St. Joseph the Worker Shrine, Lowell, Massachusetts. Jesus calms the storm. This Week’s Messagefrom Fr. AmesseApril 23, 2023 In a month, we will celebrate the “40 Hours Devotion.” The Holy Eucharist will be exposed on the altar for approximately 40 hours. St. John Neumann made the 40 Hours Devotion popular as Bishop of Philadelphia (1852-1860). … Read More He Is Here. And He is Not Silent.
By Italy specialist Shannon I’ve always been drawn to Italy’s places of worship because of the stories of controversy and intrigue hidden in their elaborate sculptures, paintings and façades. For my Art History degree, I studied in Florence and attended lectures in churches and basilicas throughout Italy. There I learned that when you’re seeing a… Read More Sidewalk Evangelism
(CNA) In his remarks on April 19, Archbishop Paglia emphasized that the Church is not a ‘dispenser of truth pills’ when it comes to engaging with a pluralistic society on the most challenging moral issues of the day. Shannon Mullen/Hannah Brockhaus/CNA Vatican April 23, 2023 Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life,… Read More Pontifical Academy of Life President Calls Medically Assisted Suicide ‘Feasible’
Tucker Carlson cancelled by Fox News. Opinion. Updated. NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — “Conservative media titan Tucker Carlson and Fox News on Monday “agreed to part ways” effective immediately. Carlson’s last broadcast was April 21, giving the hugely popular host no opportunity to bid farewell to his audience. An announcement from Fox News shared on social media… Read More Are Moral Truths and Free Inquiry Being Outlawed in America Today?
David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way” “The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of… Read More Videodrome. When the Seven Deadly Sins of Excess Morphed Into “Progress”
+ Earliest ‘Jesus is God’ inscription found — deemed ‘greatest discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls’. See NYPost, November 2024 Bishop’s Encyclopedia of Religion, Society and Philosophy Jesus Mythicism As Dan Brown in his book The Da Vinci Code writes, “Nothing in Christianity is original.” Much is meant by Brown’s words. It is in recent… Read More Reasons Why Scholars Know Jesus Is Not A Copy Of Pagan Religions
Little Known Facts By Philip Kosloski While working in a factory during the Nazi Occupation of Poland, Karol Wojtyla heard that one of his co-workers was expecting a child. The man worked the night shift and found out that his wife gave birth to their child. After a full day of work during the day, Karol… Read More John Paul II: A Man for Others
Kills Babies, Injures Women The Supreme Court is allowing continued sales of the dangerous abortion pill that kills babies and has killed and injured women. The vote was 7-2, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting. The nation’s highest court ruled [April 21] in an unsigned order that the abortion drug mifepristone can continue… Read More Supreme Court Allows Continued Sales of Abortion Pill
“Do you know that we are tremendously powerful already? … I’ve reckoned them all up: a teacher who laughs with children at their God and at their cradle is on our side. The lawyer who defends an educated murderer because he is more cultured than his victims … is one of us…. The juries who… Read More Dostoevski on the Revolutionaries
“…recent changes to the way everyone gets their news—coupled with the style of news that dominates today—may not be good for mental and even physical health. “The way that news is presented and the way that we access news has changed significantly over the last 15 to 20 years,” says Graham Davey, a professor emeritus… Read More What is Monied “News” Consumption Doing to Us?
“New World Order Without God”… Who needs the old Progressivist desire for a Third Vatican Council to mitigate Church teachings when they can have almost anything they want through an incremental permanent synodal Church? A lot of the infiltrators who maneuvered their way into the highest positions in the Church by pretending to be pious… Read More Cardinal Müller challenges Pope Francis
Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register wrote, “The former cardinal-archbishop of Milan [Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini], a favorite of those pushing for heterodox reforms in the Church, had envisioned a permanent synodal Church in which the idea of collegial governance introduced at the Second Vatican Council could be better realized. The Jesuit biblical… Read More Martini’s Endless Dream
By Father Gabriel of St Mary Magdalene, O.C.D. Even without the presence of other causes, it is possible to pass from a state of sensible spiritual fervor to one of absolute aridity. This happens by the direct work of God which makes it impossible for the soul to pray with the help of the mind… Read More Aridity and Spiritual Progress
Damian Thompson associate editor of The Spectator writes, “Ludwig van Beethoven had a profound faith in God. He was born and raised a Catholic and on his deathbed he asked to receive the Last Rites. He told the priest, ‘I thank you, ghostly sir – you have brought me comfort.’ One of his closest friends,… Read More Why didn’t Beethoven Go to Mass?
