensians. He preached and used all the reasoning he could muster; he laid out the true doctrine of the Faith; he probably expounded the fathers with a genius and lucidity almost unknown to us today. But this would not suffice. It took the rosary and, almost as if to emphasize the point, the rosary alone to finally put to death this awful error of his time.
Henry Walker Mother Knows Best: An Exhortation to Pray the Rosary (August 28, 2019)

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is a convert from the Reformed tradition. After a decade of teaching in Taiwan, Elliot returned to America and is now a freelance translator, interpreter, marketer, and writer. He is a happily married, multilingual father of three and occasionally a fitness nut. Find out more at ebougis.wordpress.com.
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I’ve never been a big fan of the Rosary.
Or, more accurately stated, I’ve never been a big fan of sacrificing time to sit (or kneel) in one place and pray the Rosary from start to finish. My flesh resists it like no other. My mind wanders like…
Where was I?
Oh, right!
Hail Mary!
Knowing that prayer is crucial, however, I have internalized other favorite prayer habits (especially the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, the Jesus Prayer, etc.) over the years, but I can only claim a sporadic devotion to the Rosary.
Nevertheless, I’ve always had a great devotion to the idea and the reality of the rosary. I love Mother Mary, I love the brown scapular, I love indulgences, and I love the lore of the Rosary as a chain of grace binding us to the Lord.
But I’ve just never been able to get into it like a good Catholic should.
Oh, I’ve been reassured that it’s not essential to pray the Rosary, so etc. but it’s always been a hollow spot for me. A sort of spiritual color blindness.
 Thank God, though, I have been “restored” by grace to the Catholic wisdom of saying fixed words at fixed times in order to fix myself to the God who wants to fix me.   What makes my rosary recovery even sweeter? It came about by using an old-school St. Joseph’s Daily Missal (SJDM) that my dad left me. I have a Spanish, an English, a modern Chinese, an old Chinese, a German, and a Latin guide to the Rosary, but something about that unassuming, battered SJDM provided the perfect enzymes for the catalyst which Ferrara planted in my mind. And even though I pray each decade now in English, now in Spanish, now in Latin, now in Chinese, now in German, it is the simple little headings in the SJDM under the quaint illustrations for each mystery that enrich my prayer like never before.
And maybe it’s just that simple.
Elliot Bougis (Florida Man™)    The Codgitator (a cadgertator) Fixed prayers fix prayer (October 27, 2013) FideCogitActio : "Omnis per gratiam

Sabbath

Of course, the sanctification of Sunday manifests itself in different ways depending upon our Christian vocation, status in life, familial responsibilities and professional obligations. It is also important to stress that, while we as Catholics are working out our own salvation in fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), we are not all at the same place in this journey. Remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy is not a one size fits all piety. That isn’t to say, however, that Holy Mother Church hasn’t given us guidance for ordering our day. Indeed, a clearer understanding of our Sunday obligation can be gleaned from Father Francis Spirago in his brilliant work The Catechism Explained:
We are bound on Sundays to abstain from servile work and to assist at public Mass; we ought, moreover, to employ this day in providing for the salvation of our soul, that is to say by approaching the sacraments, by prayer, by hearing sermons, reading spiritual books, and performing works of mercy. (p. 348).

An interesting insight into the sanctification of Sunday in the not too distant past comes from a 1955 essay entitled “The Land Without a Sunday” by Maria Von Trapp. The matriarch of the singing family made famous by the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “The Sound of Music”, Von Trapp wrote of a pious faith practiced in the years just prior to the Second World War. As is often the case with things in life that are truly important, structure and ritual were essential. For the Von Trapp family, entering the weekly event of Sunday required devout preparation beginning the night before:
After the evening meal the rosary is said. In front of the statue or picture of the Blessed Mother burns a vigil light. After the rosary the father will take a big book containing all the Epistles and Gospels of the Sundays and feast days of the year, and he will read the pertinent ones now to his family. The village people usually go to Confession Saturday night, while the folks from the farms at a distance go on Sunday morning before Mass. Saturday night is a quiet night…People stay at home, getting attuned to Sunday.

Sunday is indeed a day provided for the salvation of our soul. Far from being simply an obligation or seemingly superfluous, the need to observe Sunday is foundational to our Catholic faith, providing the necessary rest we require both naturally and supernaturally.  Our respite from the temporal on Sunday prefigures and reminds us of the heavenly rest we hope to know one day.  Putting aside the secular notion of the weekend, may more faithful Catholics rediscover an authentic understanding of the Lord’s Day.
Brian Williams A Day Provided for the Salvation of Our Soul (August 4, 2014)
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It was A.D. 321, and the Emperor Constantine decreed that the venerable “Day of the Sun” ought to be dedicated to rest. As we read in his imperial edict: “The magistrates and inhabitants of the cities shall rest on the venerable Day of the Sun, and all the stores will remain closed.” But it was Emperor Theodosius I in 383 who converted the “dies Solis” into the “dies Dominica,” or “day of the Lord.” The Lord’s Day is the day of Christianity par excellence, in which the key words are tradition and family.
For Poles, in fact, the day of rest represents “opposition to the exclusivism of the ideal of work” – a break that is actually part of the deeper work of watering the Christian roots that give life and moving ever away from the specter of communism.
Lorenza Formicola And now, amazingly, in a strange Poland Leads the Way in Bringing Back the Day of Rest (December 21, 2017)

Sacred Music

. If all you have is Gregorian chant, people will either think you have good taste but are poor or admire your noble simplicity, and anything you do above and beyond redounds to your glory. You might raise a few eyebrows by the ostentation of programming Striggio’s 40-voice Mass or a Viennese orchestral Mass, but nobody will really be offended.
Then there is the Novus Ordo, the rite in which most weddings occur and where your musical demonstration of Tradition can do the most good. Many, maybe most Catholics are still bought in to the Vatican II liturgical paradigm as they have come to understand it. The key concept is “full, active, conscious participation” in the post-conciliar understanding, which is “sing everything, do everything, understand everything.”  People by and large will not go to bat for post–Vatican 2 music. Oh, they might have a personal connection to some hymn or Mass setting, but that’s just sentimentality. They will, however, go to bat for singing the Ordinary, or for English. (If the groom strongly advocates for the typical missalette repertoire in general, Bridedaddy might want to hire a detective to make sure that his future son-in-law doesn’t have a history in Castro Street bars.)
Jeffrey Quick The Wedding: How to Be a Catholic Music Patron, at Least Once (August 8, 2019)
http://jeffreyquick.com/

A music major who takes a good “history of music” course at a university music department will encounter the term “word painting” when studying the music of the Middle Ages (and Gregorian chant as the most important music in the West in that era).

Word painting is an illustration, in musical melody, of the meaning of a word that is sung on that music.

Now that the reader may understand the prevalence of word painting, we may ask again, as we asked above, why should Gregorian chant be so concerned with words and musical meaning? The answer could fill half a book, and we won’t go into it fully. Gregorian chant as a Christian art form involves setting the words of Scripture and liturgy to music. Not only is it setting words; it is setting the Word to music. In the process of setting the Word to music, it is only natural that making the words of Scripture intelligible in a new and enhanced way is a fascination. If music can open up another door into the Word, and cause the performer or listener to actually enter into the Word in some new way, this is an amazing gift, and perhaps one of the true meanings of the gift of music to humankind.
Certainly, various art forms have been used to great effect to communicate many things about God, the Church, and God’s Word as found in Scripture. One has only to think of stained glass, statuary, icon paintings, or the architecture of churches to understand that the Word is communicated in many ways.
The fascination with setting the Word to music in Gregorian chant, as in the other arts, has to do with intelligibility and intelligence itself. Words obviously are understood by the intelligence. Thomistic theology of God as understanding or intelligence is relevant to our discussion of music that paints words. What if music itself can be read by intelligence, like words? And what if this added, further appeal to intelligence through music can cause human intelligence to grasp the word, and the Word, in an expanded way? Our understanding, participating in the intelligibility of words and music, is enhanced in understanding the Word, which is surely God’s intelligence.

Word painting in Gregorian chant is painting not only concrete words and visible actions, but also abstract things. (The painting of abstract things, like “mercy,” was approached above.) In the following antiphon from one of the commons of the Blessed Virgin Mary, both concrete things and abstract things are portrayed. The word “carried” is a concrete action and is quite suitably depicted — as one might depict carrying something in sign language
Webster Young The Art of Word Painting in Gregorian Chant (August 7, 2019)

Saints

While the image of St. Nichols as benefactor of poor children has etched itself into the collective imagination of most of the western world, it is curious that the other feats attributed to him have received comparatively little attention. The most notable of these include his foot pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine, his combat against evil spirits and demons, his imprisonment and torture for witnessing to the Faith, and, above all, his having ended a debate with the heretic Arius at the Council of Nicae in A.D. 325 by punching him in the face.
Matthew Karmel Cardinal Schönborn on the Image of Saint Nicholas (December 5, 2014)

The silence of Saint Joseph allowed God to speak to His saint and to be heard over the noise of the carpenter’s shop, over the haggling of customers and suppliers in Nazareth, where he plied his artisanship, over the multitude of taxpayers thronging into Bethlehem at the time of the census of Caesar Augustus, and over the foreign tongues that he would hear in Egypt. Joseph, the just man, distinguished himself by his intimate rapport with the Lord whom he served, for he obeyed the Father’s command to take to his home the Blessed Virgin, the living tabernacle of the new and eternal covenant. Saint Joseph provided food, shelter, and a loving home for God the Son, and he protected the Mother of God from idle speculation and malicious gossip. The Fathers of the Church, beginning with Saint Irenæus of Lyons, maintain that Saint Joseph played an important role in keeping from the devil the secret of Christ’s virginal conception and virginal birth. The devil, although he knows more than we do, is not omniscient. God alone knows all things, and He kept from the devil the particulars of our Savior’s conception and birth, lest the evil one try somehow to undermine God’s wise and loving plan for the redemption of our fallen human race. Saint Joseph is the ideal saint of Lent, precisely because of his great silence (prayer, contemplation), his unfailing devotion to duty and to self-denial (fasting and mortification), and his goodness to others (charity and almsgiving), which still finds expression in the granting of favors and supernatural interventions recorded by grateful souls. May we strive to imitate his virtues and call upon his aid in all our needs.
Father Thomas Kocik When Silence Speaks Volumes: A St. Joseph’s Day Reflection (March 19, 2017)

“Don’t lose the merit” was an expression of one of Philip’s main platform planks, usually expressed as “amare nescire” – “to love to be unknown.” The idea, simply put, is that one keeps one’s spiritual life private, and one’s ascetic practices, fasting, penance, private prayer and alms-giving, secret. To talk about it is to lose the merit – the value – of your practices. It’s a simple idea really – once you have let the secret out, you have changed from uniting yourself interiorly with the suffering of Christ on the Cross to looking for plaudits from others.
Philip was well known for his desire to not be taken as a saint, even though he was well known during his life as a miracle worker and ecstatic visionary, curing illnesses and even raising the dead. But if he was asked about it, he would be as likely to make a joke out of it, or play a prank on you, or do his best to make himself look ridiculous. He was well known as for his sense of humor, and his reputation as a practical joker was as famous as his saintliness.
Hilary White “Don’t Lose The Merit”: Keep Your Lenten Sacrifices Secret and Safe (February 27, 2020)

Salvation outside the Church

To state “there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church” does not mean that no Protestant, Jew, Muslim, etc., could be saved, but if he were saved, it would be by virtue of the Catholic Church and not his erring sect or religion. If he were saved, it would be because he was, by grace (or in the case of Protestants, by baptism), a member of the Catholic Church. Everyone who is in heaven is a member of the Church Triumphant and, ipso facto, a Catholic.

I do not think many people will deny that there are good and holy people in other religions. But this does not lessen the importance of the fact that all the graces in the world enter the world through the Catholic Church.


It is the duty of all men on Earth to enter the Catholic Church and to submit to her authoritative teaching. It is God who speaks to men, not through Scripture only, but also through the Sacred Tradition and the universal Magisterium of His Church. We must believe what Christ teaches us through His Church; faith that is at least implicit, in all that God has revealed, is necessary for salvation (and there are certain truths also that must be believed explicitly).
It is a great sin against charity to encourage people to persevere in their errors. Error will not save anyone. The truth of Jesus Christ — which includes the truth of His Church, which is His Immaculate Bride and His Mystical Body — will save people. People have a right to the full truth of the Gospel and should not be denied any part of it. They therefore have a right to know the truth: that Catholicism is the true religion; that the Catholic Church is the Church of God, which is endowed with authority, infallibility, and indefectibility, and will teach the true Faith and preserve the sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ until the end of time. Membership in it is necessary for salvation.
David Mitchell There Is No Salvation outside the Catholic Church (July 24, 2019

The Truth of the filial adoption in Christ, which is intrinsically supernatural, constitutes the synthesis of the entire Divine Revelation. Being adopted by God as sons is always a gratuitous gift of grace, the most sublime gift of God to mankind. One obtains it, however, only through a personal faith in Christ and through the reception of baptism, as the Lord himself taught: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.” (John 3: 5-7).
Bishop Athanasius Schneider The Christian Faith Is the Only Valid and the Only God-Willed Religion (February 8, 2019)

Science Fiction and Catholic Faith

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up at the stars in the night sky and wondered, what if…
And really, I think that the larger reason why science fiction has endured for me as a lifelong passion is that it embodies the one thing that makes stories utterly compelling: the thrill, and often the fear, of the unknown. Not knowing what’s out there, how dangerous it is, how inevitable it is, is an utterly terrifying concept that is uniquely exciting.
It’s like standing outside in a particularly powerful storm and wondering just how much destructive power it will bring to bear.
Steve Skojec SciFi & The Thrill of the Unknown in Storytelling (Jul 24, 2019) steveskojec.com


I am a Catholic. In my world, every sunrise is the trumpet blast of Creation, more astonishing than the bomb burst, and every nightfall is the opening of a vast roof into the infinite dance of deep Heaven, where the stars and planets reel and waltz to the music of the spheres.
When I was in China, the tour guide saw me stop to give alms to beggars. He watched in wonder and asked me why I was ‘tipping’ the beggars. I told him our God walks the Earth in disguise dressed as a beggar, and any man who does not give alms with both hands is stricken with a curse and flung screaming into a lake of fire.
One might think that an odd reason to give alms, or even an impure or superstitious reason, but no one can say it is a prosaic reason. To see God in a beggar’s careworn and quotidian face is the very soul of romance.
Romance? Let me say something of the wild poetry that now rules my life.
I have a charm chalked on my front door to call a blessing down from wide Heaven. I carry a Rosary like a deadly weapon in my pocket and hang the medallion of Saint Justin Martyr, whose name I take as my true name, atop my computer monitor where he can stare at me.
Two angels follow me unseen as I walk, and I live in a world of exorcists and barefoot friars, muses and prophets, healers who lay on hands, mighty spiritual warriors hidden in crippled bodies, and fallen angels made of pure malicious spirit obeying their damned and darkened Sultan from his darkest throne in Hell. And I live in a world where a holy Child was born a secret king beneath a magic star, and the animals knelt and prayed. And from that dread lord, the small Child will save us.
You might think my world inane, or insane, or uncouth, or false, but by the beard of Saint Nicholas, by the Breastplate of Saint Patrick, and by the severed head of Saint Valentine, no one can say it is not romantic.
My life these days is a storybook story. If there were more romance in it, it would be enough to choke Jonah’s whale. Without Catholicism, there is no romance. Outside the Church, where are the miracles?
Should I hide this? Should I hide a world larger and more glorious than mortal worlds?
It is the only type of story worth a man’s time to tell or heed.
John C. Wright Faith and Works in a Science Fictional Universe (August 1, 2016)

Screwtape

My Dear Wormwood,

You will see how much success we’ve had recently in sowing confusion, fear, doubt, and despair among the humans. This is, of course, nothing new in itself. But the Internet allows us to magnify these effects in two important ways. Firstly, each and every public utterance of the leaders of the Enemy’s Church is now disseminated around the world in a matter of seconds. This was not always so: in fact, quite the opposite. For much of human history since that Great and Wretched Disaster, only the most serious, the most considered, and the most thoughtful of the chief bishop’s sayings reached the ears of the ordinary Catholic. Many of them would go decades or even a lifetime without hearing a word from him. Even during the latter twentieth century, the age of radio and television, it was typically still through the written word that he communicated with the Enemy’s followers, and it was through this medium that they heard from him. This has now changed: every public utterance of his is now not only disseminated, but also analysed, commented on, digested, and commented on again.

