Deep in the heart of winter near the longest night of the year, as a child my heart was graced annually by one of the great traditions of Christendom. It was ultimately an experience which kept me deeply tied to my Catholic roots even during later years spent in temporary disbelief, and it imbued in…
As many have recently noted, there is a deficit not in the deposit of faith, but in our access to it. Take, for example, Whispers of Restoration’s recent article “Exiting ‘SquishyChurch,” Eric Sammons’s explanation on the “Old Evangelization,” and OnePeterFive’s mission of “Rebuilding Catholic Culture. Restoring Catholic Tradition.” When I returned to the faith, having abandoned…
Image: Baptism illumination, circa 13th century. Although few things can match the natural beauty of a fall day in the upper Midwest, I still vividly recall my wife and myself making our way from the cool outside air into the hushed baptistry of our local cathedral, to witness the striking splendor of the Sacrament of…
A New Cocktail for the Old Rite Next week marks the tenth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, which on July 7, 2007 granted all priests the right to use the 1962 Roman Missal without the permission of their bishop and which has resulted in a slow but ready rise in celebrations of the…
Little things we do every day can transform our lives. Over time, these little things become habits. Good habits change us for the better; bad habits, for the worse. In past articles, I’ve encouraged daily mental prayer, the Rosary, and other prayer habits that can be practiced throughout the day. Today, I’ll continue this theme…
(Image courtesy of John Cosmas, Charlotte Latin Mass Community) In a 2015 interview with the noted atheist Sam Harris, Mark Riebling, another atheist and the author of Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler, makes a fascinating connection between the Nazis and ISIS: [T]here’s a reason that the first books the Nazis banned…
Fifty years ago, in anticipation of the First Sunday of Advent of 1966, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence. Most American Catholics today are not familiar with the Statement itself, but we are familiar with its general effect: the loosening of norms for Catholics regarding fasting and…
The days are darkening, and I am angry. Yes, angry, along with so many others who observe with growing pain and confusion what is happening to our Church from within, far more grievously than from outside. But this anger isn’t a bitter, despairing anger; rather, it is a zealous, irrepressible anger that pulses hot against…
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he was hungry. – Matthew 4:2 The Scriptures are sometimes amusing in their understatement. Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this is when St. Matthew describes how Jesus was feeling after fasting for forty days. Think about how you feel if you have to skip…
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