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.
“We are surprised at falling: an evident mark that we scarcely know ourselves. We ought, on the contrary, to be surprised at not falling more frequently, and into more grievous faults, and to return thanks to God for the dangers from which He preserves us. We are troubled every time that we are beguiled into… Read More St. Francis de Sales on Spiritual Self-knowledge
James 4:2: “you have not, because you ask not.“ The great Doctor of the Church, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, wrote, “The absolute necessity of prayer is taught throughout the Holy Scriptures, and by all the holy Fathers; while, on the other hand, I see that Christians are very careless in their practice of this great… Read More “Those who pray will be saved, those who do not will be lost”
If there has been a better talk on Confession in recent years, I haven’t heard it.
Lucifer, the “Light-bearer,” we are warned in Scripture, always “appears as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14) and comes as the “liar from the beginning” (Jn. 8). He believes his own lying narrative. So do his followers, who believe even when they know they are lying. ________ In the News — Lord Marchmain’s Long… Read More Lucifer Believes
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 kind of death of our own being, our own self. No matter how hard we try, we resist this… Read More Perseverance, Patience, Penance.
He rescued Adam and Eve from obscurity, devised the doctrine of original sin—and the rest is sexual history. By Stephen Greenblatt.The New Yorker.June 12, 2017. Note: the italics in the above title of this essay were not in the original but have been supplied here. SH. One day in 370 C.E., a sixteen-year-old boy and… Read More How St. Augustine “Invented” Sex
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me. O God, forgive me for all the sins of my life; The sins of my youth and the sins of my age, The sins of my body and the sins of my soul, The sins I have confessed and the sins I have forgotten, The sins… Read More Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Forgive Me…
Sam Guzman: “The statistics on porn use are staggering. It’s pretty safe to say that at least one in two American men, and a growing number of women, struggle with compulsive porn use. And it’s no wonder: porn is easy to access, free, pleasurable (at least for the moment), and anonymous, making it seemingly irresistible… Read More Should Pornography Be Illegal?
“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“ “But 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 the… Read More Frs. Francis Spirago, Richard F. Clarke On Penance
Be it near or still a ways off, Jesus the Lord said regarding the last times, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there… Read More Does God send wars as a punishment for sin?
No matter the state of our souls, “Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet”. — Diary of Saint Faustina, 699
The World Over | Bill Donohue of The Catholic League with Raymond Arroyo. Ignatius Press: “This work unpacks the history and root causes of the clergy sex abuse scandals in the United States. Building on decades of data and research, author Bill Donohue, who holds a doctorate in sociology, tells the story from a fresh… Read More The Abuse Crisis 20 Years Later
National Review. An ancient evil abolished. “No topic in American history is more enduringly controversial than slavery. It sits at the heart of every indictment of America and our founding principles. It is central to battles over critical race theory, the removal of monuments, and the renaming of places and institutions. It is invoked in… Read More American Slavery in the Global Context
John Paul II: “To do penance means, above all, to re-establish the balance and harmony broken by sin, to change directions at the cost of sacrifice” (Reconciliation and Penance, 26, emphasis added) Looking back, it seems to me I was only somewhat converted (if one can say that) to my Catholic Faith when I was… Read More Late A Disciple
In his novella, The Fall, the French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus stops lamenting for a moment social injustice as well as the “meaninglessness” and “absurdity” of an empty Nietzschean universe in general, and turns instead to biography, specifically to his own cruelty. Camus was a notorious, even “obsessive,” womanizer. But in time it got more complicated… Read More The Falls of Albert Camus
A Personal Account. July 3, 2021 Brother Lawrence Mary, Tert. M.I.C.M. Have you ever paused on the edge of a life-changing decision, one in which you contemplated an irreversible choice that would separate you forever from everything that you know and love? Maybe you traveled to a new country, knowing you would never return. Or… Read More Standing on the Edge
—Also, Fulton Sheen on Penance “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.“— Isa.5:20
Catholic Critique 