(1) The Odyssey, an epic Greek poem [attributed to Homer], tells the story of King Odysseus and his heroic struggle against the gods. The tale begins when the ship of Odysseus is blown off course on the way home from the Trojan Wars. In his effort to get home, Odysseus lands on an island where… Read More Lashed to the Mast
“The Patriarchs” of the ten tribes are men whose God-given task, even to risking death, is to protect family, especially women and daughters when in danger; because woman carries the very future in her womb. Hierarchy in Church and family has no retirement or expiration date. But even many so-called conservative (or ‘Trad’) couples are… Read More Abiding Patriarchy
When Magicians work their tricks, people applaud, are charmed, and wonder aloud how they ever did that. But with the Lord Jesus Christ it was very different. His saving deeds elicited fear, which is the sign of a real miracle occuring in the midst of sane men and women, as witness the Gospel history: “A… Read More Jesus of Nazareth vs the Magicians and Empiricists
By Father Gabriel of St Mary Magalene, 1953. O Lord, increase my confidence in Your help and grant that in this confidence, I may always find courage to begin again. What most distresses souls of good will who are seriously trying to live a spiritual life, is to find themselves falling so many times, despite… Read More The Courage To Begin Yet Again
… and a present or future faithful and deeply spiritual Pope. Acts ch. 2: “‘In the latter time, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit… Read More Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich On the Infiltrations of a Dark Theology…
“I appeal also to philosophers, and to all teachers of philosophy, asking them to have the courage to recover, in the flow of an enduringly valid philosophical tradition, the range of authentic wisdom and truth — metaphysical truth included — which is proper to philosophical inquiry — John Paul II, Fides et Ratio # 106… Read More John Paul II’s Battle Against Nihilism
A Light, Too Bright For Our Eyes. Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalene Teach me to believe, O Lord, even in darkness and obscurity; teach me to believe by relying only on Your word. Through its own efforts, the human mind is able to attain to a knowledge of God the Creator by considering created… Read More The Sacred Darkness
“We, the Ordinary People of the Streets“. The words express the core of Madeleine Delbrel’s vision: These are the people who have an ordinary job, an ordinary household, or an ordinary celibacy. People with ordinary sicknesses, and ordinary times of grieving. People with an ordinary house, and ordinary clothes. These are the people of ordinary… Read More We the Ordinary
First, the Problem. The famous Thomist philosopher Etienne Gilson writes, surely accurately, in his Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, “… at the very place where the Summa of Alexander and the Commentary of St. Bonaventure undertake to show that the existence of God is evident, St. Thomas devotes an article to proving that it… Read More Gilson, Saint Thomas and The Self-Attesting God
Romans 8: 18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of… Read More Holding On, Pressing On
Modern or post-modern man (i.e., the human person, m/f) is characterized by and attached to ambiguity and relativity. Truth, the very notion of it, is suspect. As a human being, I am obliged to truly encounter my world, my times. It has engaged me. I am now 70 years old. I have tried to engage… Read More The Light and Life of Being
“Each According to Its Kind”.by Dr. Werner Gitt. From the creation account, it is clear that all living beings were created in clearly separate groups—each according to its kind. For biologists, kinds of organisms are the fundamental building blocks, just as the chemical elements are for a study of chemistry. Rolf Siewing defines “kind” according… Read More “Each According to Its Kind’
“… several years after my Bat Mitzvah, I started to ask myself deeper questions: What is the real purpose of our human existence? What really happens when we die? And God, why do YOU feel so far away? I felt like I received a fantastic introduction to God, but I was still, somehow, craving more: I wanted a… Read More Why Recognizing Jesus as the Messiah Is the Culmination of My Jewish Faith
Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene writes, “The Blessed Virgin teaches us to believe in our vocation to sanctity, to divine intimacy. We did believe in it when God revealed it to us in the brightness of interior light, and the words of His minister confirmed it; but we should also believe in it when… Read More Mary’s Faith
Brother Gabriel of St Mary Magalene, 1953, writes, “There are many who desire to make progress in the spiritual way and constantly entreat God to draw them and let them advance to this state of perfection [the state of union], but when it pleases God to begin to bring them through the first trials and… Read More The Temptation to Escape The Cross
Why Catholic Critique? To confess the Faith to any who wish to hear or see. “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9)…” “If you continue in my word, then you are my disciples…” (Jn. 8:31) This website is a small,… Read More Catholic Critique
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
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
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.
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.
By Malcolm Muggeridge. Some eight decades ago I came into the world, full of cries and wind and hiccups; now I prepare to leave it, also full of cries and wind and hiccups. Whence I came I cannot know, least of all in the light of contemporary myths like Darwinian evolution, Freudian psychology, situational ethics,… Read More As daylight hours draw to a close
“The Unspeakable. What is that? Surely, an eschatological image. It is the void that we encounter, you and I, underlying the announced programs, the good intentions, the unexampled and universal aspirations for the best of all possible worlds. It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the… Read More Merton on The Unspeakable
“The Christian may not despair; i.e ., he may not give up hoping that God will forgive his sins, or help him in adversity. Cain despaired when he said: “My sin is too great to be forgiven” ( Gen . iv. 13 ). Saul despaired by throwing himself on his sword when hard pressed in… Read More The Christian may not despair.
James M. Patterson, April 2020First Things Magazine C-Span: The important lecture of Thomas Reeves on America’s Bishop (including an the account of his many sufferings and persecutions). Watch it here. Fulton J. Sheen is defined in popular imagination by the persona he adopted on Life Is Worth Living, his Emmy-winning television program. During each episode, the… Read More Taking Sheen Seriously
Jerry D. Salyer,Crisis Magazine. American conservatism has certainly come a long way since the days of Richard Weaver, the Southern philosopher who identified “contempt for natural order” as the underlying ailment of the modern mind. Back in the 1960s, when he was known and celebrated as a conservative intellectual icon, Weaver saw “the foolish and… Read More Are Women in the Workplace a Good Thing?
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