The second way that the Internet helps us is that, through articles and comments, we can magnify our efforts at creating despair by making one human’s worry affect thousands.

You want him to be so concerned by ecclesial politics that it absorbs all his attention. This is good not only because of the effects it produces – anger, rancour, worry, neglect of duty, and so on – but also because all the time he’s brooding over these things, he is neglecting to think about his own soul. You want to exploit this. You want, above all, to wrench his gaze away from his own soul and his own salvation, over which he has complete control, and towards that which he has no control: the Church’s place in the world, or what the chief bishop really thinks about some question or other, or who’s really in control of the Vatican. Or something similar. The

He can be easily induced to forget about his soul, simply because (in one sense) he can’t see it. In fact, even without your efforts, the concupiscence that blinds him means it’s a struggle for him to remember it. So exploit this animal nature. Make him think that Vatican politics is something more than the world of flesh which is passing away; inflate the immediate and the temporary in his mind, such that there is no room for the spiritual and the eternal.   

keep him from the sacraments. Especially confession. Every single time he worthily confesses, all our work that we’ve built up to that point is destroyed. Not only that, but the Enemy’s grace is renewed in him, and he receives encouragement, peace, and all kinds of other vile things.  

So, keep him from thinking about his individual soul, keep him from prayer, and keep him from the sacraments. The same methods we’ve always used, just with a different hook: the Internet.

A soldier who constantly questions his generals’ strategy is useless, so keep him constantly questioning the Enemy’s strategy. Keep him concerned with matters of the war that don’t concern him, and that he can do nothing about. (Besides pray– don’t let him do that, of course. The usual tactic is to make them think that one prayer is useless in the grand scheme of things.)

Your affectionate old uncle,
Screwtape
Edward Lawrence Screwtape: Sage Advice for the Synod, September 18, 2015  

Second Coming

Scripture also records that the Lord’s return will be heralded by a sign in the heavens which tradition says will be that of the Cross — and that this sign be seen by all — which will take place whether people believe or not.  In truth, that “all” consists of all the living and the dead: everyone, each of whom will either cower over the imminent justice to befall them for their crimes, or who will radiate with joy for God’s ultimate vindication of their life of faith and obedience to His will. And why so?  Because the Lord’s Second Coming is going to bear directly upon the backlogged conduct of every person born into Creation. At that dread advent there will be no liberal whining over supposed “rights” on the one hand, nor shrill indignation of intolerant self-righteousness on the other. In fact, no one is going to say a thing since everyone will listen — for once — to God,  Who will assuredly have the final word — in an exacting Divine justice.
Dom Daniel Towards The Second Coming: Facing the Liturgical East
 Augustine Oppenheimer, CRNJ (May 20, 2015)  
http://www.canonsregular.com/

Sede

At some time, we have all encountered a sedevacantist — if not in person, at least online.  I won’t bore you with the theology of the sedevacantism except to say they hold that a heretic cannot be pope, with the most common strain affirming that Pius XII was the last legitimate pope (although I did once come across one who believed that Pius V was the last legitimate pope).
The one error of sedevacantism is essentially pride. They raise their opinion over that of the Church when judging that the pope is a formal and manifest heretic, while we know that the Church teaches that the First See is judged by no man.
 Michael Massey Sedevacantism Is Modern Luciferianism (December 2, 2019)  

Sexual Revolution

The sexual revolution has begun to devour its children. The statistics on abortion, divorce, collapsing birthrates, single-parent homes, teen suicides, school shootings, drug use, child abuse, spouse abuse, violent crime, incarceration rates, promiscuity, and falling test scores show how this society, in which the cultural revolution is ascendant, is decomposing and dying. Empty nurseries and full waiting rooms outside the psychiatrist's office testify that all is not well. But before this diseased culture runs its course, it may take the West down with it.
Patrick J. Buchanan The Death of the West (2002)

Sin

St. Anthony did not think it was difficult or rare for people to commit mortal sins. He wrote, “Faith teaches that the pains of Hell are eternal, and it also warns us that one single mortal sin suffices to condemn a soul forever because of the infinite malice by which it offends an infinite God. With these most positive principles in mind, how can I remain indifferent when I see the ease with which sins are committed, sins that occur as frequently as one takes a glass of water, sins and offenses that are perpetrated out of levity or diversion? How can I rest when so many are to be seen living continually in mortal sin?”
He expressed his incredulity at how many of his contemporary priests and lay faithful would not warn sinners about the frightening path they were on: “Neither can I understand why other priests who believe the selfsame truths as I do, as we all must do, do not preach or exhort their flock so that they might avoid this unbearable eternity of Hell. It is still a source of wonder to me how the laity — those men and women blessed with the Faith — do not give warning to those who need it.”
John Henderson Anthony Mary Claret: How Easily People Commit Mortal Sins (October 31, 2019)   

The two ex novo arias, composed for tenor and soprano I — of which an English translation follows — are the most interesting part of the whole work. “Among so many worries, I looked to You / for pity, oh Lord, / Who sees my beautiful heart, / Who at least knows me. / You have listened to my pleas, / And this soul has rejoiced / because of the silencing by You / of the tempest in my breast,” the tenor sings in a challenging aria, in B-flat major, whose first part is pleading (andante) and the second robust and flourishing (allegro), accompanied by solo flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, and strings. The soprano I, with flute, oboes, bassoons, horns, and strings, sings an aria in C minor, which begins in a threatening and chromatic way (andante) and continues brilliantly (allegro) with much coloratura (high range and extreme agility) and jumps of wide intervals: “Among dark, hostile shadows / the heavens become calm and brighten for the Righteous One, / Who keeps His peace and calm heart in the tempest. / Beautiful souls, oh! Yes, rejoice, / and there will be nobody who will detract the audacity, / this joy and this peace / Whose author is only God.”
Massimo Scapin Mozart’s Penitent David and Today’s Lack of Sorrow for Sin ( February 13, 2020)

St. Francis Messege

In the early 1200s, St. Francis of Assisi inflamed the hearts of the faithful with the Gospel message. He did not just speak the Good News; he lived it, with a particular emphasis on poverty and simplicity. As he wandered Italy and farther abroad, people flocked to hear his preaching and marveled at his example. At a time of widespread corruption, confusion, and worldliness within the Church and throughout Christendom, his zeal for souls regenerated the faith of many. Multitudes asked to join his movement. In response, the Seraphic Father founded three orders: the Friars Minor, the Poor Clares, and the Brothers and Sisters of Penance. The Third Order was open to all lay men and women, and diocesan clergy, so that even those living in the world could follow St. Francis’s way of holiness.
St. Francis’s message is still essential. Not every Catholic is called to follow the Franciscan way. It is one way of living out one’s baptism; it is one path to heaven.
Just as a cell needs a membrane to distinguish itself as a healthy, coherent organism in relation to its environment, Secular Franciscans – as an Order, and individually – need to have a clear understanding of their distinctive vocation in order to function and survive in the world, with the ultimate goal of getting to heaven and bringing along as many souls as possible. To be clear about their relationship with St. Francis and to follow his unique example does not close them off to the world; it makes them salty with a distinctive Franciscan flavor
Benjamin J. Vail, OFS In Search of a Secular Franciscan Charism (October 19, 2016)

Spiritual Warfare

Moses, Joshua, and Saul to destroy the enemies of Israel. They were still quite vulnerable to Satan’s evil, as shown in the story of the golden calf, King Solomon’s life, and the reasons for the division of Israel into the North and the South as well as the exiles.
Although God has not changed, humans have. The change came through the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. You can look at this as Christ’s “ban” on sin. Hebrews 1:1-2 points this out: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.”
Whereas the Israelites had to fight, sword, tooth, and nail against nations who wanted to destroy them, our battle has been fought and won by Jesus. Since winning the battle, God sent the Holy Spirit to guide us. In order to understand the violence of the Old Testament, you have to appreciate the power of the Cross and Pentecost in the New Testament.
Evil is still all around us, and it is just as deadly and vicious as it was in the Old Testament, but we do not fight this evil by marching into the neighboring town and killing everyone and destroying everything, because Jesus has already conquered evil. Our sword is the rosary, our shield is the Eucharist and the other sacraments, and our catapult and our battering ram are prayer, fasting, and penance.
After the fall in the Garden of Eden, God redeveloped the human race over many centuries until we were ready for the incarnation. While we are still a far cry from the original plan He had for us in the Garden of Eden, we have a multitude of advantages which Abraham, Moses, and King David’s people did not have. These advantages are all contained in the Catholic Church.
Through the sacraments, prayer, and personal sacrifice, we are to be just as relentless against pornography, human sex trafficking, child abuse, adultery, abortion, etc… as Saul was to be toward Amalek. The ban is still in existence. We cannot retain a little pornography, accept some abortions, tolerate some marital infidelity… any more than Saul could keep some of the plunder from the Amalekites. We must deny all immorality and all sin. Otherwise, we are like Saul who defied God’s order and only performed about 99% of the ban, thereby forfeiting his crown.
Bob Sullivan In Layman's Terms - 30 November 2018
www.bsullivan.org

Suffering

My friends, things will and must get worse before they can get better. But this is not a time for mourning, it is not a time for fear, and it most definitely is not a time to hang our heads. This is a time for Catholics to hold their heads high and prepare to be counted! Why? Because the darkest period of the night is the moment just before the break of dawn … and DAWN IS COMING! Dawn will break, and before we know it, the Light which entered the World 2,015 years ago will once again scatter the darkness!

This is a time of trial, but in trials we get to show God what we're made of! Don't be consumed by the flames of the world, but be purified by them! The enemy is standing before us, and we are encamped on all sides. By the standards of worldly wisdom, the victory of the enemy is at hand. But our Lord loves the underdog and confounds the wise with the humble and the meek. David slew Goliath. Gideon defeated "the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the sons of the east [who] were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts" with only 300 men.

Michael Hichborn -Following the Dark of Night Comes the Dawn

The Lepanto Institute -  Restoring All Things In Christ

Many of us are suffering right now. It’s recent and sudden, and happening in ways we never anticipated or imagined. The family discord, this falling away between family members and among otherwise close friends, the many cancers, diseases, catastrophic accidents and job losses, the persecutions, both wet and dry, the malfeasance among many of our highest shepherds, all this and more is bewildering and overwhelming. Everyone who has a deep Faith and a spiritual awareness right now feels the palpable presence of evil unleashed.
This present battle won’t be won now except by prayer and fasting – coupled with real and freely accepted redemptive suffering. Our culture is obsessed with sex, pleasures, comfort, leisure and satiety. We know this will end soon, and severe difficulties are directly ahead, along with real suffering and crosses. It’s unavoidable now, it’s palpable, and we all feel it.
Since we “know” these crosses lie directly ahead, due to our collective decadence and sin, we must tell God beforehand that we accept these coming crosses, and offer them up to the Father, for souls, the restoration of the Church.
Dr. Brian Kopp The Urgent Call of the Cross (September 12, 2016)

Vatican II

At the time of the Second Vatican Council (Oct. 1962–Dec. 1965), leaving aside the traditionalists faithful to the vision of Pope Pius XII and his predecessors, the Church split between “Conservative” and “Progressive” factions led by the speculative theology of leading contemporary Catholic thinkers. The progressives, at the closing of Vatican II in 1965, began publication of a scholarly journal titled Concilium featuring the writings of Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Johann Baptist Metz, Karl Rahner S.J., and Edward Schillebeeckx. among others. In contrast, a group of the more conservative modern thinkers, including Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Walter Kasper, Marc Ouellet, Louis Bouyer and others, founded a counterpart journal in 1972, called Communio.
H. Reed Armstrong A Dubious Influence: De Lubac & Von Balthasar’s Effect on Catholic Thought (March 30, 2017)

The Second Vatican Council completely avoided the use of the terminology of ordinary and extraordinary magisterium in its constitution on the Church Lumen gentium, which outlines three basic forms of magisterial teaching: (1) the authentic (i.e. authoritative) but not infallible teaching of the pope and bishops; (2) the infallible definitions of popes and ecumenical councils; and (3) the infallible teaching of the bishops dispersed throughout the world (a footnote referring to Tuas libenter and Dei Filius makes it clear that this is a reference to the ordinary and universal magisterium).
I believe that much confusion could be avoided if we were to follow the example of Lumen gentium in speaking consistently of the ‘authentic magisterium’ of popes and bishops when it is a question of their non-infallible teaching, while reserving the term ‘ordinary magisterium’ for the infallible teaching of the Church dispersed throughout the world.
John Joy And we would do wel On the Modes of Exercise of the Magisterium – Part I (June 26, 2017)

It is a failure to choose, in principle, not to cite Vatican II. It is a mistake. Traditionalists sometimes make this mistake. On account of some statements seen (understandably) as ambiguous or confusing or lacking the full precision of past teachings, some have decided never to cite Vatican II. This is to cede all ground to others. In fact, there is much to cite in Vatican II and in more recent magisterial documents. One must isolate the ambiguous statements from all the good that can be found. Some of this good material will readily enrich one’s appreciation of Catholic truth. For example, the Church most certainly is a “divine society.” But this notion, society, is not the only notion by which to appreciate the depths of the Church. Our Good God has used a teeming multitude of expressions to wake us up to His Truth. Let us not restrict our appreciation to just one term, even though it is indispensable and precise and very useful for fighting ambiguity. The truth is deep. Do not make it shallow. theologicalflint.com
Christopher J. Malloy Not Citing Vatican II: A Fault of Some Traditionalists (January 14, 2020)

So, therefore, may faith, hope, and charity abide (1 Cor 13:13)! May we, clinging to Jesus in love, be transformed into his image, more and more (Rom 8:29), being “stitched together” with him in his death, so as to rise with him in glory (Rom 6:4–5). May his hearers—following him from the Garden to the Cross—one day “all be one” (Jn 17:21), all living members of his body (Jn 15:5–7). We cannot fail—if we thus cooperate with his grace—to be united as one, here on earth, for the Spirit shall draw us together. May God unite what man has sundered!
Christopher J. Malloy Catholic Ecumenism: Towards an Integration of Faith, Hope, and Charity (July 26, 2014)
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I think it's safe to say that many liberal Catholics – if they're even practicing their faith – like to misrepresent the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. And in all likelihood, that's not going to change.

Just as unlikely is Pope Francis repudiating Vatican II. Ditto for any living cardinal. None of them have done so thus far, and there's no reason to think they will do so in the foreseeable future.

Was Vatican II a disaster? This much is certain: The Church since the council has indeed suffered greatly. In 2009, I had the following letter published in The Wall Street Journal:
Regarding Father Edward T. Oakes's review of Father John W. O'Malley's book on the Second Vatican Council ('Chronicle of a Council,' Dec. 26): It is not a stretch to assert that the Catholic Church, particularly in the U.S., has suffered greatly since the council took place.

Kenneth C. Jones compiled an 'Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II,' published in 2003. Among his findings: While the number of priests in the U.S. more than doubled to 58,000 between 1930 and 1965, that number has fallen to 45,000, and by 2020 there will be only 31,000. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns, but by 2002 that number had fallen to 75,000; Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments rose from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002. (Regarding the annulment process, it is said that, for better or worse, psychological factors have been taken into consideration much more so post-Vatican II.) And, of course, we have the clergy sex abuse scandal that culminated in 2002 and continues to this day.

