Jesus Christ: “given unto us” (Isa 9.6): This “true Man” has been the subject of the most sublime 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… Read More Jesus Christ, Light of the World
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Christians and non-Christians alike. “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”— 1 Jn.1:10 All we, like sheep, have gone astray,each of us has turned to our own way; — Isaiah 53:6 “For… Read More Truth and “Catholic Guilt”
by Stephen Hand 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… Read More Lord Marchmain’s Long Hate
What follows is a critique of Calvinist Apologist James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.. “…that you may know how you ought to behave yourself self in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” — 1 Timothy 3:15 By Stephen Hand The living… Read More White Lies
Biblical Interpretation in Crisis. On the Question of the Foundations: and Approaches of Exegesis Today by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1988 (later Pope Benedict XVI) In Wladimir Solowjew’s History of the Antichrist, the eschatological enemy of the Redeemer recommended himself to believers, among other things, by the fact that he had earned his doctorate in theology… Read More Biblical Interpretation in Crisis — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1988
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave.” Are there any who are devout lovers of God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival! Are there any who are grateful servants? Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord! Are there any… Read More Let No One Despair! Forgiveness is risen! St. John Chrysostom. St. Francis de Sales.
Cannot all the waters of the seven seas wash this blood clean from my hand? — Lady Macbeth Friends: It used to be that people escaped admitting their own guilt by blaming it on capitalism, communism, lack of soft drink parlors, Grade B milk, and naughty ductless glands. Now a new psychology arises to blame… Read More Morbidity, the Denial of Guilt, and Forgiveness. Archbishop Fulton J Sheen.
The objective of the modernist has always been to force ‘God’ into a relative obscurity in order to make more room for the autonomy of man. In order to do so it is necessary for the modernist to utterly reject the traditional understanding of the Incarnation, whereby God consummated His love and revelation of Himself… Read More The “Specious Pretext”. Modernism.
“Our peace in this life is found in humbly enduring suffering rather than in being free from it. He who knows best how to suffer will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven.”— Thomas a Kempis, Imitation… Read More The Cross of Jesus Christ and Suffering Love.
The value of sufferings in Christ By Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D. O Jesus Crucified, teach me the science of the Cross. 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 a… Read More Personal knowledge of the Cross
Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 men between the late ‘70s and early ‘90s, killing them in the most horrendous ways. His killing spree involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia, and cannibalism. Few crimes in modern history are seen as disgusting and evil as Dahmers’. Police discovered mutilated bodies, refrigerated skulls, a shrine and a barrel with headless torsos,… Read More Jeffrey Dahmer’s Confession
St. Bernard declared forcefully, “[You may say] I have committed a great sin. My conscience will be troubled but I will not despair because I remember the wounds of my Lord. For indeed, He was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that it cannot be remitted through the death of Christ?… Read More Never to despair
“We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord, and the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against you.” Jeremiah 14: Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name’s sake;for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against you.8 O you hope of Israel, its savior in time of trouble,why should you be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler… Read More “Our backslidings are many; we have sinned against you”
In his 1987 encyclical letter, Redemptoris Mater, Pope Saint John Paul II writes, “Thanks to his special bond, linking the Mother of Christ with the Church, there is further clarified the mystery of that “woman” who from the first chapters of Genesis until the Book of Revelation, accompanies the revelation of God’s salvific plan for humanity. For Mary,… Read More Mary the Mother of May
“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’
“There is only one recorded time in the life of our blessed Lord that he ever sang. And that is the night he went out to his death.” “You can sell the Blessed Lord. But you can never buy Him”. + Archbishop Sheen on the Last Supper and Agony. + Death March to Jerusalem +… Read More The Supper and the Cross
Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. — Hebrews 12:14. I hope. I hope holiness means the striving for holiness. I’ve wanted it, holiness, ever since I was an aimless teenager. Today I am in my seventh decade and I know I am not… Read More How I Hope for Us All.
