“It is fashionable for Catholic liberals to decry the pre-conciliar Church as concerned with little more than personal piety and indifferent to the injustice and suffering in the world. This is a monstrous travesty of the truth as every adult Catholic must surely know. Never in the history of our planet has so much concern… Read More Michael Davies on the Merciful, Ever Welcoming Pre-Vatican II Church
Christian parents, we have traditionally been taught, must be both gentle and strong, without ever becoming brutish. They must try to encourage their children to make their faith in Christ real and to give to the poor and seek the Good always; but they must also become a wall of resistance against disrespect, illicit drugs,… Read More Christian Parents and Grandparents In Anarchic Times
Julius Caesar is remembered as a brilliant general, political reformer, and one of the central figures in Rome’s transformation from republic to empire. But his rise was built partly on extraordinary violence. During his conquest of Gaul, Caesar’s forces massacred civilians, enslaved large populations, and attempted to annihilate the Eburones while inflicting catastrophic losses on the… Read More The Dark Truth About Julius Caesar
“What did Elizabeth I say about Anne Boleyn? Though the last Tudor monarch rarely mentioned her infamous mother, who was the second wife of Henry VIII, she did make the occasional reference to her, whether in word, in writing or in art. In this Tudor Queens documentary from History Calling I take you through all… Read More What Did Elizabeth I Say About Anne?
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,and has lifted up the lowly.He has filled the hungry with good things,and the rich he has sent away empty.He has come to the help of his servant Israelfor he has remembered his promise of mercy,the promise he made to our fathers,to Abraham and his children forever.… Read More Jesus and the Poor
“Never be discouraged, and no matter what fault you happen to commit, say: Though I should fall twenty times, or a hundred times a day, I will arise at every fall, and pursue my course. What does it amount to, after all, that you should have met with some accidents on the way, provided you… Read More St. Francis de sales’ on the Great Battle
If Frank Sinatra’s music, which I obviously enjoy, entertains and only rarely is, in a sense, contemplative or thought-provoking (e.g., The album Watertown), Joni Mitchell, whose mid-to-later recordings which I have been listening to lately, tends to reflect a more serious or at least more interesting perception of the world and cultures along with music… Read More Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Joni Mitchell
Monsignor Karel Kasteel Talks About His Experience and thoughts throughout that long period. His reflections are his own. CNS: Now 92, Monsignor Kasteel has witnessed some of the most consequential moments in the modern history of the Catholic Church, including the Second Vatican Council, the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, and decades of change… Read More He worked in the Vatican for 70 years. Served 8 Popes.
Conversion to Truth, while totally fulfilling, is never a light matter (Jn. 14:6; Mt. 11:28-39), because the Truth is the Cross, and the Cross is no picnic. “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” — Jn. 16:33 Jn. 15:20,21 “Remember the word that I said to you,… Read More Converts who take root learn fast that the Church and the Cross are one.
