So it’s Guy Fawkes Day. Thanks to the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament, English Protestants have had a Catholic boogeyman to focus their hate on for centuries. Fawkes would have been the Osama bin Laden of Catholics, had he succeeded. I wouldn’t doubt it, in fact, if it were actually Divine Providence that prevented…
In the wake of the latest instance of a faithful son of the Church pointing out that the papal emperor has no clothes, we have been treated to yet another flurry of loud and aggressive assertions that there is nothing to see here, no confusion really exists, and can everyone please stop acting childish and just…
During His sublime discourse to the apostles on the eve of His Passion, Our Lord explained the nature of our relationship to Him in the spiritual life as follows: I am the true vine; and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He will take away: and every one…
Last month, our friends at LifeSiteNews conducted an interview with Professor Joseph Seifert and several other Catholic Scholars on the topic of the development of doctrine. The occasion was the controversy raised by the pope’s recent comments that the Death Penalty “is, in itself, contrary to the Gospel.” Although LifeSiteNews published links to PDF versions of the…
Voice of the family, a coalition of twenty-five pro-life and pro-family associations, held an international conference in Rome on October 28th, hosted by Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. Among the speakers, His Eminence Cardinal Walter Brandmüller; Professor Roberto De Mattei and Professor…
Image: “The Dragon Transmitting Power” Master of Sarum, c. 1250. Sometimes, it’s hard to find words. This is one such occasion. What can be said to explain the Vatican’s decision to issue a stamp with a reverential image of one of the most notorious heretics in history, to “mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation”? Note the…
The temptation to despair when pondering the state of Holy Mother Church is all too great at the moment, especially when we see that those on whom we should be able to rely are sacrificing the Faith on the altar of humanism. It is easy to forget that we are not in fact helpless. We…
Today, 28 October, an encouraging piece of news comes to us. At the Conference on Humanae Vitae which takes place in Rome, at the Pontifical University St. Thomas Aquinas, and which was organized by the lay organization Voice of the Family, Professor Josef Seifert – a former member of the recently reformed Pontifical Academy for…
In a two-part essay at Public Discourse (here and here), E. Christian Brugger has responded to Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bassette’s new book on capital punishment (By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment). Feser and Bessette argue that the Church’s traditional teaching on the moral permissibility of the death penalty…
“A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere … the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie.” When I was 13, I attempted suicide for…
Do we really know when this “crisis” started? Many of those concerned about our ongoing – and suddenly calamitously escalating – crisis look mainly back to the last 50 years for causes; it is certainly undeniable that the period immediately following Vatican II has seen the most precipitous drop in the relevant statistics in our…
