My maternal grandmother had the merriest brown eyes of anyone I’ve ever known, but they’d take on a special light when she recalled one of the poems she’d learned as a young girl. Her favorite, Daffodils, she could recite to her dying day, with such obvious pleasure that her listeners believed she beheld in her…
Part 1 | Part 2 The best way to walk through the door of the Confessional is to regularly pray and ask the Lord to lead you there whenever you need it. Remember this, ponder this, and let this sink in all the way: If the soul is in a state of Mortal Sin it…
The German Church is in a dire state. Threatened by burgeoning apostasy and heresy within its own ranks, orthodox Catholics around the world look with a wary eye to the nation that gave us Martin Luther and the Protestant “Reformation”. The original title of Fr. Ralph Wiltgen’s essential account of the ecclesiastical revolution that took place at the…
I recently took a trip across the country, and, as it happened, found myself in a certain chapel (under the care of one of the traditional Catholic priestly societies in good standing) for the Third Sunday of Lent. As the homily began, my ears immediately perked up at a quotation from 1 Peter 5. What followed was…
Part 1 | Part 2 The Sacrament of Penance (now commonly called “Reconciliation”) is the ordinary means by which the Christian soul is restored to an objective State of Grace/Habitual Grace/Sanctifying Grace. The soul must be in the State of Sanctifying Grace at the moment of death for it to be welcomed by God into…
Even before it became available on March 1, Loyola Press’s Dear Pope Francis was listed on Amazon as a #1 Best Seller in its category (Other Christian Denominations and Sects). Thirty letters from children to the pope are answered in a picture book intended to simulate a series of heart-to-heart chats with Francis. I wish I…
In a 2 March article published by the French Catholic magazine, La Vie, editor-in-chief Jean-Pierre Denis recounts parts of a private conversation between Pope Francis and a group of thirty Catholics engaged in the field of social Christianity – led by French Socialist Delegates – which took place on 1 March of this year at…
London, UK: The well-known and much respected auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, Athanasius Schneider, has given a wide-ranging and hard-hitting interview during his week-long tour of England this past week. Bishop Schneider spoke exclusively to me, taking on a number of controversial issues, including evangelization in relation to Jews and Muslims, the Pope’s recent comment…
The February 2015 Linacre Quarterly (the official journal of the Catholic Medical Association) features a groundbreaking study by Chris Kahlenborn, MD of The Polycarp Research Institute titled Mechanism of action of levonorgestrel emergency contraception. The study, contrasting the theoretical basis on which emergency contraception (otherwise known as “Plan B”) is claimed to function with the…
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In Part 1 of this series, we explored how, in a parish committed to the full Catholic paradigm, even something as simple as entering the church can become an exercise in multi-sensory learning, and therefore a highly effective means to help the people become recollected before Mass. In…
The fallout from Pope Francis’ comments on Zika and contraception continue. I’ve already shared my thoughts on the need for public correction by our bishops of the error (that contraception is justified to prevent birth defects caused by viral transmission) propagated by Francis. Privately, I’ve begun to hear from moral theologians and Catholic medical professionals who…