“Someone said, drink the water, but I will drink the wineSomeone said, take a poor man, rich folk don’t have a dime Go fool yourselves if you will, I just haven’t got the timeYes you can drink the water (yes you can drink the water)But I will drink the wine Someone gave me some small… Read More Time Out: Favorite Son, Bad Boy Brother Frank
Steven Shaviro in his interesting book No Speed Limit writes, “Science fiction takes up certain implicit conditions of our personal and social lives, and makes these conditions fully explicit in narrative. It picks out “futuristic” trends that are already embedded within our actual social and technological situation. These trends are not literal matters of fact,… Read More Accelerationist Thinkers, Short-sighted Capitalists and Marx
And why others leave it for the same. From his masterpiece, Witness 1952: “I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time. You will ask: Why, then, do men become Communists? How did it happen that you, our gentle and loved father, were once a Communist? Were you simply stupid? No, I was… Read More Whittaker Chambers: Why men become Communists for moral reasons…
Aldous Huxley on the Technocratic Dictatorship seeking to be born. “…democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old… Read More Aldous Huxley on an Emerging ‘Scientific’ Dictatorship…
Marriage, children and grandparents. The reason men have always, when necessary, fought and died to protect the women they love is not only romantic or sentimental. It is, rather, because, in her mystery, woman carries the future. She is that sacred gift who sustains a people and life itself. To encourage women to join the… Read More She Carries the Future
“In the context of Christian liturgy, a canticle is a psalm-like song with biblical lyrics taken from elsewhere than the Book of Psalms, but included in psalters and books such as the breviary. — Wikipedia. St. Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly: in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in… Read More The Gift of Canticles for One Another
Updated. One of the Grand Architects of the Iraqi War which sent hundreds of thousands of Iraqis into the Afterlife loves the Pope. The atheist Manipulator par excellance and host of the Leftist podcast The Rest is Communism, I mean Politics! —loves Leo XIV because Campbell is the great cynic and he perceives Leo, rightly… Read More Alastair Campbell Loves the Pope
“As scientists study nature, they observe that certain things happen with astounding regularity. One of the things that happens regularly is that living things always come from other living things. Scientists have known this for many years. In 1858, a German scientist by the name of Rudolph Virchow stated it like this: “Every cell arises… Read More Pasteur showed that life only comes from life. The Law of biogenesis.
9/30/26. Updated. Is there more reason to beware? Sacred Scripture says “The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with lying signs and wonders” —2 Thessalonians 2:9. Blessings to those who are helped. They receive gifts despite the means which in the hands of men like… Read More They will make the blind to see and the lame to walk…
Saint Alphonsus Liguori on the “ordinary” and sometimes daily sins of people who consider themselves blameless, innocent. “The whispering tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”—James 3:6… Read More Gossip, Whisperers & Detraction: “Triple Murder”
“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, 25 of which I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully… Read More The Cross. Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen. 1954.
Are modern smartphones and algorithms destroying our capacity for deep thought? In this video essay, Dr. Ryan Topping breaks down the science of attention, addresses 3 myths of the digital mind, and provides 4 practical, tactical skills to master hard books and rebuild your focus.
+ John Paul II on the most decisive confrontation and “history’s last lap.” Karol Wojtyla (St.JPII) wrote, “A non-Catholic philosopher once said to me: ‘You know, I just can’t stop myself reading and rereading and thinking over the first three chapters of Genesis.’ And indeed it seems to me that unless one does so reflect… Read More Popes St. John Paul II and St. Pius X on the AntiWord
Hard Sayings. “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience [in suffering in Him] and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” of redemption. — Romans 15:4 John 15 18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the… Read More More Terrible Times to Come for Many Christian Families.
‘The desert in the city’, I repeated over and over to myself, looking out of the window, my thoughts reaching to the distant origin of this word ‘desert’ which had been laid on my heart at the best moment of my life. I thought back to nights in the Sahara, to the sand-dunes, to all… Read More The Desert in the City. Carlo Carretto.
Simple acts of charity can leave a lasting impact on both the giver and the recipient. Furthermore, they highlight the human connections that charity fosters, strengthening relationships within communities. By understanding personal accounts of charity, readers can develop a deeper appreciation for altruism and its role in enhancing personal and collective well-being. —Blissful balance Generosity… Read More Simple Acts of Charity
“What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden and even considered harmful.” —Pope Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the occasion of the publication of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007. “The Holy… Read More The Sacred Deposit of the Faith. No Substantial Evolution of Meaning.
Archbishop (Blessed) Fulton J. Sheen
Only illness at home could make me late posting this. Raymond Arroyo is joined by Fr. Gerald Murray, priest of the Archdiocese of New York, and Robert Royal, editor-in-chief of TheCatholicThing.org, for a very special edition of The World Over from St. Louis, Missouri on the occasion of the Beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.… Read More A Blessed Day for the Church!