Such statistics and events are sobering for any assenting Catholic. The cause? I submit that the zeitgeist and the activities of a number of morally corrupt churchmen are responsible for the problems in the Catholic Church since Vatican II and prior to the council, for that matter.
But when all is said and done, the council – more precisely, the teachings of the council – is here to stay; and it's not going to do one darn bit of good for traditionalists to rail against it at every turn. I'm not saying that all traditionalists are doing this, but some go on and on and on and on and on and on ... you get the picture.

Again, Vatican II is here to stay.

In regard to Pope Francis, I appreciate the commentary of traditionalist Michael J. Matt, editor of The Remnant, who writes (excerpted; click here for his commentary in its entirety):
He's known to have a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother (is said to pray fifteen decades of the rosary every day), and in fact called upon Our Lady several times from the loggia during his first message to the world last night. This morning one of his first papal acts was to make a pilgrimage to the Basilica Santa Maria Maggoire. There he placed flowers on Mary's altar and knelt for several long moments in prayer. If externals mean anything, our Holy Father's devotion to the Mother of God is as genuine as it is touching, which, of course, bodes well for him and for us all.

Over the years he has distinguished himself as a champion of Christian marriage, speaking out courageously against his own government's stand in favor of so-called gay marriage. He's also an outspoken defender of the unborn. These are two happy realities that will most assuredly put our new pope at odds with the modern world, which is always a good thing. There is no greater social or moral threat to our civilization today than that presented by the international warriors against the Christian family. At least in this arena, it seems the forces of evil will have a force with which to be reckoned in Pope Francis....

So forgive me for not combing the Internet for evidence of all the faults and missteps of Cardinal Bergoglio. At this moment, I feel obligated before God to add my humble prayers to those of all the loyal sons and daughters of the Holy Father throughout the whole world for him. May God grant him the strength to restore order to our Church in chaos and the faith to lead the world out of the valley of the shadow of death and into the light of Christ our King.
Well said. And I would add that my prayer life can't hold a candle to the prayer life of Pope Francis.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us. Renew America
Matt C. Abbott Pope Francis and Vatican II (March 19, 2013)

Vocations

Has money been requested to buy resplendent liturgical vestments? Has it been suggested to add grandeur to their physical church buildings, and to include young people in these projects? Perhaps setting up, with the help of children, a pious votive candle stand, or a pleasing weekly rose for a statue of Our Lady?
Are they challenged to pray a rosary, even daily, for good vocations? Are Ember Days, the seasonal days of fasting and prayer intended to cultivate vocations, promoted?
Has it been taught that genuflecting before the tabernacle sets a good example to young people, and that chatting about the weather while standing some ten feet away from the Real Presence does not? What of the other necessary items to be promoted, such as male-only altar boys, firm teaching, ad orientem worship, and traditional music?
Have these honest queries, and many more of the kind, been placed before them? I fear not.
Dan Millette Beating Vocations Away, and Sensible Things Left Unsaid January 14, 2020

Temptation

Someone experiencing homosexual orientation can live a life of holiness. 
What, then, would be the appropriate response of a Catholic committed to living a holy life if he found himself experiencing strong erotic desires toward someone with whom he were living in close quarters?  It relates to the married as much as to the unmarried, to the heterosexually inclined as much as to those experiencing homosexual inclinations. Indeed, it ranges beyond sexual desires to all manner of temptations.

The answer is well supplied in both Catholic tradition and in common sense. One must avoid occasions of sin, especially when the temptation is to serious sin, the temptation is strongly felt, and there is no compelling reason to remain in the situation.
To put it bluntly: “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”

Those with homosexual inclinations can indeed lead lives of profound and exemplary holiness. With the rest of humanity, they achieve this by loving God with their whole heart, soul, and mind and are assisted by the collected wisdom of the saints in their lives and teachings.
-Hugh Henry Why John Henry Newman Is No ‘Gay’ Saint (November 18, 2019) 

Time

My daughter said, “I think it is neat that God knows everything that will happen in my life.”
We were eating breakfast at the time, and her reflection became the subject of our meal.
God wants us to think about Him. He delights in our “small minds”. We think spatially. I imagine God outside of time, and He sees all of time at once. If it were us, we would have to limit God’s knowledge to the moment, or our freedom would be in jeopardy. As it is, we are just not able to understand what is not spatial. To us, time is spatial; to God, it is of course spatial too, because time is what it is: created by God. This thrills me! What a loving mind God has, to think and yet never be limited; to know, and yet never “impose His will”… He is a good God.
And so, God has one thought—everything in God is simple—and His thought is His Son. This Son, by the eternal decree of the Father, was predestined together with His Mother. Forever in His mind was His Mother, lovely, pure, human, and His.
So, God created time. His Thought—His Word—His Son—was with His Father—He was God. And the Word became flesh…
In the fullness of time…
In the Womb of the Virgin.
Clara Fleischmann In the Fullness of Time (January 3, 2016)
Missio Immaculatae International magazine (published by the Franciscans of the Immaculate). She is also an avid gardener, and she loves everything about textiles (knitting, sewing, weaving…). She occasionally blogs at https://clarafleischmann.wordpress.com.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181127191728/https://clarafleischmann.wordpress.com/


There is an organic rhythm to the life of the Church, in her liturgy, just as there is an organic rhythm in nature itself. The Church is a living, breathing organism, the Mystical Body, a living Body of a living Person — Jesus Christ — just as the physical body of Jesus Christ is the living body of a living person. One of the ways in which the Church lives and breathes is in her liturgy, with its cycle of seasons and of time, from First Vespers of Advent Sunday until the end of the next liturgical year. Advent, Christmas, Septuagesima, Lent, Easter. The seasons are marked, traditionally, by the Ember Days — it was (and is) traditional to fast for vocations on these days. The word “Ember” comes from the Latin name of these days, Quatuor Tempora, the four times.
It is important to mark time. It is important to mark the end of the year. It is not some horrible pagan practice that has replaced Christmas; no: it is an end and a beginning. The day, the year, time itself has a beginning and an end; that is part of God’s plan. Whether the end of the year should be marked with eating and drinking inordinate quantities is another question — perhaps it should be a time of greater reflection and solemnity. Indeed, it seems to me to be a time for reflection, as the end of the day is a time for the examination of one’s conscience. We can examine our conscience for the year just as much as for one day. Indeed, we can reflect on the whole decade just ending and what has happened in our lives over that time. In what have we sinned? In what have we done well? We can do penance for the former, if we have not done so already; and we can thank God for the latter. To Him be all the glory.
David Mitchell On the Rhythm of Life: A Meditation for the End of the Year ( January 2, 2020)

Theology

Therefore, for Catholics, science and philosophy are consistent with Truth (capital T) — that is, with theology — because, as Thomas Aquinas says, “[lower, scientific] truth cannot contradict [higher, theological] truth.” Recalling this Thomistic principle, Hans Urs von Balthasar adds that “Thomas never fails to remember the way in which being points critically to the eternal, hidden God nor the way in which reason points noetically to the possible revelation of that God, and consequently he wants all metaphysics to be seen as oriented towards theology.”17 That is to say, man uses his natural intellect with science and philosophy to discern the order and intelligibility of the universe. And he can even derive theological meaning from it.
Timothy Gordon-Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome

Tradition

Fundamentally, the reason we know anything about Jesus Christ – that He was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, descended into hell, rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven – is because these things actually happened, and someone saw or heard them happen. Before they were written as scriptures, before they were declared as doctrines, they were kept as memories.

If the Blessed Virgin Mary had told nobody what the Archangel Gabriel had said to her at the Annunciation, we would not know it. If Jesus Christ had told nobody that His sweat became as blood while He prayed in Gethsemane, we would not know it. Even St. Luke, writing with divine inspiration, knew about these events according as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. Our tradition identifies witnesses even of the Descent into Hell: those saints that had slept, who rose from their tombs after the Resurrection of Christ, came into the holy city and appeared to many.

Catholic tradition is based on real memories of real events. Something either is part of that tradition or it is not, just as something either is part of a body or is not. If it is part of that tradition, this is evident in the law of worship and the agreement of the Church Fathers; these are the epistemic bridges between the age of the eyewitnesses and our own.
Daniel Mitsui Invention and Exaltation: A Lecture by Artist Daniel Mitsui (October 7, 2015)
www.danielmitsui.com.
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Traditions

If you’re a Catholic, you’ve probably seen it: a mysterious series of letters and numbers, looking for all the world like an equation, inscribed in chalk over a doorway at your parish, or at the home of a friend. Maybe you thought you could figure it out. Maybe you were too embarrassed to ask, “What the heck is that?”
If you don’t know what the chalk is all about, don’t be ashamed. You’re certainly not alone.

Epiphany (also known as Twelfth Night, Theophany, or Three Kings Day) marks the occasion of a time-honored Christian tradition of “chalking the doors.” The formula for the ritual — adapted for 2020 — is simple: take chalk of any color and write the following above the entrance of your home: 20 + C + M + B + 20.
The letters have two meanings. First, they represent the initials of the Magi — Caspar, Malchior, and Balthazar — who came to visit Jesus in His first home. They also abbreviate the Latin phrase, Christus mansionem benedicat: “May Christ bless the house.” The “+” signs represent the cross, and the “20” at the beginning and the “20” at the end mark the year. Taken together, this inscription is performed as a request for Christ to bless those homes so marked and that He stay with those who dwell therein throughout the entire year.

The chalking of the doors is a centuries-old practice throughout the world, though it appears to be somewhat less well-known in the United States. It is, however, an easy tradition to adopt, and a great practice whereby we dedicate our year to God from its very outset, asking His blessing on our homes and on all who live, work, or visit them there.
The timing for the chalking of the doors varies somewhat in practice. In some places, it is done on New Year’s Day. More commonly, it is performed on the traditional Feast of the Epiphany — the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Most often the chalking takes place after Epiphany Mass, and can be done at any church, home, or dwelling.  Traditionally the blessing is done by either a priest or the father of the family. This blessing can be performed simply by just writing the inscription and offering a short prayer, or more elaborately, including songs, prayers, processions, the burning of incense, and the sprinkling of holy water.
After many Epiphany Masses, satchels of blessed chalk, incense, and containers of Epiphany water (holy water blessed with special blessings for Ephiphany) are distributed. These can then be brought home and used to perform the ritual. Another common practice is to save a few grains of the Epiphany incense until Easter, so that it can be burned along with the Easter candle.
Practicing traditions like the chalking of the doors helps us to live our Faith more concretely and serve as an outward sign of our dedication to Our Lord. Our homes are also the place where many of us will make the greatest strides in our spiritual growth, through observance of daily prayer, spiritual reading, and work offered as an oblation to God.
The chalking of the doors of a home encourages Christians to dedicate their life at home to God and to others. Seeing the symbols over our doors can help to remind us, while passing in and out on our daily routines, that our homes and all those who dwell there belong to Christ. It also serves as a reminder of welcoming the Magi gave to Jesus. We should strive to be as welcoming to all who come to our homes to visit us!
Jamie Skojec The Chalking of the Doors: An Epiphany Tradition Explained ( January 6, 2020)  

Traditionalism

The Church allows Catholics the freedom to be “traditionalist” in the sense of strongly preferring the ancient Latin rite of Mass and disagreeing with some of the recent official changes in pastoral practice and policy (perhaps, for instance, in the area of relations with non-Catholics and non-Christians). But no convincing case has been made for crossing the line into dissident traditionalism that flatly rejects certain recent developments in magisterial teaching and on that basis practices serious, ongoing disobedience to just laws and precepts promulgated by Peter’s successors.
Fr. Brian Harrison O.S. • The Society of St. Pius X and Dissident Traditionalism (1/1/2014) Catholic Answers

I do believe that those of us who have been drawn to the majesty and solemnity of the ancient liturgy have a pearl of great price that should make us excited to be Catholic, and to share the goodness we’ve found with others. We should be happy at Mass, friendly to our fellow parishioners, welcoming to those who are new, and understanding to those who don’t yet see why we make so much effort to be a part of something so outside the norm.
Condemnations, judgments, specious arguments, and morose dispositions do no favors for our cause, or its future. We’ve got something great going on, and it’s about time we acted like it.
Steve Skojec They Will Know We Are Traddies by Our Love (October 4, 2010)

Tolkien and Fantasy

These indigenous people, which we call, for lack of a better term, Fairies, went into hiding when the Christian conquerors arrived in their lands. That is why they are associated with “tales” and “legends” and strange appearances. It is the hope of the Synod that these indigenous beings of Brittania will come out of hiding and enrich us with their knowledge of the glory of the ecological beauty of the Creation. We hope they will show us how to return to the ultimate Beauty of Nature, in all of its purity and innocence, and participate in the return of the Divinity of ecology and a final abandonment of all that Christianity has imposed on Western culture: the desecration of Nature, the development of personal greed, the rigidity of Christian dogma that acts as chains that prevent us from moving forward to true freedom to be whoever we want to be without the shackles of tradition or imposed religion. And lest we think this Natural Kingdom ever disappeared from the Brittanic consciousness, the great poet, Edmund Spenser, wrote of these beings (although disguised in Elizabethan dress) in his epic poem, The Faerie Queen. Even in the twentieth century the Anglican writer C.S. Lewis wonderfully depicted the wonder and reality of the kingdom of Lions and Witches and Wardrobes.
Fr. Richard Cipolla How about a Synod for the ‘Indigenous Peoples’ of Britain? ( July 3, 2019)

“[T]he seminal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, only properly grow in an imaginative ground saturated with fables, fairy tales, stories, rhymes, romances, adventures–the thousand good books of Grimm, Andersen, Stevenson, Dickens, Scott, Dumas and the rest. Western tradition, taking all that was the best of the Greco-Roman world into itself, has given us a culture in which the Faith properly grows; and since the conversion of Constantine that culture has become Christian. It is the seedbed of intelligence and will, the ground for all studies in the arts and sciences, including theology, without which they are inhumane and destructive. The brutal athlete and the aesthetic fop suffer vices opposed to the virtues of what Newman called the “gentleman.” Anyone working in any art or science, whether “pure” or “practical,” will discover he has made a quantum leap when he gets even a small amount of cultural ground under him; he will grow like an undernourished plant suddenly fertilized and watered.”
–Ryan Topping, Renewing the Mind
There has been a war against fantasy, a war against wonder. And yet, those who wonder and philosophize are superior to those who despair cluelessly. And only someone who does not know everything has the capability to wonder. Therefore, what better place is there to explore than fantasy? The realm of fantasy is a place accessible to all, and as it is ever changing, we can never hope to know everything about it. The Land of Faerie, as Tolkien called it, transports and uplifts us. It renews us. It waters the soil of our minds, and it serves as a much needed respite from the godless demands of the world.