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
… involved, he says, in recruitment of “undercover sources” within the Catholic Church and other churches. Catholic News Agency reports, “A new document revealed that the Richmond Federal Bureau of Investigation used at least one undercover agent to obtain information about traditionalist Catholics, said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who chairs the House Subcommittee on the… Read More Senator Josh Hawley says DOJ spying on Christians and churches
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.… Read More First Amendment Protections
The Incomparable Mr. Buckley | William F. Buckley, Jr. | Full Documentary “A new American Masters documentary on him settles on one adjective in its title, The Incomparable Mr. Buckley, but not before first suggesting “insufferable” and crossing it out, in reference to a letter Buckley said he once received. Indeed, not many people like the through-and-through WASP… Read More The Incomparable Mr. Buckley | Full Documentary
“The laity . . . are given this special vocation: to make the Church present and fruitful in those places and circumstances where it is only through them that she can become the salt of the earth” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 33; emphasis added). Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem Second Vatican Council… Read More Laity and Evangelization
Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager. In this episode Trent Horn examines some recent comments from Dennis Prager and Jordan Peterson that argue for pornography in moderation and compares them to Protestants who condemn porn but defend masturbation. Trent Horn earned his master’s degrees in the fields of theology, philosophy, and bioethics. He serves as a… Read More Trent Horn on The Spiritual Limits of Otherwise Decent Internet Moralists
And the Whittaker Chambers masterpiece, Witness. Excerpt from an Amazon review of Witness by T. Graczewski. “Witness” makes the Red Scare of the early 1950s much more palpable and understandable for twenty-first century American readers. The conspiracy that Chambers details in “Witness” is stunning in its scope and audacious in its aims. Today, McCarthyism and… Read More Are We Reliving a New Phase of the Hiss – Chambers Drama In Our Time?
When after hundreds of years the LORD finally heard the prayers and cries of his people in Egypt and delivered them from slavery under Pharaoh, he led them into the desert where they suffered for another 40 or so years. And the people were not happy about it: Then they said to Moses, “Was it because there… Read More Real Faith is Not For the Fainthearted
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. April 3. “My heart hath expected reproach and misery: And I looked for one who would grieve together with me, but there was none:And I searched for one who would comfort me, and I found none:And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst, they gave me vinegar… Read More Abp. Viganò: Passion of the Church No Less Serious Than Our Lord’s Passion
Peter Kwasniewski, PhD To a degree not yet as widely recognized as it should be, Pope Francis – Jorge Bergoglio, S.J. – is showing himself to be an admirable disciple of his Jesuit forerunner Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955), the Piltdown paleontologist and “Omega Point” mystagogue, who exercised an enormous influence on the young… Read More Teilhard de Chardin: Model of Ambiguity for a Future Pope
“One of the most famous and most evil techniques of Maoist Marxism is the “struggle session” (dòuzhēng, 鬥爭; or pīpàn dòuzhēng, 批判鬥爭, “critical struggle”; or sometimes just pīdòu, 批鬥; also called “denunciation” sessions). “They were made famous during Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but they were utilized in the Chinese thought-reform (xǐnǎo, 洗脑, lit. “wash brain”… Read More Surviving A Modern “Struggle Session”. James Lindsay.
