The Woman in the Trees: A novel about America’s first approved Marian apparition Theoni Bell (https://theonibell.com/) Independently Published 237 pages $6.99 Kindle; $15.99 Paperback Publisher’s Description: “Set within the expanses of the American frontier, The Woman in the Trees follows Slainie, an inquisitive pioneer girl, whose life is forever transformed when a mysterious seer shows…
A tall, gray building stands against a gray sky, smoke and spire alike reaching towards Heaven. Thousands of ornate details confess a Gothic ancestry, this sacred place a child of stone born by the toil of generations. The face of the church remains stoic as her stained glass windows burst in the heat, hundreds of…
The year 2020 is half-finished. The remnants of civilization continue to burn, the enemies of Christ push the Overton window ever wider, and Christians are reminded more and more frequently of our uncomfortable call to crucifixion. Things tend to accelerate as they near the abyss. Comrades! Shall we destroy a statue of a slave-owner or…
We press our lips against the foreheads of our loved ones, we tell them just how beloved they are, and we suit up for war. The world, the flesh, the devil, our own fallen nature, the wounds of Original Sin that none can escape — we are never in want of enemies. When will sinful…
“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” —Saint Augustine of Hippo, City of God Two years ago, I was a prisoner. Sometimes, I looked up at…
This past Sunday, I had the privilege of attending a conference talk on Heaven by Father Isaac Mary Relyea, part of a Lenten mission series on the Four Last Things hosted by The Fatima Center. In the car on the way there, I joked about how my fiancé and I needed Father Isaac to give…
This seems to be an easy question to answer, at least for us: we need God. We need other things, yes, but those needs become negotiable if our relationship with God is at risk. Sometimes they fall away for a time, when God wishes to draw us closer to Him in a special way. I…
I will never forget what it was like to watch the Lord of the Rings films for the first time, when I was eleven or so. I had always devoured books, but the story of Frodo and the ring was in another class than anything I had yet experienced in my young life. I remember…
Dear Jorge Mario Bergoglio, It feels odd to address a public letter to a superior in this way, but be assured, I mean no disrespect in omitting “Holy Father” or “Pope Francis.” On the contrary, I address you by name because it reminds me of your humanity, awash as I am in a sea of…
Early Monday morning in Rome, an anonymous group of men entered the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, removed the wooden “Pachamama” idols, and ceremoniously threw them into the Tiber river. Catholics the world over rejoiced, much to the chagrin of various papal sycophants, liberals, and Vatican representative Paolo Ruffini, who called the act “A…
Already by the winter of 2017, I had spent nearly two years as a secular, “conservative” political commentator on various internet platforms. I observed and took part in many of the discussions that dominated the first years of the Donald Trump presidency in the USA, learning about “fringe” views which had for decades been exiled…