John Adams ridiculed imagination. He joked that Shakespeare could have been an electioneering agent. In his view, “superstition, prejudices, passions, fancies, and senses” were weaknesses to be manipulated, preventing you from ever having what he considered liberty. Adams believed that fantastical thinking was forced upon the West in order to control the people. This is all a grievous error. “For God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 1:27).
It is the imagination that enables us to survive in today’s wicked world. We have a sense of wonder that rationalists like Adams cannot understand. This sense of wonder is what prepares us for understanding the wider world and what it means. The vast majority of people who fall away from the Faith or refuse to consider it lack wonder. As a result, you have a large portion of people in the West who fall into hedonism. They try to numb their own senses as they struggle to follow the crowd – as though they were swimming among a school of fish.
“Fantasy, horror, and science fiction, apart from allowing an author to comment on things in a way he normally could not in mainstream writing (so much of which is garbage anyway) – it breeds a sense of wonder. And ladies and gentlemen, if you do not have a sense of wonder, you cannot really understand the Catholic faith. You’ll just be ‘Oh well, the bread and wine turn into the body and blood of Christ.’ You may actually believe that, but if you don’t have a sense of wonder?
“Listen, ladies and gentlemen, what is more amazing? The idea that with a wand I could wave, everything would start dancing around the room? Or that Christ Himself comes down onto the altar and becomes bread and wine that we are able to receive into ourselves? Which is more wondrous?
Laramie Hirsch Want to be a happier Catholic? Read fantasy  (July 25, 2018)

There is a useful criterion by which we can measure all things. It takes the form of a simple but oft-neglected question: does this lead me closer to God or farther away? In the instance of a narrative work, does the piece display a knowledge of a rightly ordered moral compass? For example, what distinguishes The Lord of the Rings from A Game of Thrones? Both are epic works of fantasy with swordplay, grand battles, fantastical creatures, intrigue, a world full of history, kingdoms and kingships to be won and defended, etc. Yet no character in Game of Thrones can be said to be on the road to eudaemonia. On the contrary, they all seem to advance self-interest through a constant thread of moral abasement through violent immorality. In the world of Game of Thrones, one can achieve his goals only by acting reprehensibly or by cooperating with, or at best being indifferent to, others who act in such a manner. Pure ambition at the total expense of one’s humanity is often rewarded, and indulging in all one’s base desires is often encouraged.
What of the world of Tolkien’s creation? The one character of Tolkien’s epic whose actions may have been lauded in Game of Thrones is Gollum. Gollum’s selfishness, splanchnic disdain for nearly all things pure, and his overwhelming avarice in pursuit of the One Ring, culminates in his destruction. The great enemy, Sauron, has one symptomatic motivation: pride. He wishes to rule all of Middle Earth, to conquer all those he sees as beneath him. To fulfill his ends, he is willing to pervert the very nature of creation. What finally proves to be Sauron’s undoing? The selfless act of an innocent in cooperation with providence. In an analogy lost only on the daft and Christologically ignorant, Frodo, the story’s hero, allows sin and evil to wash over him and buffet him to the brink of death, only then to have it swallowed up in selflessness and love for his “fellowship,” which includes all of creation. For “greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Tolkien’s deeply held Catholic faith informed and permeated his work. Through a supreme mastery of analogy and a deep understanding of the tenets of the Faith, Tolkien made manifest the clear essence of Catholicity in his world without explicitly mentioning God.
Christopher Laurence The Hemlock Self-Prescribed (June 3, 2019)  

Like many Catholics who love their faith, I have struggled to find an explanation for the current crisis in the Church. Despite countless hours of research and analysis, I still find the situation deeply mysterious. It seems that the impossible has happened. It seems that the Church has lost either its visibility or its indefectibility. I know on faith that the Church must always retain these characteristics, but I do not always understand how she has done so in our present circumstances.

When we accept the mystery of the situation, we receive suddenly, as a bonus, the thrill of possibility that the mystery, however mysterious, might actually be a happy mystery in the end. It might not be a question of resignation in the sense of resigning ourselves to darkness, suffering, and failure, or not solely that – it might be a question of resigning ourselves to an unspeakable triumph.

But we are not wise, and we never claimed to be, and we never wanted to be. We believe that a Man executed by the Romans 2,000 years ago is God. We believe that we drink His Blood and eat His Flesh. The words of St. Paul are especially powerful in this context: “For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:21-25).[vi] And in the end, it is we who are wise, and the world that is foolish. “Let no man deceive himself: if any man among you seem to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written: I will catch the wise in their own craftiness. And again: The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain” (1 Corinthians 3:18-20). Our Lord himself said, “Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).
Walker Larson Words of Consolation: Chesterton, Tolkien, and the Crisis in the Church (November 6, 2018)
author of the novel The Skystillers.

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In every age of darkness, there is always present the Spirit of the Church, facing down the worldly spirit of the times. In seeking to understand the conflicts of our own times, we may turn allegorically to the mythical world of J.R.R. Tolkien – and the experiences of his contemporary, Dietrich Von Hildebrand – to gain greater understanding and perspective. The former constructed a world so theologically rich as to be a social barometer for the struggles of any era, while the latter saw his beloved homeland snatched away from him by a false ideology coddled and compromised into power by a disconcerting number of Catholics leaders.
Mark Nowakowski Against the Zeitgeist: The Role of Independent Catholic Voices (September 17, 2015)

When was the last time I truly looked at the stars? The first time I noticed them with a Catholic heart was when I was part of the now defunct “Projekt Mozart” festival in Poland. While most attendees spent their evening hours sleeping or socializing, I began to cultivate the habit of going outside under the unimpeded night sky, lying down, and just looking up at the stunningly three-dimensional and deep progress of the endless universe before me. Half-formed psalms and prayers formed in my heart then. I remembered my place. I remembered my God, and I brought this abiding refreshment — as well as the experience of necessary refreshment — back home with me. My short time living near the mountains brought a similar comforting sentiment whenever I allowed myself contemplation there: how small you are and insignificant your problems, little one, yet how great you are that I have created such beauty for the refreshment of your gaze.
Christian contemplation can lead us to a place that is simultaneously deeply humbling and stratospheric in its implications. If we don’t take the time for such quietude, we will run ourselves fully into the ground that we are called to transcend.
Tolkien visited Lothlorien whenever he needed to, and we should learn from this. Rest, refresh, replenish. Discern again what is yours to bear fully, what you are only to assist in, and what is simply another’s fight. Do not take the weight of the world upon your shoulders, and stop whenever you feel this unbearable weight encroaching. You may sooner or later return to the fray if that is God’s will, but only once you have regaining your full strength for the exceedingly small — yet immensely great — part that you are called to play.
Mark Nowakowski Return to Lothlorien: When You’re Discouraged, Rest (August 26, 2019)

Superman and similar “cosmic” superheroes are positioned at one end of a hypothetical spectrum, while Batman, Green Arrow, the Punisher, and other characters bereft of super-powers stand at the other. The latter set calls to mind what can be accomplished with discipline, intelligence, and a sense of mission; yet whether by coincidence or some inner logic, the dark side is often very noticeable in such “merely human” superheroes. Superman, on the other hand, is conceived of as a benevolent, otherworldly power who visits mankind gratuitously, through no merits or agency of man’s own. Superman is a pop culture Christ-figure, Papandrea concludes, a savior sent by his father Jor-El so that he may use his unearthly power on behalf of humanity.
At the same time, the superpowered heroes of movies and comic books inevitably imply troubling questions that go all the way back to the ring of Gyges featured in The Republic. Were a man endowed with godlike powers, how likely is it that he could resist the temptation to abuse them?

Here we might ask ourselves whether it is plausible that someone who could see through walls and move faster than a bullet would really behave like that affable, Midwestern Boy Scout, Clark Kent.
Jerry Salyer “Knowledge of a greater existence”: A review of “From Star Wars To Superman” (April 6, 2018)

In light of events in the Church today, Tolkien’s message resounds with greater clarity, for Frodo was small and flawed, and yet in spite of this, he was chosen to defeat the greatest evil of his age. Though he sinned by pride, and again by despair, and though he betrayed his quest at the last moment, he was carried through by what can only be properly called grace. Tolkien’s story beautifully illustrates that God chooses the flawed, the foolish, and the little ones to accomplish the greatest of feats and that we need only trust in Him to bring us out of the darkness.

Like Sam, we must always hope, knowing that the darkness must pass, and we must always recognize the temptation to compromise with evil as a lie that will only bring us harm, even though God will mysteriously permit such evil to bring about a greater good. He will provide, and the Church will emerge victorious. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Joe Terlisner What the Lord of the Rings Teaches about Today’s Crisis in the Church (October 24, 2018)   

Trust God

Life can be very difficult.  Sometimes – certainly from a spiritual perspective, but also physically – we cannot seem to catch our breath.  We need help.  When those times come, when we need the breath of love, we come to know and experience God most appropriately through our families.  When we reach to those who know us best, entrusting our suffering to God and persevering in prayer, we truly come to know Him Who never leaves our sides.  To build up the family – to extend the breath of life in persevering prayer and trust in God’s Divine Providence – is to transform our works into the saving, healing breath of love by the Holy Spirit, Who works through us for the sake of others.
Br. Esteban Ybarra, FMCD A New Saint at the Altars: Stanislaus Papczynski and the Virtue of Building Families (June 23, 2016)

Truth

We become and remain Catholic for many reasons. G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said he became Catholic, principally, “to get rid of my sins” and, secondly, by following the Church’s teaching, to think more clearly. If and when someone says the Church is insufficiently au courant and contemporary, we must understand that something is true not because the Church teaches it; the Church, of whom Christ is the head (Col. 1:18, Eph. 1:23), teaches it because it is true. Similarly, something is evil not because the Church forbids it; the Church forbids it because it is evil.
Deacon James Toner The Death of the Lebanon Cedar (July 30, 2019)  
Author of Morals Under the Gun and other books. He has published numerous columns in The Catholic Thing and in Crisis Magazine. He serves in the Diocese of Charlotte (N.C.).

Vocations

Because vocations are supernatural, they must come from the supernatural – and our best present means of encountering the supernatural is through the liturgy. Vocations come out of the liturgy because that is where God comes to us, where we are united to the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. In the Eucharist, in Scripture, and in the apostolic ways of praying that Tradition gives to us, the Christian soul is brought to the gate of heaven, there to become divinized, united to the life of God.
The prayers, ritual, and music of the Latin Mass are the perfect vesture for making present again the reality of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, the Son of God’s infinite act of love. Guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit, added to and embellished by the greatest saints of the Church, the Latin Mass takes into account the handicaps of fallen humans by providing the richest prayers and most beautiful ceremony possible. It is by such vehicles as St. Gregory’s Roman Canon, the chant that bears his name, and the poetic, theological sequences of St. Thomas Aquinas that the mysteries of the Catholic faith are made more accessible to our weak intellects.
Vocations to religious life, whether active or contemplative, occur when the soul begins to see God as attractive. People become monks and nuns because they have discovered their thirst for a God Who is Beauty. They will not be satisfied with anything other than the pearl of great price. Because of this, the place where God comes to us, the sacred liturgy, must aid us in seeing the attractiveness of God; otherwise, no one, man or woman, will want to seek Him in the consecrated life.
This is why I love the Latin Mass. Not only are the Catholic mysteries made more accessible to our intellects by the traditional prayers, but they are made more beautiful and attractive to our slothful wills and clouded appetites.  
Julian Kwasniewksi Monasticism Will Save the Liturgy (June 7, 2018)   

War

Pre–20th century Catholic international thought located the causes of war in both humanity’s fallen nature and the anarchic nature of the international system. With respect to the first of these, from the time of the Church Fathers, key Christian thinkers such as Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine argued that war was a byproduct of personal sin. As a result of Adam’s fall, they all agree, pride, vanity, and what Augustine called libdo dominandi — the lust for domination — drive princes to attempt to subjugate their neighbors or perpetrate other grave evils. As Augustine and Aquinas argued most explicitly, humanity’s fallen nature thus gives rise to two kinds of war: unjust wars motivated by pride, vanity, and libdo dominandi and just wars fought in self-defense against unjust aggression or to otherwise punish evildoers.
Andrew Latham On War: The Strange Death of Catholic International Thought (September 23, 2019)
Author of The Holy Lance: A Novel

Wrestling With God

Anyone who has had to wrestle with grave questions on morality, theology, or vocation knows how stressful it can be. The regular ways of Providence, which permit that we undergo mental and emotional agony in order to arrive at a satisfactory possession of virtue or knowledge, can be rough. Wrestling with Providence feels like being on the edge of mental and emotional dissolution; it raises questions of actions that must be followed that will knowingly cause interpersonal alienation. It is combat with an angel.
-Cameron Henderson The Little Flower of Fr. Thomas Weinandy, (December 20, 2017)

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Architecture

Cologne Cathedral is the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe and the tallest Catholic church structure in Europe. If you’ve ever seen a Gothic cathedral, you know how impressive they can be. Notre Dame de Paris has nothing on Cologne. It took over six centuries to complete, and is Germany’s most visited landmark. It’s even taller than Reims, the cathedral where the kings of France were crowned for a thousand years.
-Harriet Vane The Rape of Europe (January 7, 2016)  

Bearing the Cross

We the faithful followers of Christ, hoping for help from sanctifying supernatural grace, welcome this, our unique current cross in salvation history. We lift high this cross and are honored by it. We speak the truth of the Heart of Christ, always faithful to the timeless teachings and doctrines of Holy Mother Church.
-Bruce Teich The Crux of the Current Cross, September 24, 2019

Bloggers

There are many bad blogs out there, some no doubt legitimately spreading lies, but we cannot just damn all blogs in one fell swoop. The more evil there is, the more good must counteract it; the more libelous reporting there is, the more true reporting must counteract it.
We cannot just boycott the internet and shut down the traditional blogs. People will be on the internet either way, and that’s why we have to continue. We have to continue to spread truth and hopefully wisdom; we have to continue to be a voice
We live in a time when it is necessary for someone to stand up for the truth — necessary that someone say something.
The traditional bloggers are the ones doing this. They do what they do because they’re Catholic, and they care about being Catholic. They aren’t perfect, and they make mistakes, but they’re doing their best to spread truth. If they don’t do it, who will?
-Thomas Greninger In Defense of Catholic Blogs ( April 12, 2019)

Book Reviews

Bearing False Witness not only debunks many of the false narratives created about the Church, but also provides faithful Catholics with an unbiased and factually correct arsenal of knowledge they can use when defending their beliefs from a host of modern adversaries. It is perhaps most fascinating that Dr. Stark is not a Catholic. He was raised Lutheran and classifies himself today as an “Independent Christian.”

Dr. Stark cites heavily from various resources. He provides tables that contain the authors, scholars, and other distinguished commentators whose studies and resources he relied on. Like Dr. Stark, many of these are not Catholic, either. By relying on their work, he avoids classification as a Catholic apologist while managing to refute anti-Catholic myth-making.
Giovanni DelPiero Book Review: When a Non-Catholic Defends the Church (June 6, 2019)
Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History by Rodney Stark

Catholic Life

One of the wonderful life lessons that you learn on a farm is about life and death and the purpose of God’s creatures on this earth. What a wonder it is to see the understanding in your young daughter’s eyes when the cute little chick she helped raise provides the meal on the table before her. All of the hours of feeding, watering, and taking care of those chicks, raising them up to full-grown chickens, and then realizing that their death provides sustenance for our family? This is a reality most people these days never have the opportunity to experience. Most children, if they even recognize a chicken (probably from a picture in a book) think that it comes from a grocery store, and doesn’t have any bones, and the meat mostly comes in the shape of a little dinosaur!

I also wish I’d been able to capture the look of satisfaction on my son’s face when we sat down to eat homemade sausage for the first time – sausage that came from a pig he’d done most of the work to raise from the time it was a 9-week-old piglet. You respect the food on your table a great deal more when you first care for it as a living thing, from birth to slaughter, all so there will be meat to help fill freezers and stomachs. I could see the pride he felt, knowing that he had been able to help provide for his family with all of the hard work he had done. No computer game or television show can even come close to producing those same feelings.
Chris McClure A Year on The Farm: Lessons From a Return to the Land (July 14, 2015) 

Catholic News

At the Congress of April 22ro, at the Hotel Columbus, Rome, just one block from Vatican City, six lay scholars gathered in order to “make clarity one year after Amoris Laetitia” (“fare chiarezza a un anno da AL”), the papal apostolic exhortation about love and marriage, with particular reference to its indirectly stated permission for access to sacramental Communion for divorced and civilly  remarried couples, as well as for couples living in other irregular situations. The Congress was organized by two Italian Catholic apologetics publications, La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana and Il Timone.
-Claudio Pierantoni Making Clarity about Amoris, Laetitia May 5, 2017

Challenge

The Christian Creed is a challenge, starting with the claim that God became Man, up to the belief in the fact of His Resurrection from the Dead from the sepulcher. It is no surprise that ecclesiastical heretics, from the very beginning, have tried to soften this affirmation and to attenuate it.
Paul Badde A “Difficult Word” Announced in Saint Peter’s Square April 10, 2018  

Contraception

I was momentarily paralyzed when, during the Q&A session at the end of the talk, my then-14-year-old daughter stood to ask a question. Without so much as a quiver in her voice, she asked, “Don’t you think you should emphasize the importance of chastity in place of contraception? And why not punish the rapists?” I trembled as I wrote down her words. I was so impressed with her courage!

