For our readers in the United States, today is Thanksgiving – a holiday set aside for us to take stock of our many blessings and to offer our gratitude to God. (It’s also a day for feasting with family and friends, which in and of itself is something to appreciate.) Despite no few difficulties…
“October 18th was a memorable day in the long history of the Roman Church. On that day, fifty years ago, Pope Paul VI celebrated Mass according to the unique rites of the papacy for the very last time. Papal Mass, which synthesized the primitive Roman tradition with the international Gallican praxis, remained virtually unchanged since…
According to Catholic evangelist Matthew Christoff, “There is a serious “man-crisis” in the Catholic Church.” How bad is it? It is widespread and serious. Unless the Church, including its bishops, priests and lay men begin to take notice and make the evangelization of Catholic men a priority, the Catholic Church in the West will decay,…
“I’ve got your six” is a military phrase that means “I’ve got your back.” It comes from the old pilot system in which directions correspond to hours on the clock, where 12 o’clock is forward and 6 o’clock is behind. Thus anyone behind you is “at your six.” Blessed Peter Favre said, “I felt great…
Today marks the 50th anniversary of ‘Lumen Gentium‘, the Vatican II constitution on the Church. With this brief post I present its highlights, while encouraging you to read the document in its entirety. The First Vatican Council was preparing to give a definition of the Church but was forced to an abrupt end in 1870…
“Every moment of our lives we stand on the brink of eternity.” – Dom Lorenzo Scupolli There are many precious traditions in the Sacred Liturgy that almost entirely disappeared after the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council. We realize that our Liturgy becomes more and more anthropocentric instead of theocentric. This protestanized liturgy is…
I recently re-discovered a small prayer book I acquired, entirely by accident, 17 years ago. It was given to me by an elderly woman in Idaho. I had taken a job with a friend’s family business installing well pumps during our last summer before college, and we were doing some work at her home. As it turned out,…
In October 1966, less than a year after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, philosopher and eminent Catholic theologian Dietrich Von Hildebrand asked whether or not we are better prepared to “meet Christ in the mass by soaring up to Him, or by dragging Him down into our own pedestrian, workaday world.” (The Case…
It is an all-too-frequent experience in my own spiritual life that when I have resolved to go to confession — particularly if my need for absolution is pressing — all manner of obstacles present themselves to prevent me from keeping my appointment with the sacrament. Distractions arise that avert my eyes from a close watch on the clock, causing me…
But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil. —Matthew 5:37 There is a certain debate that began at the Second Vatican Council and has never been settled. It is a dispute over whether it is better to use the phrase, “the medicine of mercy” to describe the Church’s approach…
“O how I have loved thy law, O Lord! It is my meditation all through the day. Through thy commandment thou hast made me wiser than my enemies: for it is always with me.” Psalm 119: 97-98. From Evangelii Guadium, to his synod address, and everywhere in between, Pope Francis has returned again and again…