…and Interview With the Authors, Shaun Blanchard and Stephen Bullivant. Note: The book under discussion here represents only one of a number of interpretations of Vatican II and it’s fruits which are found at this website. See Labels / Categories for others. — Editor. “There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that sometime in the 1950s,… Read More Addressing a “Different Kind of Crisis”? A New Introduction to Vatican II
Beyond Independent Thought “In the World State in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, embryos are placed in a social class and conditioned to the careers and peers that best meet the needs of the community … we learn about the social class called Epsilon. Bred to Be Unintelligent. The World State produces five distinct social classes named from… Read More Huxley’s Uniform Epsilons
On Confession, by Fr.Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD. “Penance is the sacrament of Christ’s Precious Blood in which God — according to the eloquent words of St. Catherine of Siena — “has bathed us in order to cleanse the face of our souls from the leprosy of sin.” If mortal sin only is the… Read More On Confession. By Fr.Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD.
G. K. Chesterton: “In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon… Read More Man could do no more… Pilate “washed his hands of the world”
House Republicans passed a bill on Friday that emphasizes parental rights in the classroom, leaning into a hot-button, culture war issue that has gained popularity in GOP politics across the country. The legislation, titled the Parents Bill of Rights, passed in a 213-208 vote, and it now heads to the Senate for consideration. It is highly… Read More House Passes The Parents Bill of Rights
Patience in Penance. Fourteen Years the Abbot spent on Overcoming One Fault. “Love demands a complete inner transformation – for without this we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother… And this involves a death of selfishness In the Verba Seniorum [Words of the Elders] we read of Abbot Ammonas, who spent fourteen… Read More Perseverance, Patience, Penance.
“Although best known for On the Origin of Species, Darwin does not address human evolution and race until his 1871 book, The Descent of Man, in which Darwin applies his theories of natural selection to humans and introduces the idea of sexual selection. Here his white supremacism is revealed. Over the course of the book,… Read More The Dark Side of Darwinism
By far the most important book on Western revolutionary culture I’ve read in over a decade. Indispensable. A REVIEW OF THE LONG MARCH. BY ROGER KIMBALL. Encounter Books, 2000.By Bill Muehlenberg In many ways the cultural revolution of the 60s has been as influential and momentous as other great social upheavals, such as the Industrial, French or… Read More The Long March by Roger Kimball
Counterrevolution? In sickness or in health, for richer or poorer… “Tradwives, a newly coined term for traditional wives, is a subculture of housewives who believe in clear gender roles, the importance of homemaking and a patriarchal marriage, according to many women who self-identify as tradwives. Tradwives are women who honor femininity, care for their husbands,… Read More Tradwives’ push back against critics who say their viral homemaking lifestyle is ‘alarming’
Alan Dershowitz intends to vote against Donald Trump in 2024 for the 3rd time. Still, Dershowitz is practically banned by his former media friends on the Left in part because he knows they only want—as in everything else— the propaganda value of having photos of Trump in handcuffs and being finger printed, as that will… Read More Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump
Adam and Christ Romans 5: 12 Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned— 13 sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to… Read More One Race, One Blood
Updated. Cardinals Mueller and Burke on the German Synod and beyond. “Bishops are accusing brother bishops of schism and heresy — and it’s all over the most fundamental and crucial doctrines of the Church.” Signs of the times. “Desecration is the act of depriving something of its sacred character, or the disrespectful, contemptuous, or destructive… Read More Pontificate of Francis 10 Years Later
The “Global Development Initiative” and “Global Security Initiative” are vague proposals spearheaded by Xi in which China pressures other countries to abandon the “excessive pursuit of self-interest” and instead pool their resources to allegedly promote world peace and eradication of poverty. The “Global Security Initiative” is of particular concern to free countries as it does… Read More Xi Jinping: China Will Be ‘Active’ in Reforming ‘Global Governance’
—Sacred Traditio, Sacred Liturgy, Sacred Space, Sacred Scripture. “Try to wrap your head around…” — Culture critic, Florence, Italy
Never more timely. Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979). A formidable scholar, prolific author, and Catholic University professor for 23 years, Archbishop Sheen was also a pioneer of the new evangelization. A charismatic radio and television personality and a zealous preacher of the Gospel, his whole-hearted embrace of modern means of communication gave him access… Read More Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on False Compassion
Catholic Critique 