The panelist – Miss Anne Khasakhala of the Population Studies and Research Institute – was dumbfounded and had no answer. Unbeknownst to us until this point, the room was half-filled with young Catholic students who applauded my dear Zoe.

Another round of applause erupted when a guest pointed out that contraception treats fertility as a disease rather than a sign of good health, therefore oppressing women. And when my friend Evelyn stood and asked with a smile, “Is it a challenge convincing these young mothers that their children aren’t a cause of joy?,” Kate Gilmore of the United Nations Population Fund had to steady herself by grabbing the corner of the table in front of her before nearly jumping from her seat and screaming that Evelyn needed to “check her privilege.”
Brice Griffin Dear Holy Father: A Catholic’s Query on Contraception, April 6, 2018

Conspiracy Theorists

On January 4, 2013, a month before Pope Benedict resigned, the Italian Central Bank turned the lights off on the entire Vatican. The Vatican no longer had the ability to make any electronic financial transactions. Italian authorities asserted that the Vatican was not in compliance with international money-laundering rules. This was a clear message that put tremendous pressure on Pope Benedict. Part of the pressure, as we now know through public records, some of which will be detailed, was that there were indeed financial corruption and offshore accounts in powerful places within the Catholic Church — forces that would have been opposed to any effort of Pope Benedict to clean it all up.
Chris Caldwell Vatican Scandals: Follow the Money…if You Can, April 3, 2019

Crisis

Right now, we are in the middle of the melee. Jesus fired the first shot — the only shot that really matters. It’s up to us now to just see this thing through. The evil one’s plan is also dead on its feet, but he is willing to fight until he can’t fight anymore. And he’s a ferocious adversary, which leads lots of folks to want to cut and run. Some will just give up the fight and join the other side. Others are so scandalized by the fact that our Catholic leadership isn’t Catholic anymore that they’ll decide they’re not going to be Catholic anymore either. But just like when faced with a mean, badly wounded bear, these are especially bad ideas. It’s tantamount to turning your back on the bear, which is something I’m not willing to do.

Somehow, through it all, we have to figure out how to stay on our feet, and we need to keep shooting, and we need to rely on others next to us to shoot, too. This isn’t the kind of fight you win alone.

Most of all, we need faith, and with the knowledge of what has already been accomplished and who wins in the end. We need to stick it out through thick and thin, keeping the understanding ever before us that eventually, whatever it is that keeps the modernists going will run out, and they are going to die off like their wretched sterile doctrines and practices guarantee they will.

We may have to content ourselves to play the long game. We will outlast the enemy. We may live and die in the Time of Madness, but Christ and His Church will triumph over all.
Rod Halvorsen The Church, The Crisis, and The Parable of the Bear (May 17, 2019) 

Divine Revelation

Now, truth can be analyzed into its elements. These elements might be different in different disciplines, according to the realities they deal with. Demonstrative truth is analyzed into principles (axioms, definitions, and postulates) and reasoning. Truth accepted by faith must be analyzed into that which has been revealed. Revelation ended with the death of the last apostle, Saint John the Evangelist.
Revelation is known through Scripture and Tradition. By “Tradition” we mean the teachings of the apostles and those saintly and wise authors who gathered the apostolic wisdom up to John of Damascus. The Magisterium is at the service of revelation and is not its master (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum 10). But when the Magisterium of the Church has defined something solemnly as contained in Revelation, the Catholic theologian must abide by that definition.
Carlos A. Casanova How Many Theologians Have Forgotten the Elements of Faith? (October 26, 2017)

Economy

The economy should be able to satisfy some human needs thanks to the consumption and instruments of labor with which man achieves. But the economy only works if man has identified and knows how to satisfy his true global needs, which are, in addition to material ones, intellectual and spiritual ones. If this does not happen and only material satisfaction is favored, the economic medium takes on a “moral autonomy” and degenerates, causing economic crises, and these, yes, are “irreversible” and damaging. As we have seen in recent decades.
I have tried to explain that the spiritual need (for the Catholic) is satisfied above all by the Sacraments, the Mass is the most important of these, and the liturgy makes the Mass fit or not for what it is supposed to accomplish, to foster thanks, given that the liturgy is substance, not form. By “corrupting” the liturgy of the Mass, adapting it to the supposed need for it to be simplified (as is often the case with the conciliar liturgical rite, left too much to the “creativity” of individual celebrants) and by reducing, relativizing, and often confusing the value of the Sacrament, there is a risk of depriving those who participate of the aforementioned spiritual nourishment, because the purpose of the Mass is not to be celebrated, but to change man by influencing his behavior.
The liturgy can be corrupted by the acts performed in celebrating the Mass, in the words spoken, in the positions of the priest, in the prayers recited, in the chants, in the thanksgiving, in the intentions to renew the Sacrifice, etc. All of this fosters the inner participation of those attending, which gives validity to the purpose of the Mass. By desacralizing the Mass, it is evident that the moral crisis that is therefore created causes a crisis in behavior, specifically in the economy, which is more sensitive to moral guidance. Hence, the material misery caused by the moral crisis is not “the economy that kills”, but rather, man who uses it poorly because he gives it an errant meaning.
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi Pope Francis, Ratzinger, and the Problem of the Liturgy of the Mass
 (September 4, 2017)

Consider the desire for food. Obviously, humans need to eat, and we have the capacity to eat in order to nourish and preserve our bodily life. Eating has other legitimate but secondary purposes: the good fellowship of a shared meal, the enjoyment of fine food and drink. But if we divorce our eating and drinking entirely from its primary end of bodily health and preservation, and we do so repeatedly, what do we end up with? Obesity, diabetes, alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver. The Roman epicures who vomited up their food so they could enjoy another round of dishes sought to enjoy the secondary purposes of eating severed from the fundamental, and I think that even today, most of us would regard their behavior as unnatural and perverse. We humans do not have the right to break the connection between the secondary purposes of eating from its fundamental purpose, for these connections are rooted in the nature of man as God created us.
Thomas Storck Distributism and the Purpose of Private Property (November 7, 2019)

Divorce

John Paul II, who said the divorced and remarried could not receive the Eucharist because of a “state and condition of life” which “objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church,” and then adding the second, ancillary reason of the danger of scandal (FC 84). In other words, the withholding of Communion in such a case is not because of the imputation of mortal sin, since as John Paul insisted in Ecclesia de eucharistia, “the judgment of one’s state of grace obviously belongs only to the person involved.” But, as he reminded the Church, “in the case of outward conduct which is seriously, clearly and steadfastly contrary to the moral norm,” Communion must be denied out of “pastoral concern for the good order of the community and out of respect for the sacrament”
-Josh Kusch Amoris Laetitia and John Paul II (August 11, 2016)

Faith

To be a Christian means having faith. This is because there is a Christian gospel, a message, that originates in God, and being a Christian involves accepting this message. This acceptance includes not just believing the contents of the message to be true, but also holding that the message comes from God, and accepting it on account of its coming from God.
-John R.T. Lamont Divine Faith (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) .  , (2017-03-01 ).

Obviously, faith is a value that has always been important to me and is foundational to how and why I started the company. We all approach our relationship with God differently. But we are united in knowing that God provides for us. It drives how we do the work and why we do it.
-Christopher P. Wendt, My core values

Fatima

This is not to say the Church is fated to remain forever at war with the present and future ages. On the contrary, the Church can and must again lead the modern world, pointing it to the reality beyond what its work-a-day and rationalistic outlook would otherwise permit it to see, proclaiming the Gospel, and offering in the sacraments the ancient, sacred, and mysterious access to the grace of God, necessary for salvation. But the Church can do none of these things if it does not retain its essential character and remains marred by division, confusion, and ideological cancers that destroy its very mission and purpose.
The messages of Fatima call us back to those essentials. Fatima reminds us that the Church is here to save souls through the teaching of pious practices and moral living. It tells us that God’s judgment is just as much a reality as is His mercy. It is a message given in modernity for modernity, and it is a challenge to modernity.
Christian Browne Fatima versus Martin Luther’s Revolution: The Church in 2017, January 20, 2017

What’s astonishing these days is how many people have never heard of the prophecies about the three secrets of Fatima. It’s astonishing because back in the 1950s, everyone knew about them. They were popularized in the media when Warner Bros released a Hollywood feature about them, and the Fatima film was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953. The world knew about the first two secrets of Fatima that were published during World War II, and the world awaited the revelation of the mysterious Third Secret in 1960. But the moment Pope John XXIII came into power in 1958, there was silence. The prophecies and the missing text fell into obscurity, and today, most of the world knows nothing about them. The world’s most remarkable mystery disappeared…but not entirely.
Paul Stark New Film Shines a Spotlight on the Crisis in the Vatican (December 13, 2017)

Feminism

From Adam’s recognition that the woman was a helpmate fit for him (of his same nature), we know that man and woman enjoy equal dignity in the sight of God.
David R. Gordon On the Bride of Christ as Bride: Why the Church Has No Room for “Christian Feminism”
 June 5, 2019 

FSSP

The Holy Father went on to encourage the members of the FSSP to pursue their mission of reconciliation among all the faithful, whatever their liturgical sensibility. “By way of the celebration of the sacred Mysteries according to the extraordinary form of the Roman rite and the orientations of the Constitution on the Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, as well as by passing on the apostolic faith as it is presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, may they contribute, in fidelity to the living Tradition of the Church, to a better comprehension and implementation of the Second Vatican Council.” The Holy Father concluded by exhorting the FSSP, according to their own charism, to take an active part in the mission of the Church in the world of today, through the testimony of a holy life, a firm faith, and an inventive and generous charity.
-Alberto Carosa Francis and Traditionalist Catholics: Catholic World Report, March 12, 2014

As you may or may not know, Our Lady of Guadalupe is not only the Patroness of Mexico, but the Empress of the Americas. Now I see more clearly Her plan to extend anew the sacred tradition of the Church throughout North, Central, and South America.

As we entered and prayed before the miraculous image, I was struck by how an image almost 500 years old has not disintegrated in any way. How it did not appear painted, but rather seemed to float on the tilma made of a cactus fiber which should have begun to break down in just a few years’ time.
There we entrusted to her our prayers and petitions. Little did I know it would be the beginning of an invitation to come live and work in her country to accomplish the same purpose which She had requested in her apparition to St. Juan Diego five centuries earlier: namely, to build a church where the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Traditional Roman Mass mind you, would be offered.

During our pilgrimage, we spent a few days in Mexico City and proceeded to visit Puebla, Morelia, Guadalajara and many other cities. In every place I was impressed to see the public expression of the faith made by the Mexican people, to see what still remains of Christendom in that nation in spite of so many bloody masonic persecutions. The Mexicans I met along my journey exuded a friendly and welcoming spirit, such that it made them seem like one big family, inasmuch as they all shared the same Catholic faith. If my God is your God then mi casa es tu casa. Likewise, the churches were generally filled with the faithful — even at times outside of Mass — with many visitors praying on their knees before the Blessed Sacrament and before the many beautiful crucifixes and statues. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that no one received Holy Communion in the hand, and that in general their Catholic hearts still retained a very traditional sense of devotion. Even then, I thought that it would be very fertile ground to reintroduce the Traditional Latin Mass.
-Fr. Jonathan Romanoski The FSSP: Growing a Traditional Catholic Apostolate in Mexico (December 14, 2015)

History

The Stopes v. Sutherland libel trial is a forgotten episode in the Church’s history of consistent opposition to eugenics. Yet the historical narrative of the trial was left to the detractors and enemies of the Church who cooked up a version that I used to believe myself.
History influences how we perceive our life and times. We live in an age in which gene technology gives eugenicists the tools that their predecessors could only dream of.
Now, more than ever before, Catholics need to know their history to prepare for the battles ahead.
-Mark Sutherland The Trial of Dr. Halliday Sutherland (March 22, 2019)  
https://hallidaysutherland.com/


If history teaches us anything, it is that circumstances change and even impregnable seeming systems and ideologies can collapse overnight (see communism). Can the reverse also occur?
Oakes Spalding November 10, 2015 Muslims Believe They Will Conquer Europe Through Faith and Babies

Jesus

Sacred Scripture teaches that Jesus was a man like us in all things but sin and that He was already fully human in the womb of the Blessed Virgin a few days after the Incarnation, when His Mother visited her cousin St. Elisabeth. The Sacred Liturgy affirms the full Humanity of Jesus from the moment of the Incarnation on March 25, just as it affirms the sinless humanity of the Blessed Virgin from the moment of her Immaculate Conception.
Hugh Owen Evolved from a Can of Worms: Evolution and the Culture of Death (January 12, 2018) 
http://kolbecenter.org/

Jewish

On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s murderous army attacked Poland. With this act, the most ruthless murderer the world ever experienced set off WWII. The Jews paid heavily as a result of this war. The Jews paid with six million innocent sacrifices.
Chris Moore with Joe Sabrin, (2015). We Dared To Live: A Tale of Courage and Survival . Gefen Publishing House. Kindle Edition.

Labels

We hesitate to use the word “conservative” to describe the pre-conciliar period or “liberal” to describe the post-conciliar period. These words represent human ideological constructs and have political meanings that vary from one country to the next. In the search for an appropriate term, we find no alternative other than “traditional” to apply to those institutes that seem to still have a future. Those whose members obey the laws of their founders and preach and teach the gospel in accordance with what was handed down to them, dress and comport themselves as their predecessors did, and pray as their predecessors did seem to have a future. In short, if their religious lives represent a continuation of the visions of their founders, and that of the Founder of our Faith, Jesus Christ, then they seem to have a future. Those institutes founded after 1967 were founded in an attempt to resurrect the religious life that was lacking in larger, well established (but dying) institutes. The authors welcome an alternative term, but for lack of a better one at the moment, the word “traditional” seems to apply to those institutes that are not dying.
Jack P. Oostveen The Data on the Death of Religious Orders: How Does Your Favorite Measure Up?
(January 5, 2018)

LATIN

For many Catholics, it is not easy to understand the importance of Latin in the life of the Church. In February of 1962, on the eve of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII wrote: “Major sacred sciences [in seminaries] shall be taught in Latin, which, as we know from many centuries of use, must be considered most suitable for explaining with the utmost facility and clarity the most difficult and profound ideas and concepts. For apart from the fact that Latin has for long been enriched with a vocabulary of appropriate and unequivocal terms, best calculated to safeguard the integrity of the Catholic faith, it also serves in no slight measure to prune away useless verbiage.”

Today, the concept of young people learning their subjects in Latin is almost incomprehensible, but less than a hundred years ago, in the early 1950s, seminarians in many places were still required to converse among themselves on certain days of the week only in Latin, and theology was taught in Latin. This made the transmission of the Catholic faith much easier and more complete. Even in English, most of the theological terminology is based on Latin: grace, confession, confirmation, contrition, virtue, vice, indulgence, absolution, redemption, resurrection, vocation, matrimony, orders, mission, sanctuary, altar, sacrifice, incarnation, eternity, and the list could go on. Those who understand Latin can crack open the underlying concepts of these words and the theological nuance they convey. Those who do not understand Latin are in danger of getting lost in a sea of private opinions. I am not suggesting that the mysteries of the Christian faith can be expressed only in Latin, but the Church’s language is a stable defense against various sophisms aimed to undermine it.
Andrew Meszaros Language Hurdles: Ecclesiastical Latin, August 19, 2019
Andrew Meszaros  uses Latin in correspondence and in telephone conversations with like-minded friends worldwide.

