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”
Jesus Christ, “given unto us” (Isa 9.6): This true Man has been the subject of the mostsublime contemplation, worship, and love imaginable for over two thousand years. Even agnostics marvel over his Person and teachings. And His enemies, of whatever variety, obsess over Him to this very day. For in that crib, the Church attests,… Read More Jesus Christ, Light of the World
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
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.
Francis X. Maier writes. , “… We live in unsettled times. Elites in the developed world have been shedding Christianity like dead skin for decades. Their grip on our popular entertainment, news content, and emerging technologies has dragged many millions of otherwise good people along with them. Big corporations wield inordinate political power. Unelected government… Read More Not Comfortable but Free
Rom. 8:22 For we know that every creature groans and travails in pain, even till now. 23 And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body. 24 For we are saved by hope.… Read More The Whole Creation Groans
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
Understanding the Epistemological Foundations of Scientific Totalitarianism. by Phillip D. Collins. Scientific totalitarianism is certainly not a new topic in the halls of political science and history. Given its bloody legacy of democide (i.e., state-sanctioned genocide, mass murder, and politicide) and its prolific spread throughout the world, scientific totalitarianism remains a preoccupying sociopolitical phenomenon of… Read More The Faustian Face of Modern Science
By Malcom Muggeridge. First Lux! The coming of Jesus into the world is the most stupendous event in human history. . . . As it is, belonging to a civilization which began with the birth of Jesus some two thousand years ago, and reaching the conclusion—to me inescapable—that whatever is truly admirable in the achievements… Read More Into History Comes the Light
Updated. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s new book, To Change The Church: Pope Francis And The Future of Catholicism … is an urgent, compelling work of popular religious journalism. Douthat reads the signs of these anxious times with acute clarity and far-seeing vision. This book is must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of… Read More Revisiting the 2018 Dreher / Douthat Interview: the Great Gamble of Francis.
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.” —Isaiah 49:15-16″ All the wrong turns in the past, the… Read More Can A Mother Forget?
There are many people who will cite the West as something which is under threat and something for which we should be prepared to fight to defend. Depending on which defender of the West is pontificating, the threat comes from Russia, or from Islam, or from China, or from some enemy within the West itself.… Read More Is the West Worth Defending? By Joseph Pearce.
“For over two decades, Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, has been blasted in the public square as “Hitler’s Pope”, accused by bestselling authors of cowardice in the face of the Nazi regime. Some have even said that the pope was complicit in Hitler’s grab for power, privately fueled by a hatred for the Jewish people.… Read More Pius XII, WWII, and the Vatican Secret Archives
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 evoked fear, the sign of a real miracle occuring in the midst of sane men and women. As witness the Gospel history: “A large crowd… Read More Jesus of Nazareth vs Magicians and Empiricists
Jesus Christ Shows That Suffering and Peace are not Opposites. We have all been brought up in a culture—which is increasingly becoming a global culture—which says that, through some uncanny stroke of good (?) “luck, ” or “chance” we have been born into theworld; we exist; so now we have to squeeze every last pleasure… Read More Suffering: Breaking With Sin. 1 Pet. 4.
Weaponizing Jesus, Flowers, Rainbows… It was never a controversy about skin color for Catholics, despite NCRs disingenuous claims. The problem went much, much, deeper. “First unveiled on NBC’s Today Show in 2000, Janet McKenzie’s painting, Jesus of the People was the first place winner of the National ‘Catholic’ Reporter’s global competition to identify an image of Jesus… Read More Why NCRs Androgynous ‘Jesus 2000’ Was a Problem
Review Author: Jason M. Morgan, April 2022, New Oxford Review. The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great. By Ben Shapiro. Publisher: Broadside Books. Pages: 288..Price: $27.99. The Person of Jesus Christ is the hinge of all human history. The Messiah for whom the Jews had waited broke into our world in Bethlehem… Read More Judeo-Christian Westernism. An Impossible Triangulation.