Preaching to the infirmed, disabled and those who care for them at one of Catholicism’s most iconic shrines, Pope Leo XIV said that “no human law should ever make you lose the certainty of your dignity.” National Catholic Reporter Pope Leo XIV celebrates Sunday Mass at the field alongside the Sanctuary of Our Lady of… Read More From Lourdes, Pope Leo issues stark rejection of France’s assisted dying law
It is not without significance that Divine Mercy Sunday Follows Easter. For Mercy is the fruit of Easter. And Jesus came not to call the righteous but sinners into his kingdom (Luke 5:32). He came “to seek and to save that which was lost”. Mercy is the revelation of the very heart of God and the Good… Read More Nihilism and the Divine Pity
“The doctrine of the Faith which God has revealed is not proposed like a theory of philosophy to be elaborated by the human understanding, but as a divine deposit delivered to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared…. That sense of the sacred dogmas is to be faithfully kept which Holy Mother Church… Read More Not Proposed Like A Philosophical Theory
Bad and evil ideas have been far more virulent in history than silver, gold, or geopolitical schemes. Our modern errors arose out of the weeds of bad Christian soil, fueled by concupiscence and backed by diverse and mighty powers. King Henry VIII’s ecclesial revolution in England, born in lust and ending in the vast dissolution of the… Read More Philosophers of the New Light
“A little error in the beginning becomes a great error in the end.” — St. Thomas Aquinas. “He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.’” –Lk.16:31. “See to it that no one makes a prey of you… Read More Pseudoscience and Origins
“And lawyers haven’t been this popular /Since Robespierre slaughtered half of France“. Lyrics Sex Kills Joni Mitchell “I pulled up behind a CadillacWe were waiting for the lightAnd I took a look at his license plateAnd it said “Just Ice”. Is justice just ice?Governed by greed and lust.Just the strong doing what they can.And the… Read More Sex Kills. Joni Mitchell pulls up the cultural shades. 2004.
When in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the avant-garde was given diverse powerful platforms to announce that traditional art forms were passé, and art galleries exchanged space for the mystic likes of Picasso, Surrealism, and, in some degree, Andy Warhol, etc., they arguably prepared the way for the denial of natural gender distinctions and the… Read More From Rembrandt to Picasso
When I began this website it was after I had debated within myself, video podcasts or the written word? God knows I’m handsome enough to do a podcast 🙃. But then I thought that since I wanted to confess the faith, despite my frailties and sins, for my grandchildren’s generation especially, the written word is… Read More Podcast Video or the Written Word?
“Angels are often depicted in art playing stringed instruments like lutes, which are part of a larger family of musical instruments known as chordophones. These instruments produce sound through the vibration of strings, and lutes specifically have a body and a neck that stretches the strings, allowing for a variety of musical expressions. instrushare.com.au / Encyclopedia… Read More Heaven Must Love Stringed Instruments
Roberto de Mattei. “In the Gospels, Jesus makes use of many metaphors to describe the Church He founded. One of the most fitting is the image of the boat threatened by the tempest (Matt. 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; Luke 8:22–25). This image was often used by the Church Fathers and saints, who spoke of the Church… Read More The “true reform” that the Church needed in the 20th century
Dr. Arthur Holmes, History of Philosophy. Wheaton College: Repetitio est mater studiorum. This is an excellent series, it is very informative and fair to the ancients, to Catholic, Protestant and Enlightenment philosophies from Thales to Sartre and beyond. 81 comprehensive episodes. One can learn something new with every listen, or relisten, of any episode in… Read More History of Philosophy Lectures
Is A Personal* God Improbable? Or is it we who are improbable? Atheism has traditionally scoffed at belief in a God who is Personal or SupraPersonal. I’ve always found their position to be a counterintuitive curiosity. One of the reasons why is that I find myself, a personal being, to exist. I am here. You… Read More A Personal Universe. Creation.