The Liturgy

What should be recalled by everyone is that the “Vatican II Lectionary” is, in fact, the one used at the Council itself, before the liturgical reform: in other words, the traditional lectionary of the Roman Rite. The traditional lectionary, with its one-year cycle of readings that is pedagogically and psychologically much more suited to the lay faithful; the traditional lectionary that, through its yearly repetition of readings, allows those who participate in the liturgy to internalize the biblical text and make God’s word come alive in them [ii]; the traditional lectionary, which preserves the whole message of the Sacred Scriptures and has not been constructed to assist with the sanitizing of “hard” texts; [iii] the traditional lectionary, tried, tested, and proven in the lives of countless saints who have gone before us.

And so, on the first “Sunday of the Word of God,” this lectionary was enthroned – this lectionary that was given pride of place in a form of the Roman Rite that lamentably cast it aside. Those of us who are fortunate enough to regularly attend the usus antiquior and feel the mental and spiritual benefits of its lectionary should rejoice in this enthroning of the liturgical tradition, and we should work toward the recovery of this great treasure for the whole Roman Rite.
Matthew Hazell The First ‘Sunday of the Word of God’: Tradition Enthroned! January 28, 2020

Within ten minutes, I was starting to tear up (just a bit) at the beauty of it. After that, I was surprised to be feeling something like shock and anger at the growing realization of what our Catholic heritage really was and is. What was beginning to come into focus was this: all this stuff — the beauty, the liturgy, the music, the orientation — all the deeper expressions and the superficial trappings — our culture and our patrimony — we didn’t just lose this. It’s not as though we misplaced it and couldn’t remember where we had left it. We didn’t even abandon it, as if we had just left it and walked away. We actively jettisoned it. We made every attempt to destroy it with extreme prejudice. We literally smashed statues and altar rails.
-Bill Lux I Didn’t Like My First Latin Mass, June 4, 2019

The article below originally appeared on the New Liturgical Movement.

Here we are, eight years after Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, came into effect. This is an extraordinary day, both for those who endured long years without the clarity that Summorum provides, as well as for younger Catholics (like those in Juventutem DC) who grew up after Vatican II and were — to the surprise of many — drawn to tradition. So where are we eight years after Summorum took effect?

As far as Juventutem DC is concerned, Summorum is the biggest thing since the responsorial psalm in E-flat major. A total game changer, it is classic Pope Benedict — pragmatic, intelligent, well reasoned, and has the force of law. Moreover, it presupposes that lay Catholics possess a certain competence, energy, and endurance. It does not, however, promote an “Indult-mentality.”

The Indult was the mechanism to get the traditional Mass before Summorum was issued. The general consensus is that those who didn’t like the traditional Mass used the Indult to limit its celebration. It was a flawed licensing system — completely at the discretion of the bishop. Pope Benedict XVI called out its weaknesses in his letter introducing Summorum. In fact, the very first article of Summorum explains that the documents that created the Indult system are replaced by Summorum. That’s a big deal: eight years ago on this day, the 1984 Indult became a legal nullity.
-Juventutem DC Taking Summorum Pontificum out of the Trenches (September 14, 2015) 

Indeed, I am a spectator, as a child is a spectator: I watch to learn. I am awestruck at the privilege of “watching the professionals” talk to God and offer Him fitting worship. I watch them take care to move gracefully and naturally, for I too must glorify God in my body. I watch them speak to God, and to us in the sight of God, with an acute propriety resulting from two thousand years of distillation, when they show me how to both intimately whisper to God and announce his mirabilia in the Church’s very words and melodies. I learn that there really are some things more important than myself, more important than my ability to understand them, and in certain circumstances more important than my “right” to even hear them. I learn, and thereby I enter, or rather I am assumed, into the priest’s sacerdotal office, so that the priest’s prayer becomes one with my own prayer — if I so choose. The Mass will go on, with or without me. No one is forced to respond, though one can if he so chooses, yet all are invited to interiorly meditate on the otherworldly joy of the psalmist when he was told: in domum Domini ibimus.

 I may attend a sung Mass and focus on the chanted propers; I might follow along word for word with the priest’s text; I might cultivate interior acts of virtue, or meditate on a single word or phrase. I may exult in the symmetrical perfection of priest, deacon, and subdeacon moving in perfect harmony from the Introit at the Epistle side of the altar to the Gloria at the middle, seeing in it a glimpse of single yet triune action. I might shudder at the sublimity of the priest qua Christ, ritually exalted and commissioned with uttering the ipsissima verbi Christi over the bread and wine; I might be moved to penance when I see the total effacement of the priest insofar as he is a man and is expected to deny himself completely.

I can do this because I have been taught to do so, by watching the “experts” do it. The particular beauty, furthermore, is that the expert is not this particular priest, but the Catholic priesthood and liturgy itself, chiseled through nearly two millennia and surviving the Roman Empire and its fall, the barbarian invasions, the Islamic conquests, the Viking incursions, the Eastern Schism, the Avignon Papacy, the Reformation, the French Revolution, and two world wars.
The hermeneutic key that links Senior’s program and the ancient Mass is perhaps best summed up in wonder. Quaerere Deum is not the same as the cupiditas cognoscendi. The Mass is the school of prayer par excellence, precisely because it does not teach us, yet it does cause us to learn.
Patrick Kornmeyer The Mass Does Not Teach, yet We Learn, (October 29, 2019) 


Pope Benedict wrote prophetically in 1997 that the crisis within the Church was rooted in some part to the “collapse of the liturgy.” Is it any wonder that young people are leaving the Church en masse, and those who stay increasingly prefer the traditional reverence of the past?
Peter LaFave The LA REC Is a Blueprint for Obliterating the Faith (February 6, 2019)

On May 6, 2017, my fiancée and I engaged in the holy sacrament of matrimony with the Roman rite as it’s been beautifully celebrated for Catholics from time immemorial. By the time we were kneeling at the altar, I felt like St. Peter of Verona, posed before Our Lord in joyful expectation, a sizeable axe sticking out of my scalp. The blissful sacrament silenced all the gnashing from the pits of Hell and the demonic cries of fury at the beauty we conferred upon one another that day. We’ve been blessed with the grace of Him Whose yoke is sweet and Whose burden is light.
Matthew Mangiaracina When in Florida: The Priest Who Refused My Wedding (January 23, 2019) 

Liberal bishops dismissed Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic constitution authorizing wider use of the traditional Latin mass, as a bone thrown to over-the-hill conservatives. But Pope Benedict XVI probably wrote it more for the young than the old.
One of the points he stressed in his letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum was that “what earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred for us too.” He had previously written that the widespread contempt for the old mass—the treatment of it as something “forbidden”—constituted an act of self-mutilation for a religion predicated on tradition.
Among the groups interested in the traditional Latin mass were youth, he noted: “young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Sacrifice particularly suited to them.”
-George Neumayr, The Rise of Latin Mass Youth




The mission of the Sacred Liturgy conference is to promote the beauty, goodness, and truth of the liturgy. The liturgy is a gift from God to His Church for the right and just worship of God and as the efficacious path to holiness. It brings us to divine life in union with the Holy Trinity. The liturgy should be beautiful and totally oriented toward God. We want to show forth the profound depths of our rich liturgical and theological heritage through a combination of lectures, workshops, and sung Gregorian liturgies.
Lynne Bissonnete Pitre Beauty, Goodness, and Truth at the Sacred Liturgy Conference (April 10, 2019) 

Despite the hostility of modernists, who mock the Tridentine Mass as a boring celebration, ill-suited to attracting people, the traditional rite summons young generations within and without the clergy. And it could not be otherwise, for, as Cardinal Sarah clearly affirmed in his lecture, the purpose of liturgy is to transform the faithful from a spiritual point of view. The liturgy, in all its different moments (listening, praying, kneeling, remaining silent), is the means to establish true communion with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Alessandro Rico Summorum Pontificum Congress Report, September 26, 2017

Many books, articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, homilies, and lectures have been produced and published on this topic, but as the calendar has turned to 2020, I wanted to write a concise and well researched list of twenty reasons to make the switch to the traditional Latin Mass in the New Year. As Latin Mass parishes grow while others shrink and the faithful continue to turn toward tradition, hopefully you will find this list useful! Just as there are infinite reasons to attend the traditional Latin Mass, let there be infinite sources of information that record them all.

Note that this article is not meant to focus on negative aspects of the Novus Ordo Mass, but rather on the beauty of the Latin Mass. That being said, I attended the new Mass for over a decade between my conversion and now, so as I make the switch, some of my observations are inherent comparisons between the two Masses — not because I am trying to bash or malign one, but simply because it is my personal experience.
Jacob Tate 20 Reasons to Attend the Traditional Latin Mass in 2020 (January 29, 2020) 

Love

Church Tradition distinguishes between three basic forms of love. First there is sensible love (or the passion of love), of which sexual love is an example; second there is rational love (or the virtue of love); third there is Charity, which is that form of rational love which is elevated by Supernatural Grace to love God as He is in Himself and the neighbour in, and for the sake of, Him.
-Don Pietro, The Family Under Attack Leone, November 29, 2016

Marriage and Family

St John presents love as living our lives according to the absolute moral norms of God which are contained in the ten commandments. This is ‘true love’ because it is based on the laws of God who is love. It is not legalistic in the same way that not putting diesel into a petrol engine is not legalistic. Would you really call someone legalistic because they insist on always putting petrol in their petrol engine? Rather you would call someone foolish who insisted that sometimes, depending on the context of the totality of the situation, it is necessary to put diesel into a petrol engine.
John Lacken , Article 107 – Marriage v Situation Ethics

When we look to the culture, the solution is simple. Catholic families make up Catholic culture. If we evangelize families so that their outlook becomes Catholic, then our culture will revert to being Catholic. There is no other long-term solution to the problems of divorce, abortion, and the other evils which plague our modern neo-pagan society. We must return God to His proper place so that our society may receive His blessings once again.
John Lacken Article 110 – Evangelize the Culture

Martyrdom

To be a martyr means to give your life for Christ. You die because of your faith.
-Daniel Omar A New Vileness: The Beatification of Bishop Angelelli  Gonzáles Céspedes, June 14, 2018 

The twenty-one Egyptian Christians killed in Libya by the militias of the Islamic caliphate have entered immediately into the ranks of the saints. The patriarch of the Coptic Church, Tawadros II, has had their memory inscribed in the Synaxarium, the martyrology of the Coptic Church, with a feast on the eighth day of the month of Amshir, which corresponds to February 15 of the Gregorian calendar.

It is the day on which the caliphate issued the video of their killing. And on the Coptic liturgical calendar it coincides with the feast of the presentation of Jesus at the temple.

In the video, everyone has been able to note that at the moment of decapitation, some of them were calling upon the name of Jesus in Arabic and whispering prayers. The most distinct words were from Milad Saber, the son of farmers from a village in central Egypt. He was unmarried, while most of his companions were married, with one or more small children. Fifteen came from Al-Our and six from other villages of the same region, around the town of Samalut. More than eighty of their companions are still in Libya, originating from these same villages.

It is a region with a strong Christian presence and with a very ancient church that is a pilgrimage destination, high on a bank of the Nile, where tradition says that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus stayed during their flight into Egypt.

And it is also a region, with its local capital in Minya, in which the Copts have often been the target, even in recent times, of hostility and aggression from Muslims, with little or no protection from the security forces.
-Sandro Magister Saint Milad Saber and His Twenty Companions (March 2, 2015) WWW.CHIESA

Masculinity

The Church needs men. God needs men. Consider the great men of the Bible and the character they exhibited. Abraham. Jacob. Joseph. Moses. Joshua. Gideon. Samson. Isaiah. Jeremiah. Adventurers, judges, and warriors — or, in another word, men.

When Christ returns, He will do so in flaming glory. He will be wielding the sword of retribution and as the king of the world and just judge of mankind. God has always called men to become men, to embark on adventure, and to do battle against the temptations of the demons. If men will not answer the call, then, like Deborah, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Hildegard of Bingen, women must rebuke men to be men.

The de-masculinization of Christianity has touched the clergy and has gravely corrupted and compromised the priestly sacrament that the laity depend on. Rather than men joining its ranks, soft-spoken, sensitive, and spineless boys present themselves, only to receive no growth into manhood. Far from putting on the armor of God; dressing for battle; and wielding the axes, banners, and swords of the Christian struggle, these meek “shepherds” preach the ethos of compromise like the weak boy on the playground.

Now, more than ever, the Church needs men to swell its ranks and do battle for God like the saints of old and what the very language of the church on Earth, the Church Militant, implies. With that restoration, men and women both will once again be able to vigorously and courageously sojourn through the world to that heavenly Jerusalem.
Paul Krause The Crisis of Masculinity in the Church (February 22, 2019)

Mormonism

His presentation was magnificent! Everything you might expect from someone so steeped in history, politics and, yes, theatre.  His dramatics were punctuated by his treasures from the past – items from his own impressive personal collection. He showed us such things as the “Inquisitors’” notes from the Spanish Inquisition; Tyndale’s bible – yes, the actual one; a silver coin from the time of Christ, to accentuate Judas’ betrayal; a hood from the KKK; and amazingly, he had Oskar Schindler’s actual typed list from World War II.
The thing was, all of this was used by Mr. Beck in an attempt to prove that the “Church” and — we her members — had lost our way, and had done all of these horrible things, as his story went, officially in the name of Christ and His Church.

Holding his own Bible in his hand, he exclaimed that we should all “set aside our differences,” (Read “religious differences”) and return to Scripture and that the Truth of it all would set us free.
Ahhh, Indifferentism. Bravo.

Would it surprise you that all of these things were collected and spoken of by a Mormon, whose core belief is that a physical deity came to earth, had sexual relations with the Blessed Virgin Mary, who then gave birth to a physical Jesus but who also had spirit-brothers – Satan and Jesus – and that at some point in the future, he too (Glenn) would have his own planet where he can populate it with a people much like us and there he will rule as “god”?

But Glenn’s assault on the Catholic Church founded and continued by Christ actually stands to reason since Mormons, like Glenn, think that Peter was the last Pope and that the “Church” crashed and burned until a 19th Century figure named Joseph Smith (who was born a Christian, formed the Mormons, quit the Mormons to be Methodist and then quit the Methodists after 14-years and returned to forming Mormonism again) put the world right with the Church of Latter Day Saints.

At the same time, I can’t help praying that he will revert to the Faith he was given at Baptism. I really do. He would be a force to be reckoned with if he came to the fullness of the Faith, which is the Truth and Light of Christ Himself given to us by the Holy Catholic Church in the Most Blessed Sacrament at every Mass and in every tabernacle in the world.

Jesus said: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

I suppose that’s like the motto of the Life & Hope Network: “Where there is Life, there is Hope.”
Exactly.

Do you think Glenn will try that coffee I made him?
- John Lillis My Dinner with Glenn Beck (April 13, 2015)

Nature of Man

To believe in men is first of all not to hide the truth from them by celebrating virtue, liberty, progress, science, while the age comes to give birth to atomic bombs, concentration camps, materialism of the State, and moral nihilism. To believe in men is to warn them against “a social providence” which would regulate for them the eternal conflict between good and evil, truth and error, and would assure them a conditioned happiness in their termite mound.