…Staunch liberal, Anti-abortion … and why he so appreciated Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon Nathan Irving Hentoff (June 10, 1925 – January 7, 2017) was an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media. Hentoff was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1958 to 2009. Following his departure from The Village Voice, Hentoff became a senior fellow at the Cato… Read More Why Former Village Voice Leftist & Atheist Writer Nat Hentoff Opposed Abortion
History: “In the idyllic pastoral setting of East Anglia, in the county of Norfolk, and located just over one mile from Walsingham, stands the little Slipper Chapel, a shrine dating back to the mid 14th century. Within this tiny shrine is kept the familiar Catholic statue of Our Lady of Walsingham. At this point, pilgrims… Read More Daily Mass at The Slipper Chapel, Walsingham
I admire much that Jordan Peterson has done and said. Very much. But I cannot accept his thought entirely regarding the question of Meaning in our lives and times, which he and others have publicly discussed, and which many admire. To the contrary, it is Jesus Christ, “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8),… Read More Jordan Peterson on Meaning
“One body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Father of us all” — Eph. 4: 4-6 Every ecclesial community brings its tradition(s) to bear in the exegesis and understanding of Scripture. Even independent Protestant Fundamentalist pastors and larger Protestant denominations employ their traditions [i.e., their received community understanding of texts] as a… Read More Catholicism, Tradition and Protestantism
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen on the Word of the Cross of Jesus Christ
Homily of Benedict XVI, Palm Sunday, 2006 To understand what occurred on Palm Sunday and to know what it meant not only for that time but for all times, a detail is important, which became for his disciples the key to understand that event when, after Easter, they recalled those tumultuous days with a new… Read More “The Cross Is the Tree of Life” – Benedict XVI
By Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D. O Jesus Crucified, teach me the science of the Cross; make me understand the value of suffering. 1. The Passion of Jesus teaches us in a concrete way that in the Christian life we must be able to accept suffering for the love of God. This is… Read More The Value of Suffering in Christ
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or read of people blaming their personal troubles, failures or psychological stresses on “Catholic guilt” in the last 40+ years. It is as though the Church is the great rain cloud ever shadowing the grand Mardi Gras that so many expect life to be. All that… Read More Truth and “Catholic Guilt”
The Figures Behind the Evangelists. By Frederick W. Marks.The New Oxford Review.Dec. 2021. One of the most powerful arguments for the reliability of the Gospels is the fact that two of them were written by eyewitnesses: Matthew and John. There is another fact, however, that is equally important. The other two evangelists, Mark and Luke,… Read More The Gospels of Peter & Mary
by Malcolm Muggeridge The coming of Jesus into the world is the most stupendous event in human history. Is our [modern] skepticism one more manifestation of our having–in Bonhoeffer’s unhappy phrase–come of age? It would be difficult to support such a proposition in the light of the almost inconceivable credulity of today’s brain-washed public, who… Read More Jesus the Man Who Lives, And the Credulity of Our Age
Msgr. Timothy Verdon, the director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, told CNA “The images of suffering that the Pietà always implies I think will deeply touch people. I think that visitors will be moved to see these works,” he said. The image of the Pietà evokes “the personal suffering of mothers who hold their… Read More How Michelangelo’s 3 Pietàs speak to a suffering world
…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
Fundamentalist Protestant incomprehension of the Catholic doctrine regarding Mary as the Mother of God is largely and essentially an incomprehension of the Incarnation itself, whereby the Word, who is God, was made flesh (John 1:1; 14). It is rooted in a failure to contemplate, with the Catholic Church, the stupendous implications of this wondrous mystery.… Read More Our Blessed Mother, Mary, in the Order of Grace
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 times that a number of people are claiming that Jesus is simply a rehash of older pagan secretive religions, and… Read More Mythology: Reasons Why Scholars Know Jesus Is Not A Copy Of Pagan Religions
Jesus Christ the Lord, Life, Death and Creation Romans 5: 12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned— 13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account… Read More A Mature Universe
Jesus Christ is “the image of the invisible God.” — Col. 1:15 St. John Damascene, b. 675, Damascus; d. December 4, 749, near Jerusalem. He writes to Christians against the iconoclasts, “The Scripture says, ‘You have not seen the likeness of Him [the Holy Trinity: one God three Persons].’ How then depict the invisible? How… Read More St. John Damascene Against the Iconoclasts
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