This war is not like any other war. A revolution … involve[s] ideologies, dogmas and creeds. 1914 The so-called “Age of Reason” was really an Age of Unbelief for its strongest protagonists were corrosive men like Hume, Kant, Voltaire, who measured the growth of reason by its alienation from God Who Alone could guarantee its… Read More Fulton J. Sheen, 1943. War Against Christians and Jews.
“It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests our fidelity. It is to confess we are called, not merely to profess. If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are… Read More Confessing the Faith
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his… Read More If We Say
By Laura Loker.The Pillar. America is facing a crisis of loneliness. With nationwide declines in social connectivity, even the U.S. surgeon general is concerned about the “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” facing Americans. And Catholics are not exempt from the crisis. But parishioners at St. Thérèse Little Flower in South Bend, Indiana, might just have… Read More Household’ gatherings offer intentional community at South Bend parish
The final phase of the Synod of Synodality will begin in October. Among the 400 participants (cardinals, bishops, lay people and religious) will be the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller. Interview with Cardinal Müller: Q- This coming October, the final phase of the Synod on Synodality… Read More Cardinal Gerhard Müller: “whenever Popes have felt or behaved like politicians … “
A most beautiful and critically important rosary (below). For our own sins and for the sins of the whole world. What sins are not covered in this particular formulation of the blessed timeless prayer? “Acknowledge that you have sinned. Everyone does this every day. We sin in ways we are aware of, but also in… Read More Repentance Rosary
By Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, 1951. The meaning of biblical, patristic Christology vs. speculative, merely academic versions. Our Savior and His Love For Us: Catholic Doctrine on the Interior Life of Christ as it relates to our own. “For to me, to live is Christ.”Phil. 1:21. We are “not the Center of the Universe” IN ORDER first… Read More The Interior Life and the Mystery of Christ
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.
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
“There would be tares as well as wheat in the harvest, good as well as bad fish in the catch, foolish virgins as well as wise virgins; there would be scandals, false sheep, jealousy, seeking first places at table, craving to lord it over others—until the final reckoning, when He would come in the clouds… Read More The Mystical Body of Christ by Fulton J. Sheen
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
I arise todayThrough a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,Through a belief in the Threeness,Through confession of the OnenessOf the Creator of creation. I arise todayThrough the strength of Christ’s birth and His baptism,Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,Through the strength of His… Read More The Prayer and Breast plate of St. Patrick Against All Harms
“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.
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
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen: the Meaning of the Cross of Jesus Christ. By Way of The Cross He leads us through both light and darkness. “Your care for me is greater than all the care I can take of myself… If You wish me to be in darkness, I shall bless You. And if You… Read More The Meaning of the Cross
John E. Fagan “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart the desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that by knowing and loving God, men and women can come… Read More John Paul II on Faith, Reason and Nihilism
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
Let all the evolutionary philosophers,* whose brains must evidently still be “evolving” towards some unknown terminus, keep silent with their opinions. The Catholic Tradition, arrested by Saints and Fathers, tells us that March 25 is the greatest of all days in the history of the World, after the Resurrection. God’s liturgical love It was, according to… Read More March 25 in the Whole History of the world
By Brian Kelly. It is written (Ezechiel 18:22): “I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done: in his justice which he hath wrought, he shall live.” Saint Thomas in the third part of his Summa Theologica, Q. 86, art. 1 uses this quote from Ezechiel in his Sed Contra to refute the… Read More Forgiveness. “I Will Not Remember Their Sins”
What is meant by the Predominant Fault? The noted theologian Reginald Garrigou – Lagrange explains, “The predominant fault is that defect in us that tends to prevail over the others, and thereby over our manner of feeling, judging, sympathizing, willing, and acting. It is a defect that has in each of us an intimate relation… Read More Judas Did Not Fight His Predominant Fault… and so was blown away
St. Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church, teaches, “Brother, when the devil tempts you again to sin, if you wish to be lost, you have it in your power to commit sin; but do not then say that you wish to be saved. As long as you wish to sin, regard yourself as damned,… Read More St. Alphonsus de Liguori on Judgment and Mercy
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