Soon Africa and other nations who were once the mission territory of Christianity may re-evangelize the post-Christian Western world that first brought them the Faith.
-Andrew Guernsey Pius XII’s Prophetic Warnings about Fatima and the “Suicide” of Altering the Faith in its Liturgy  June 12, 2017 

Papacy

 A Catholic must always respect, in an absolute way, the Petrine Office, which is an essential part of the institution of the Church founded by Christ. As soon as a Catholic no longer respects the office of the Pope, he or she is disposed towards schism or to apostasy from the faith. At the same time, a Catholic must respect the man charged with the office of Pope, which means paying attention to his teaching and pastoral direction. This respect also includes the duty to express to the Pope the judgment of a conscience rightly formed, when he deviates or seems to deviate from true doctrine and sound discipline or when he abandons the responsibilities inherent in his office. By natural law, by the Gospels, and by the constant disciplinary tradition of the Church, the faithful are required to express to their pastors their concern for the state of the Church. They have this duty, to which there is a corresponding right to receive a response from their pastors.
Riccardo Cascioli Burke: Correct the Pope in order to Obey Christ (April 5, 2018)

Persecution

The battle to end Christianity is approaching its conclusion in some European countries, with lines being drawn in the U.S. as well. Western societies have made a Muslim takeover that much easier through birth-control and abortions, through which the West has lost its sustainable population. How our generation behaves could determine whether the Western way of life continues.
Our Church, our culture, our society, our people do not have long to wake up. We need to fight for souls. We need to pray for all people. We cannot stay silent and passive.
There is a stealth war against Christianity. It is a war the Church hierarchy does not see.
Frank Szedlak, Jr. My Experience of a Not So Stealth War against Christianity (May 11, 2017)

Philosophy

First, one of Catholic doctrine’s major tenets is that man’s response to God must be reasonable and free. Second, Christ came in meekness, refusing “to be a political messiah, ruling by force.” Finally, his apostles strove to convert not by coercion, but through the power of the word of God.

The Catholic tradition, then, argues that any human dignity that exists comes as given, as gift, from God — for only God is capable of granting them power to follow their own counsel.
Hilarius Bookbinder Vatican II’s Confusing Counsel on Conscience and Human Dignity  (July 8, 2019)  

The nucleus of Modernism for St. Pius X did not consist only in opposition to one or another of the revealed truths, but in the radical transformation of the whole notion of “truth” itself, through the acceptance of the “principle of immanence” which is at the foundation of modern thought, as is summed up in proposition 58 condemned by the Decree Lamentabili: “The truth is no more immutable than man himself, for it evolves with him and for him.”

Immanence is a philosophical conception which assumes experience as an absolute and excludes all transcendent reality. For the modernists, it is born from a religious feeling, which by not placing itself on any rational foundation is in reality fideism. Faith is thus not an adhesion of the intelligence to a truth revealed by God, but a religious exigency which springs from the obscure foundation (the subconscience) of the human soul. The representations of the divine realities are reduced to “symbols,” whose “intellectual formula” changes according to the “interior experience” of the believer. The formulas of dogma, for the Modernists, do not contain absolute truths; they are images of the truth which ought to adapt themselves to religious feeling.

In the final analysis religious truth resolves itself in the self-conscience of the individual faced with the individual problems of faith. In this sense there is a return to the tendency of Gnosticism to embrace all truths by means of one principle, the subjectivity of the truth and the relativity of all of its formulas.[19] For St. Pius X, “in fact the immanence of the Modernists desires and admits that each phenomenon of conscience is born from man in each man. Therefore as a legitimate consequence we may deduce that God and man are the same thing: it is therefore pantheism.[20]
Roberto De Mattei The Roots and Historical Consequences of Modernism June 23, 2018  

Poetry

Amidst the walls of crumbling stone
and pages that are tattered;
amidst the long forgotten dreams
and sorrows that are scattered
– like so many old photos
strewn across the floor –
calling out, “Do you remember?
Do you still love me anymore?”

Time, marches on
the same relentless gait,
never ceasing still increasing,
and for no man will it wait.
But instead treads each
soul neatly underfoot;
this meager mortal grind of
ash and dirt and soot.

And dust, from which we came
and to which we must return.
This, life’s one long
lesson must we learn
by heart, till heart should
beat no more;
in a cold abandoned box
seven feet beneath the floor.
Death, above all else is
certain, sure, and soon.
Even now as life approaches
the fateful hand of noon.
Brian Miles A Godforsaken Mind (February 19, 2015)

Pope Francis

It is unfortunate that the Benedict-is-still-Pope (BISP) theory, for some, has moved beyond a mere “theory” or hypothesis to be now treated as an undeniable fact, known with moral certitude. While I share the concerns over this papacy (NB: concerns that led to the foundation of this blog) which have led some to find the BISP theory an ‘attractive’ explanation of Francis, I just don’t believe there is any credible evidence for the BISP theory.  I wish I could say otherwise. I do. However, the evidence is simply not there.
-Steven O'Reilly Benedict is Still Pope and Other Errors (January 15, 2019) 

Only after an enormous amount of research would it be possible to say with relative certainty (we’re speaking about a divine institution, after all) whether or not the direction of Pope Francis would be continued by a new pope.

Will the conclave favor continuity with Pope Francis?

What happens if there is no majority in a conclave for the disciples of Francis? The most prominent opponent to a lot of what Pope Francis does is Cardinal Burke, who was bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin and archbishop of St. Louis, Missouri before heading the Apostolic Signatura in Rome. Pope Francis demoted him and gave him an honorary position with the Order of Malta.

It’s unlikely for Burke to be elected pope. The cardinals will be afraid to elect someone from North America, because the media are sure to dig up every single speck of dirt that can be found, no matter how insignificant. The first reason is simply the desire for a scoop; the second is that Burke is a conservative, which almost nobody in the media would appreciate.

Other names come to mind, for instance Cardinal Müller, but it’s impossible to know if enough cardinals would rally around him. A new pope from Asia or Africa is not unimaginable. The idea would be to elect a person distant from the epicenters of corruption and depravity in the West. At the same time, many cardinals might be weary of electing someone they don’t know very well – the election of Bergoglio was a mistake some cardinals won’t want to repeat. Also, the better known cardinals from these two continents are a mixed bag, at best, ranging from Cardinal Sarah on the one hand to Cardinal Tagle on the other. The spectrum may well extend even farther, given our lack of knowledge about most cardinals.

What’s to be done now?
-Martin Bürger Let’s Say Pope Francis Resigns. What Next? (September 3, 2018)
 One Comment

In his first public homily on March 14, 2013, His Holiness Francis cited our calling to walk as disciples of Christ and alluded to the idea that a renewal of the Church will only come about through the cross. He warned that a failure to confess Christ before men would reduce the Church to a “pitiful NGO” that walks no longer with Christ, but according to the world.

All things considered, Pope Francis is a good man with the lamp of charity burning in his heart, so we pray he shine that lamp universally over the whole Church.
-David Martin Let us pray that the new pope will stand fully with God, like Moses with his staff
Canada Free Press March 15, 2013

The papacy of Pope Francis has set many new bars for the Church. Many of us, who are faithful Catholics, have been shocked and dismayed as he appointed heterodox clergy and prelates; promulgated highly ambiguous documents that appear to challenge formal teaching; and terrified us with unguarded language of the latest airplane presser like a lightning bolt from the hand of Zeus, poised to strike at any time. “Who am I to judge” and the reluctance to handle the problems stemming from homosexuality in the clergy have caused many faithful even more dismay.

It is little wonder that some people wish it would all go away. In recent years, some people have decided they will do just that. How? By putting it in a hat and pulling out a rabbit named Benedict. These individuals, believing that Pope Benedict did not properly abdicate the papal throne (for one reason or another, all of them wrong, as we shall see), argue that he and not Pope Francis is the true pope. Therefore, all the insanity goes away, problem solved, huzzah! Some have coined a term for them: “Benevacantists.” I will use this term as an easy reference for these individuals who hold for a certain fact that Benedict is the pope, while Francis is not.

We have seen that there is no prescribed form for a pope to resign from the papacy apart from him making his will known and following it up with action. If there is some pressure, threat, or duress caused by whatever theory one wishes to posit, according to canonical principles, this act remains valid until it is shown otherwise in an ecclesiastical court. The presumption of validity rests upon the current officeholder until proven otherwise, just as in a marriage, presumption of validity rests upon the bond until proven otherwise.

To overthrow due process, the gift of the Church to the legal systems of the world, and reduce judgment of who the pope is to bloggers and Facebook posts opining from private judgment is to not only attack the visibility of the Church, but to invite schism at levels unseen since the Middle Ages. Five centuries of Protestantism have dulled our senses to the evil of schism, but it is something to be feared rather than welcomed.
Ryan Grant Rise of the Benevacantists: Who Is Pope? (December 14, 2018)

Major: The universal acceptance of Francis as pope following his election provides infallible certitude that he became the legitimate pope.
Minor: One of the conditions required for Francis to have become pope is that the papal office was vacant at the time, and hence that Benedict’s abdication was valid.
Conclusion:  Since Francis was accepted as pope by the entire Church, it proves infallibly that the papal office was vacant at the time, and hence that Benedict’s abdication was valid.
If the Major is true, the Conclusion is also true. If the Papal See was not vacant at the time of the election, Francis would not have been accepted as pope by the Church. Since he was accepted as pope, it proves infallibly that the papal office was vacant at the time, hence that Benedict’s abdication was valid.
Every objection that has been raised against the validity of Francis’s election (or the validity of Benedict’s abdication) can be inserted into the place of the Minor and will be refuted by the infallible Major. Any attempt to get around it will require that Minor, which is nothing but a fallible opinion, to be treated as infallible, and the Major, which is an infallible dogmatic fact, be treated as a fallible opinion. In other words, to reject the legitimacy of Francis, one must reject an infallible truth (Major) in favor of a personal opinion (Minor), which is both illogical and absurd.
Robert Siscoe Dogmatic Fact: The One Doctrine that Proves Francis Is Pope (March 18, 2019)  

Prayer

Pray that the orthodox bishops at the Synod have the courage to defend our Lord and His Church against the modernists.
-Jeffrey Bond, What We May Expect From the Synod: A Brief Synopsis (October 4, 2015)

There are certainly times for silence. Before the Blessed Sacrament. As one sits in beautiful silence in the mystery of the Lord Jesus Christ’s offering during the Holy Mass. Silence in solemn remembrance of a loved one passed on, hopefully to our Lord’s peaceful embrace.
John Vianney said, “Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.”
Nikko Lane Silence and Prayer’ When the House Is Falling Down ( September 7, 2018)

Pro-Life

A quick internet search led me to 40 Days for Life. I went through their short but informative training course and have now been a part of a number of sidewalk protests throughout the greater regions of Philadelphia.
Last week, God answered my prayer by placing me in front of a late-term abortion clinic in Chinatown. The other two women who were scheduled to meet me were late, and so I found myself all alone, rosary in hand.
“Get away from here!” The clinic’s receptionist stormed out, screaming at me. Her hands were up as if she were trying to shoo me away. I kindly pointed out that I was standing on a public sidewalk. Then I pointed to my gray hair and frumpy tee-shirt that reads, “I love you and your unborn baby.”
“Am I really that scary?” I asked her with a smile. “I’m just a grandma who loves babies.”
I stood my ground, knowing that just the sight of me and my rosary beads was probably keeping clients from entering. According to statistics, there can be 75% “no shows” on the days when people simply pray outside an abortion facility.
-Sarah Robsdotter How a Bully Pushed Me to the Front Lines of the Pro-Life Movement (May 3, 2019)

Protestant

The Protestant is unaware that he is looking through the interpretive lens of an upstart religious tradition. He is unaware that his outlook is governed by a lens at all or even of what that means as far as discovering objective truth is concerned. Moreover, he is unaware that there exists a rich, coherent, and unbroken interpretive tradition and understanding of the nature and place of Scripture and of its meaning that predates Protestantism by 1,500 years.

To add to this, the Protestant’s thinking on religious matters is bound and distorted by a foundational commitment to the idea, foreign to historical Christianity, that the Bible is to be understood all on its own as though it fell from the sky — not in the light of the religious tradition from which it came, but strictly in the light of itself. He does not consider that his understanding of the nature and purpose of the Bible corresponds to a new and problematic interpretive framework. This is to say that it necessarily changes the meaning of the text.

Protestants, generally speaking, have little to no knowledge of the history of Christianity (even of Protestantism), although they do embrace a set of self-confirming myths about it. This does not bother them. Christian tradition is, to the mind of most Protestants, wholly irrelevant to the understanding of the Bible, which does not require any context outside what can be discerned from its pages. History can thus be disregarded.
On the Evangelization of Protestants
 Clement James March 8, 2019

Raising Children

I am no educational expert. I am simple high school student, working from my own observations. However, I think we can all agree that the importance of Catholic friends who care about their faith is important. We should always try to help those in error to the truth, but that is a job best left to well formed adults. Sending a child into such an environment may lead to significant damage to his faith.
-Thomas Greninger The Importance of Catholic Friends (April 19, 2019) 

Imagine if St. Joseph and Our Lady sent Jesus away to be taught by the Romans so they could devote all her energies to building a lucrative carpentry business. Perhaps they considered sending Jesus to the Temple permanently to be instructed by the greatest scholars of the law because they felt ill equipped for such a daunting task. Clearly, God the Father could have willed that His beloved Son be born into home of the world’s greatest intellectuals, but this was not the case. Instead, God wanted to be raised by the most virtuous parents in the history of the world. The home, the domestic church, is the greatest school of virtue. After all, which is more important: getting our children into Heaven or Harvard?

When a mother chooses her career over her children for any other reason than absolute necessity, she exposes her innocent children to a world of vice. A quick read of St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography reveals how wicked relatives and friends were leading her to Hell had she not repented.
T.A. Mylor The Fifth Prophecy of Humanae Vitae  (November 20, 2019)
T.A. Mylor is the pseudonym of a man who loves saints and sunsets.

Revelation

The passage of time will possibly bring greater revelations – then again, perhaps not – but, like a hand held over a flipped coin long enough, you will lose your interest in the matter…or failing that, at least your steam.
T. Greypiccolo Prerogative, the Pope, and Peronism: ‘I Will Not Say a Single Word’ (August 28, 2018)

Sacred Music

Watching "The Nativity Story." Opens with Veni Emmanuel in Latin. Even Hollywood knows proper liturgical music is Latin. --Adrian Hau

Scandal

Your Eminence, Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley,
It is with a spirit of faith, hope, and love that I write this letter to you, the shepherd of all Roman Catholics in the Archdiocese of Boston. During his apostolic journey to the United States, our Holy Father Pope Francis exhorted you and all of the U.S. bishops in attendance to be “close to people,” becoming “pastors who are neighbors and servants.” Citing the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the Holy Father asked that you and your brother bishops be men of pastoral sensitivity, examples to the priests under your care, so that they too may “be ready to stop, care for, soothe, lift up and assist those who, ‘by chance’ find themselves stripped of all they thought they had” (Lk. 10:29-37).
John A. Monaco An Open Letter to Cardinal O’Malley Regarding the Seminary Investigation
 (August 17, 2018)

The best possible end to the McCarrick Affair is that Mr. McCarrick tell all he knows. He might do it for all the wrong reasons: revenge, greed, spite. He might not do it for the good of the Church or his immortal soul. No matter. People often do the right thing for the wrong reasons. The entire Body of Christ would benefit, whether McCarrick intends it or not.
Please, someone: Offer Mr. McCarrick a book deal.
-Jennifer Roback Morse The Best Possible End to the McCarrick Affair (February 28, 2019) 

Space Exploration

The first person to stand on the Moon was Neil Armstrong, who was followed by Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins orbited above. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. Throughout these six Apollo spaceflights, twelve men walked on the Moon. These missions returned a wealth of scientific data and 381.7 kilograms of lunar samples. Apollo set major milestones in human spaceflight. It stands alone in sending manned missions beyond low Earth orbit, and landing humans on another celestial body. Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit another celestial body, while Apollo 17 marked the last moonwalk and the last manned mission beyond low Earth orbit to date. The program spurred advances in many areas of technology peripheral to rocketry and manned spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers. Apollo sparked interest in many fields of engineering and left many physical facilities and machines developed for the program as landmarks. Many objects and artifacts from the program are on display at various locations throughout the world, notably at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museums.
-Demo Content Getting NASA back into outer space, March 26, 2016 

Spiritual Warfare

Even though Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said the laity would save the Church, many in the laity are acutely aware of their limitations. We can’t elect a pontiff, submit dubia, or run a diocese.
In the ongoing civil war between orthodoxy and modernism, we are privates, not generals, colonels, or even lieutenants. It’s good to know your station in life; it’s equally good to do all you can within that station.

