“This in-depth study of the Catholic–Orthodox reunion efforts during the tumultuous 11th–15th centuries reveals the vital role played by the Dominican Order in shaping the theological and political discourse of that era, with a focus on the contributions of prominent Dominican figures such as John Stojkovich of Ragusa, Andrew Chrysoberges, Manuel Calecas, Demetrios Kydones, Thomas… Read More Scholars of the Sacred by James Likoudis.
“Our whole life ought to be one continued penance“. Joel 2:12: “Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all of your heart,with fasting, weeping, and with mourning“ “if the wicked do penance. . . . .I will not remember all his iniquities.”—Ezek.xviii.21 The Nature and the Necessity of Penance — > “As soon as… Read More Frs. Francis Spirago, Richard F. Clarke On Penance
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.
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
National Catholic Register. The hearing followed the unveiling of the House Judiciary Committee’s report detailing the results of a monthslong investigation into a leaked internal FBI memo that discussed investigating Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on… Read More FBI Director Grilled After Release of New Report on Targeting of Catholics
In one of Saint Therese of Lisieux’s favorite books, End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life, the author, Fr. Charles Arminjon (1824-1885) writes among many important things on the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. And he draws a most important moral Gospel lesson: “There are circumstances when even… Read More Even the Wicked Are Rewarded In This Life.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen writes, “If we save our life in this world, we lose it in the next; if we lose our life in this world, we save it in the next. If we sow in sin, we reap corruption; if we sow in truth, we reap life everlasting. But we cannot do both.… Read More The fast or the feast?
“Sinners themselves admit the magnitude of their misery, as we read in the Book of Wisdom: “We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through hard ways, but the way of the Lord we did not know. What has pride profited us? Or what advantage has the boasting of riches… Read More The Destiny of Wickedness
The American Solidarity Party is based in the tradition of Christian democracy. We acknowledge the state should be pluralistic while upholding a vision of the common good of all and of each individual conscience informed by Christian tradition and acknowledging the primacy of religion in each person’s life. Our Principles 1. Sanctity of LifeHuman life… Read More An Alternative to Trump-Biden-Harris. The American Solidarity Party.
And an interview with Raymond Arroyo. “The collaboration between a future pope and young prelate is transformed into profound friendship when circumstances thrust Joseph Ratzinger into the Apostolic Palace, even as he expected to be released in retirement to his beloved Bavaria. Monsignor Georg Gänswein never left his side, and witnessed one of the most… Read More “Who Believes Is Not Alone.” Mons. Georg Gänswein.
The need to be in a state of grace to receive Communion (CCC 1385) Leila Miller: … Christ said marriage is a one flesh union. So anytime you’re ripping that living flesh apart, something is dying. I mean, something pretty serious is being lost. Trent Horn: Yeah, because we think about divorce, it’s always so… Read More Trent Horn on the Evil of Divorce and the Way to Healing.
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
Though they take the credit, feminists, radical or otherwise, actually had little to do with the progress of women in the latter half of this century. The trends that would of themselves produce today’s results were in place at least by the early 1960s. Once such things as the right to vote and the right… Read More Remaking Human Beings. Robert Bork.
Pinned 2.15.23 —Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794, is a papal document issued by Pius VI in condemnation of the Gallican and Jansenist acts and tendencies of the Synod of Pistoia (1786). In the introductory text the Pope exposes the “art of deception,” just as Pius X did again at the dawn of the twentieth century… Read More When Popes Exposed and Denounced Doctrinal Ambiguity, the “Art of Deception.”
