A stoneis not an individual.You can make little onesout of big ones. A treeis an individual.It comesfrom a germ.“Only Godcan make a tree,”says the poet. A horseis an individual.The horse is notan individualthe way the treeis an individual.It has animal life. Man is an individualand has animal lifelike the horse.Man has also reason.which the horse… Read More On Personalism. Peter Maurin.
“Master, do you not care that we perish?” — Mark iv. 38. “… we bear in mind what was promised about the holy church and him who said that the gates of hell will not prevail against it (by these we understand the death-dealing tongues of heretics); we also bear in mind what was prophesied… Read More The Gates of Hell — (Formal Heresies within and without) — Do Not Prevail
By Michael Brendan Dougherty.National Review, 10/12/22. And six decades of pseudo-theologyYears ago, during a very brief meeting at New York University with the eminent English conservative Roger Scruton, I shared with him — an Anglican by tradition — my reservations about the Second Vatican Council and my interest in the old liturgy. He had no… Read More 60 Years Since Vatican II
Who or what here is front and Center the whole time? And Who is casually picked up for scarcely a second, put back down and de-emphasized quickly, then passed around in what appears to be the real climax of liturgical intention, the act, it would appear, not of adoring His Real Presence, nor the re-presentation… Read More Now You See Him. Now You Don’t.
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 kind of death of our own being, our own self. No matter how hard we try, we resist this… Read More Perseverance, Patience, Penance.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges.… Read More The Church Will Become Small
In Evelyn Waugh’s stunning classic, Brideshead Revisited, there is a scene which presses on my mind these days as I ponder so many forces gathering against a Church weakened greatly by the sins of her own children, both clerical and lay. All of us. It is the time when Sebastian, Lord Alex Marchmain’s idiosyncratic, drunkard, but… Read More Lord Marchmain’s Long Hate
…who kindly blesses each one us from the sidewalk when we come out of Church. Or when we pass on the street. Once when I needed to Confess my sins only to find it was one of those rare days when the church was closed and there would be no Confessions, he happened to be… Read More I know a priest
Carlo Carretto1910-1988 “How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and… Read More Love Letter to the Church. Carlo Carreto.
By a.d. 1200, Europe was in the process of changing from a medieval agricultural economy to one based upon interregional trade, which contributed to the growth of large urban centers. Many of these cities evolved from successful trade fairs established along busy trade routes. In turn, they engendered a commercial revolution that would eventually change… Read More Medieval Fun and Commerce: Trade Fairs and the Commercial Revolution
Reginald Garrigou Lagrange and St. Alphonsus Ligouri 1. Catholic Thomist Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s Summary of Predestination: “Herein lies the great mystery of grace: it’s two aspects which are to be harmonized, may be expressed in the following manner: this mystery contains a striking light and shade: The light is expressed in two principles; the shade is… Read More Harmony and Differences on Predestination in Catholic Theology
Catholic Critique 