The warrior and the martyr are two sides of the same coin. Christ’s crucifixion destroyed the works of the devil; the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

Fighting, in some ways, may look different for different people according to their gifts. One believer may pray and fast deep into the night, another teach a class promoting robust orthodoxy at his parish, another start a petition that puts pressure on a corrupt prelate to resign, still another make a contribution to orthodox Catholic media.

Our Lady longs to take these sacrificial acts and weaponize them in advancing the kingdom of God. We’re like the small boy who brought his loaves and fishes to Christ and saw them miraculously multiplied for the purpose of serving others. Our Lady, like her Son, is a force-multiplier.

When religious institutions move to the left theologically and politically, it results in precipitous decline in membership, revenue, and influence in the culture. Years ago, sociologist Dean Kelley understood that churches adhering to Tradition were growing because they make serious demands of their parishioners in the areas of doctrine and behavior.

More than one saint has asserted that God gives his favorites more trials and that he holds his choice servants so close that they feel his nails and thorns.

Aquinas wisely identified at least four substitutes for God: wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. If you find yourself half-hearted about fighting in the civil war, then now is the time to do a searching and thorough examination of conscience.

He cries out to heaven: “My God! How can anyone be saved?” A voice responds from Heaven: “Humility.” Ancient Hebrew wisdom tells us that with humility comes wisdom (Prov. 11:2), and we’ll need supernatural wisdom to recognize and repudiate the many strategies of the enemy.
-Jonathan Coe  What It Means to Kill and to Die in Our Lady’s Army (October 30, 2019)

Courage, steadfastness, equanimity, and unyielding faith in the eternal promises, truths, and traditions bequeathed to the bride of Christ must govern our hearts and wills in this time of great testing. Then, and only then, will the song of the just ring out in one accord as the perpetual cry for deliverance from this madness rises with that of all temporal creation…… Maranatha!
-Michael More Till the Storms of Destruction Pass By…. (December 5, 2016)

The treasure of the Church

The Synod on the Family revealed a profound malaise in the Church – a crisis of growth without doubt, but also recurrent debates on the question of “remarried” divorced persons, “models” for the family, the role of women, birth control, surrogate motherhood, homosexuality, and euthanasia. It is futile to close our eyes: the Church is challenged in its very foundations. These are to be found in the entirety of the Holy Scriptures, in the teaching of Jesus, in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in the announcement of the Gospel by the Apostles, in an ever finer understanding of Revelation, in the assent of faith by the community of believers. The Church has been entrusted by Jesus with the mission of receiving these truths, casting light on their coherence, commemorating them.
The Church has not been given by the Lord either a mission to modify these truths or a mission to rewrite the Credo. The Church is the guardian of this treasure. The Church should study these truths, clarify them, deepen man’s understanding of them, and invite all men to adhere to them through faith.
Msgr. Michel Schooyans From Casuistry to ‘Mercy’: Toward a New Art of Pleasing? (November 9, 2017)  

Tradition: TRADITION

MILLIONS OF WORDS have been written and spoken for and against the revolution within the Catholic Church called Vatican Council 2. Nothing was left unchanged following the Council .  I am not qualified to discuss any of this as a theologian or philosopher or church historian or canon lawyer or even as someone with an opinion that deserves to be heard. I am just someone who has lived right through this revolution, who has seen it develop.

On a cheerier note, allowing for individual situations and speaking generally, choose tradition and you will be exposed to the beauty of Catholic liturgy and culture in all its forms including a clear connection to 2000 years of church history – you won’t be drifting aimlessly; you will know why you are Catholic and you will love and value your faith above all things; the world will never be able to serve up anything to make you despair; you will always have serenity within the depths of your soul; you will very likely have many happy and well adjusted children and grand children, and your life will always have purpose and joy even in tough times. I acknowledge times will get tougher for our children and their children but as mentioned above, God will not be outdone in generosity.
Anthony Massey 50 YEARS LATER: An Everyman Reflection on the Revolution of Vatican II
The Remnant January 12, 2019

Universal Church

The Archdiocese of Cebu is home to 4.6 million Catholics. It was on this island in March 1521 where Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing under the Spanish flag, first arrived in the Philippines – and with him missionaries who would be the first to preach the Gospel to the Filipinos. The first baptism and the first celebration of the Holy Mass in the country would occur here. Pope St. John Paul II, in his visit to Cebu in 1981, called it the “cradle of Christianity in the Philippines.”

“Finding myself in this important city known as the cradle of Christianity in the Philippines, I want to express my deep joy and profound thanksgiving to the Lord of history. The thought that for 450 years the light of the Gospel has shone with undimmed brightness in this land and on its people is cause for great rejoicing.” –John Paul II, February 1981 

With such a deep history and heritage of Catholicism, it is a big surprise that up until recently, there was no regular traditional Latin Mass celebrated in Cebu. Maybe it is the Filipino culture, which is so quick to respond to changes. After all, the young people here are very up-to-date when it comes to cell phones, social media, and fashion.  Being a flexible bunch, Filipino Catholics, lay and clergy alike, have embraced wholeheartedly the post-conciliar reforms. The ancient rite is extremely hard to come by in these parts, with even the Novus Ordo celebrated ad orientem or in Latin a rarity.
Gerard Biagan Cebu: Nurturing the Latin Mass in Asia’s Christian Cradle (December 14, 2017) 

It happened at the time when Father Pilus thought that not a single Catholic existed in the entire country. One day, he was in an open-air market (dressed in civilian clothes – clerical dress would have been inadvisable, even dangerous), buying some cheap vegetables. He chose a stall to buy from, and the stall holder, a lady, asked him if he was Russian. He replied (in Russian) that no, he was Polish. She asked him what he did. “You are working in the shipyard, I suppose.” “No, I am a Catholic priest,” answered Father Pilus.

He told me later that the woman physically jumped backward as if electrocuted, tearfully telling him that her mother was very aged and near death. She was one of the very few Catholics who had returned alive from Stalin’s camps, and all she wanted was to see a priest before she died. Desperate, she was praying constantly for this grace, but of course it was impossible for her daughter to arrange this for her. She asked if Father Pilus would come to her apartment, where her mother was bedridden, that very minute.

Father Pilus had found his first Catholic. He heard the old mother’s Confession (all Baku Azeris speak Russian) and gave her Holy Communion and the Last Rites. She died peacefully in the Faith some two or three days later.
Benedict Carter Good News from across the World: Father Pilus and the Church in Azerbaijan May 25, 2017

The future for the Church in Ireland is bleak: falling numbers, persecuted by powerful forces that seek to eradicate it from the land, weak leadership. Yet this is nothing new. Twice in its history, the Irish Church has been wreathed in shadows. The early Church brought light to pagan Europe after the fall of Rome. Then she rose again after the penal laws and persecution: this land of saints and scholars sent missionaries to bring light to all corners of the globe.
The Faith will remain in Ireland – small, isolated, but waiting.
JGP Connolly A Peculiarly Irish Disaster: What Remains of the Faith of Eire? (June 8, 2018)

So here we sit, amid the ruins of a crippled Church, with a pearl of great price. We have a parish that is rock-solid orthodox, with a choice on Sunday between a prime-time Missa Cantata and a prime-time Reform of the Reform Mass. We have multiple Latin Mass options during the week, a robust devotional life, and a booming parish of intentional Benedict Option families — and all of this on a foundation of daily Confession, widely available and accessible to the faithful.
The lesson is that you start with a single step. Maybe it’s a Kyrie — after all, how hard is it to sing three words in Greek? Maybe it’s a single priest just happening to choose Penitential Rite A and the Roman Canon every single time. God takes these small inches and gives us a mile in return. All we have to do is participate in His plan. Even with everything else going on, we have a place to hide from the storm and a beacon for others.
 Ryan Ellis Brick by Brick: A Living Example of a Thriving, Orthodox Parish (May 23, 2019)

The tiny number of conversions that result from the efforts of Japanese Catholicism is a sad reality. I often ponder the reasons. Is there any greater barrier to evangelization than disunity amongst the people who claim to follow Christ in a place still very unfamiliar with Him? A Mormon here; a Jehovah’s Witness there; an Evangelical singing hymns on a street corner. How can a Japanese person navigate through it? We Catholics commit ourselves to barely a fraction of the evangelization efforts these others do. I wonder if Catholic schools even teach the salvific imperative in Church dogma. To complicate matters, Oriental people seem to see religion not so much as a means of salvation, but rather more like a talisman: something to ward off misfortune or bring happiness and prosperity. It is a question of “What can it do for me?” But when people become as prosperous and successful as they have in modern times, supplication of the supernatural fades away and self-reliance increases. You can see it clearly by the decline even in the prominence of Shinto and Buddhist practice in daily Japanese life since World War II, and these religions are inextricably interwoven with the culture here.
Michael Ezzo Catholicism in Japan: Reflections of an American Ex-Pat  (November 17, 2017)

To speak the truth. The truth about red-Chinese Communism. The truth about the persecution of the Catholic Church. The truth about the planned betrayal of legitimate Chinese Catholicism to red-Chinese Communism.
It is exactly this freedom of the word that will kill progressivism: in order to gain doubtful advantages, the Catholics of China are supposedly to give up rather than to insist upon their rightful freedom to speak the truth.
Cardinal Zen responds to this and says: No! Not with me! I will not be silent!
Let us follow his example – in the West as in the East – and let us bear witness that the unchangeable Catholic Faith must be proclaimed freely, always and everywhere. Because only in this way, we fulfill the mission of Jesus Christ: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”
Mathias Von Gersdorff 
Cardinal Zen – The Man Who Does Not Follow Cardinal Parolin’s Kowtow toward Secular Power
(2018)  

On May 13, 1524, twelve Spanish Franciscan friars set foot on Mexican soil for the first time. After walking barefoot from the coast of Veracruz, they finally arrived at Mexico City, a distance of 250 miles over two mountain ranges. These men “of exceptional worth” became known as “The Twelve Apostles” because of their apostolic zeal. The evangelization of Mexico had begun.
Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill, in Mexico City (two hours west of Tlaxcala). Within a decade, nine million indigenous people had converted to the Catholic faith. In 1990, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope John Paul ll beatified the three boys, declaring them martyrs for the faith “in odium fidei” (in hatred of the Faith). They were canonized by Pope Francis in 2017. They were the first martyrs in the Americas.
Mary Hansen The Three Boy Martyrs of Tlaxcala, Mexico (November 11, 2019)


The people of Mexico are open to the traditional Latin Mass, although for the most part, they aren’t even aware of it. This was the mission’s goal: to let people know about the Mass and bring people over to it.
We went door to door in a small town called Juchipila. We invited people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, to experience the allure and beauty of the Latin Mass. Every night, we had a Solemn High Mass, and it felt so good to see the angry anti-Catholics with whom we just argued for hours sitting in the front pew with tears in their eyes. Most of these people were at one point or another Catholic, and many had left the church because of Vatican II.

Many Catholics in Mexico no longer go to Mass, yet they still pray the daily rosary and walk in the Good Friday processions. We would knock on their doors, and they would see that we were the “misioneros.” They would gladly invite us into their homes, whether they were rich or poor, and we would talk to each other. One particular man I remember told me he lived through the Cristero War, and he recalled always wanting to be a Cristero even at his young age. This man also told me he remembers the old rite of the Mass, but in this town and in this day and age, they hadn’t had a priest who would say it in a long time. I personally invited him to attend that night’s Solemn High Mass, and he was there, praying the responses in Latin and everything!
-Henry Hickey Growing Faith in 2017: Two Hopeful Stories in a Troubled Year (December 6, 2017)

I was overjoyed to learn that the Underground Church was increasingly able to come out of the catacombs and was, in many parts of China, openly preaching the Gospel and making converts. Even more surprising to me was that the Patriotic church, which had begun as a communist front organization intended to co-opt and gradually extinguish Catholicism throughout China, had been transformed from within by faithful Catholics who saw themselves as part of the Universal Church.
Steven W. Mosher Parolin and the China Negotiations: First, Do No Harm (February 22, 2018) 

 Dominus vobiscum!
The heart of the Community of St. Bonaventure is complete. I want to thank everyone for attending the inaugural Mass, especially those who had to stand outside. Perhaps we already underestimated how large it needed to be! But what a wonderful problem to have!

Ten years of toil, blood, sacrifice. Ten years of hardest labor, the type this land once forgot. Not only did you donate money and time, but you gave your lives to see our vision completed. You wanted something that would outlast you, and God willing you have it. If anything allows us to see God, it is to make a sanctuary for His Grace.

Now, when a traveler comes to our community, he will see the Cross rising high above our town and know that this is a communion of believers, banded together by baptism in our Lord Jesus Christ. When he sees the high stone walls of our Church, he will understand what perseverance entails. When he sees the spires rising up to the heavens, the carvings of saints, the light entering through gorgeous stained glass windows depicting our Lord’s mission on Earth, he will understand the Holy Spirit dwelling within. When he enters the church to see the Holy of Holies, resting in a tabernacle still not worthy of Himself, but the best us lowly men could do, he will know what faith is. Perhaps that traveler will join us here.

I ask that you remember those who came before you, the faithful who worked tirelessly so you could have the deposit of Faith unsullied. I ask that you stop by the cemetery of your faithful great grandparents and say thank you, because they did not live to see the spring. They did it for you, all of you here.

Yet we need to look beyond our town. Always, we are part of a larger mission. As we grow, our mission will grow with it. I’ve been informed that our governor is declaring, in no uncertain terms, that every authority on Earth, including this state, is subject to the authority of Christ. Abortion is, thank God, now criminalized. Our communities are now hundreds strong and still expanding. We are all connected to one another, learning, communicating. Yet nothing can be better than simple human interactions with the people closest to you.
Nathan Thelen What Will It Look Like if We Win? (October 29, 2018)

Vatican

I recently got to tour the papal gardens at Castel Gandolfo, and it was a remarkable experience. They were too lovely for my poor powers of description.

Papal guards, papal sweepers, choristers, builders, etc., etc. surround the pontiff in a great constellation of virtuous devotion. You see the pride in their eyes. They are humbly conscious that their daily work goes toward magnifying the descendants of Peter and making possible not only a fitting liturgical splendor, but even his basic safety and livelihood.

Everything we passed was papal property. Papal olive groves, papal greenhouses, papal cypresses; the ancient remains of the imperial summer palace; and, yes, papal chickens and cows! There was even, I kid you not, a papal car train – I mean a little white train of open touring cars pulled by a car whose engine was shaped like a train engine, with steam pipe and all! And, jealousy of jealousies, there is a little convent school smack in the middle of the gardens for the children of the town.

I went to papal vespers at St. Paul Outside the Walls, and it was a huge event.

I’ve been to pontifical liturgies in the old rite before, so I didn’t expect to be impressed. But the effect was really awe-inspiring, and the antique basilica aesthetic finally made absolute sense to me. Anyone standing far in the back can only but glimpse the figures of the pope and his entourage ranged round the back of the huge apse, the figures only and nothing of their features. But if he only looks up to the great arch, he sees Christ arranged in state with his apostles, directly above the clergy. The effect is indescribably powerful: the individuals and their personalities disappear, and all of a sudden, one is confronted with a vast image of the cosmos in beautiful symmetry: Christ and his apostles there, the pope and his clergy here on Earth, we the people gathered before his face. The altar planted in the middle of it all.
Aelredus Rievallensis
What ‘Humility’ Means for the Papal Staff     March 1, 2017