The time from Michaelmas until the Hallowtide, for me, has always been a time to reflect upon Hell itself. After all, as fall settles on the Northern Hemisphere, people tend to reflect upon the afterlife as the days grow shorter and darker. And didn’t Christ talk about perdition quite a bit? It used to be…
The reaction to Archbishop Viganò’s revelations – at least in the United States – should give us heart: there are still bishops of orthodox faith who respect human rights and divine justice. Moreover, in spite of the almost daily bad news from Rome, we find dioceses in which vocations are on the rise; we even…
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article was first published at OnePeterFive in October 2015 under the pen name “Benedict Constable.” Due to some controversy (the nature of which need not be gone into here), the article was taken down, but not before it had reached a large number of readers and received praise…
Atheists love to catch faithful, religious Catholics on scientific technicalities in order to instill doubt in the back of their minds, or simply to humiliate them. “Miracle #1 couldn’t have happened because of scientific principle A.” “Miracle #2 couldn’t have happened because of Law of Physics B.” Quite often, such arguments from the faithless are…
Your Holiness, It is with a spirit of faith, hope, and love that I write this letter to you, the vicar of Christ on earth, the successor to St. Peter, the point of unity for all Catholic Christians. Truly, the Petrine office is one to which I faithfully submit in humble obedience. I pray for…
With the Lenten season upon us, and the faithful preparing for the commemoration of the death and resurrection of Our Lord, the precepts of the Church have inevitably come up from the foxhole in which they dwell throughout the rest of the liturgical year. Primarily because the Easter season is called out by name in…
There is a hierarchy of language. This is true for secular politics and cultural commerce, as well as in terms of religion. In this hierarchy, some languages are higher than others. JRR Tolkien, a philologist at Oxford, was quite aware of this. In his fictional world, which we know through Lord of the Rings, the…
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…
Recently I’ve been reading The Hobbit to two of my young children. Central to the story is lost treasure: Thorin and his fellow dwarves ask for Bilbo Baggins’ help in reclaiming their trove, which has been captured by the dragon Smaug and hidden deep within the Lonely Mountain. As I read the book, I can’t…
What does “Catholic” really mean? In order to answer that question, to the benefit of Catholic and non-Catholic alike, I’d like to examine the core distinguishing elements of catholicity. I hope to reveal the inner logic of the word, which is the unity of the people of God in all eras, in every place, in…