A fascinating look at the devolution of culture and the arts over time through the lenses and timelines of Beat, Folk, and Rock ‘n Roll. Superseding orthodox Marxism and other political and social movements, theBeat Movement was the ovum of all later decadent movements in both cultures and music . The Encyclopedia Brittanica defined the… Read More Psychedelia, Beat, Folk, Rock’n’roll…and Us
For Catholics our every Eucharist is Thanksgiving day (lit. from Koinē Greek: εὐχαριστία). And only a neopagan nation could conceive of a national syncretic Thanksgiving Day apart from the Eucharist. This is American simulacra. SH. By Solange Strong Hertz. Thanksgiving and more. “…[R]eligion, of course, is what the [1776-1789] Revolution is all about, for no one… Read More America’s Feast Days — To Itself
Is Jesus Christ a mere symbol of transcendence or the concrete Redeemer proclaimed in Sacred Scripture, “the same yesterday, today and forever”? (Heb. 13:8) After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, he did graduate work in philosophy at Princeton University and holds an MA in Theology from Sacred Heart School of Theology in the… Read More A Paradigm Shift in Catholic Theology? Dr. Ralph Martin.
Truth does not change with the changes in political parties, current philosophies or trends. ” a thing cannot be and not be at the same time”— St. Thomas (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, chap. 84) “…reason’s first principle is the principle of contradiction. He who denies this principle affirms a self-destructive sentence. To deny this principle… Read More Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange on Reason and The Law of Non-Contradiction.
Charles Lewis. Review of The Priest Barracks: Dachau 1938-1945 by By Guillaume Zeller. National Catholic Register . Updated. “On July 20, 1933, six months after Hitler rose to power, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, and the German vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, signed a concordat — a sort of peace treaty between the… Read More Enduring Faith Amid Horror: The Priests of Dachau
C. S. Lewis once said that reading literature from the past is like a clean sea breeze blowing through our musty minds. Interview by Greg Peters. This article is from the November 2023 issue. Christianity Today. In recent decades, evangelicals studying faith in the Middle Ages have done much to recover its variety and richness. Yet… Read More Mystics, Monastics, and the Moderns Who Need Them
It cannot be seriously doubted in our time that since the Second Vatican Council not a little of what has been called “Catholic ecumenism” has in fact gone off the Church’s traditional dogmatic rails. But for all that the principle cannot be doubted. It was doubtless the seemingly radical abruptness of the Church’s turnaround regarding… Read More Traditional Catholic Ecumenism
“Does it make any sense today to write an encyclical to condemn communism? Or to condemn national socialism? No, they are dead, they are not the problem. Capitalism is the problem.” We must be clear. Catholic social teaching is neither capitalism nor socialism. Rocco “Buttiglione It is also important to stress that the Church does… Read More Capitalism is a Problem
Also, Dr Ralph Martin on the same. 1255 For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents’ help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized. As Pope St. John Paul II beautifully put it in his theology of the body, “the body… Read More National Catholic Register on Recent Vatican Statements on Baptism
“Sleep,” the Saints show, “is like food; some require more than others” By Fr. Aloysius Roche “We must be sure that even the most mortified among the saints were as glad to get to bed as we are. “When a man really loves God,” St. Philip Neri said, “he comes to such a state in… Read More The Sleep of Saints
Hear Davies’ talk: What Happened at Vatican II? +++ Michael Treharne Davies (13 March 1936 – 25 September 2004[1]) was a British teacher and traditionalist Catholic writer of many books about the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council… Although Davies opposed French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s canonically-illicit consecration of four SSPX bishops in 1988 against the wishes of Pope John Paul II,… Read More Michael Davies. What Happened at Vatican II?
Tuesday Update: 11/14/23 Bishop Strickland Calls for Prayers for Pope Francis, Warns of Forces Corrupting Catholic Church WSJ: Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland, a vocal critic of the pope, has “warned of ‘blasphemies emanating from Rome’”(WSJ 11/12/23) “Ousted Bishop Speculates on the Reasons the Vatican Removed Him. National Catholic Register: ““I really can‘t look to any… Read More Pope Francis Fires Conservative U.S. Bishop. Updated.
Why “faith and culture”? Do they go together? Can they be separated? Can faith exist without culture? Can culture exist without faith? In the broadest sense of the word, faith and culture are inextricably connected because a culture is always an expression of the faith which informs it. If a culture is animated by a… Read More Faith and Culture by Joseph Pearce
John Lennox is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics[2] at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford University. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School and a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum. Upon completing his doctorate, Lennox moved to Cardiff, Wales, becoming a reader in Mathematics at the University of Wales, Cardiff. Lennox teaches science and… Read More Philosopher of Science and Mathematics John Lennox on the True, False & Anthropomorphic in A. I. Research
It was Aldous Huxley who, very early, saw sexual decadence combining commercial interests with political manipulation in the emerging media. And he knew what that would mean for a culture. “Aldous Huxley in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World depicts a culture in which pleasure is compulsory and engineered to eliminate intellectual challenge and to… Read More Aldous Huxley, Sex, and Corporate Psychological Manipulation
The Gospel according to St John, read by Sir David Suchet. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life,[a]… Read More Beginning Again. In the beginning.
No food, no water, no electricity, no escape as attacks intensify overnights Pope Francis repeated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza and called on Hamas to release hostages, invoking God, in a series of tweets addressing the conflict on Sunday. “In God’s name, I beg you to stop: cease using weapons,” Francis said. “I hope that avenues will… Read More Pope Francis has called for an immediate halt to the conflict in Gaza
A fireworks of metaphors employed in quest to assess its place in Catholic history. Then there is Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne who (Oct. 8) thinks “The assembly that Pope Francis opened in Rome last week is radical, though not in the sense that his right-wing critics have in mind. Its purpose is downright… Read More Theologians See Trainwreck in Synod of Pope Francis.
… or of Scientistic Transhumanism? Eva Vlaardingerbroek and millions of young people around the world are waking up to the threats of scientism, what Vlaardingerbroek rightly calls the “poisoned chalice of history”. Note: Living in New Time. Christians believe history is going somewhere. If man (m/w) is not allowed to flourish as the Image of… Read More Man as Image of God?
Sunday Times Bestseller by Nigel Biggar. A new assessment of the West’s colonial record. “In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the ‘End of History’ – that the global dominance of liberal democracy had been secured forever. Now however, with Russia rattling its… Read More Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning
“For the first time in over fifty years, a Catholic bishop has published his own comprehensive presentation of the Faith–what to believe, how to live, and how to pray as Christ taught. Sure to be a classic for generations to come, Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith offers a clear and readable summary of Catholicism… Read More Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith. Athanasius Schneider.
National Review: “Billions of dollars of aid have flown into Gaza while it has been under Hamas’s control, but instead of going to help alleviate the suffering of its people, the money has been diverted by Hamas to fund its terror operations. The group has dug up water pipes to repurpose them as rockets to… Read More Hamas Is to Blame for Gaza’s Problems
USA Today: “If you care about democracy, or about abortion rights or about the lives, freedoms and well-being of LGBTQ+ friends and loved ones, this past week was important… If you see former president and current criminal defendant Donald Trump and his MAGA movement as a dishonest, disingenuous threat to America, if you believe religion… Read More How the Left Defines “Democracy” in One Paragraph
Vatican synod ends without clear stances on women deacons, LGBT. AMERICA MAGAZINE : Gerard O’Connell “… There was a section on truth and love where the document talks about controversial issues and how to address them. In that section, the term L.G.B.T. doesn’t specifically appear. What do you see [that] is addressing that issue? Because… Read More Progressives Scramble to Explain Absence of LGBT in Final Synod Document
And he gave as good as he got 🪓 It is bizarre to hear how little the otherwise impressive English historian Tracy Borman seems to know about the Catholic theology of Indulgences, medieval and otherwise. It would have been better to consult the turn of the century Catholic Encyclopedia online or the Catho!ic Answers website… Read More An Axe to Grind. Cromwell’s Cynical Propaganda.
“… will face a canonical process over allegations of sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse against women religious, the Vatican announced Friday, in an apparent about-face. The Vatican has not formally specified the charges Rupnik will face, and the Vatican’s press office has declined questions on its statement. null The Holy See press office said Oct. 27… Read More Pope Francis waives statute of limitations in cartoonist Rupnik case
Catholic Critique 