Editor’s note: This article comes to 1P5 via an anonymous Catholic, whose identity we are protecting at the author’s request. In these confusing times, when so many voices are vying for attention and claiming to give answers to important questions, it can be difficult to hear the authentic voice of Catholic teaching on certain moral…
There is a rhythm to life, to the seasons of the year, to the day, from its dawning to its close, to the history of the world. There is a rhythm to the liturgy of the Church, and there is a rhythm to the Bible, with its opening at the beginning of time and its…
In this Christmas season we are invited to worship the Divine Word, the invisible Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who is made visible. “He has come to lift up all things to himself, to restore unity to creation” (Preface of Christmas II). The idea of “Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, man, not God incarnate”…
A mechanically inclined friend of mine once commented that a church in his city looks like an enormous Harley Davidson that was disassembled and dropped in a heap of parts. I’ve seen the place from the outside, and my friend’s description is apt. It’s struck me that too much of the Catholic Church in recent…
The Warehouse District in New Orleans, a stone’s throw from the French Quarter, is home to eclectic art galleries; one of-a-kind shops; and two very different museums, though these particular museums share the same theme: war. Located at 945 Magazine Street, the World War II Museum is the most popular attraction in the city. It…
We conclude our series on the Four Last Things. Read the first three parts on death, judgment, and the fires of Hell. St. Benedict sums up the spiritual necessity of the Four Last Things in his chapter “What Are the Instruments of Good Works”: To have wholesome fear of the day of judgment. With fear…
The new calendar is one of the subtler corrosives the post-conciliar Vatican poured on the faith of an unsuspecting Catholic populace. From introducing confusion as to the existence of well respected saints to obliterating octaves to the chaos of weird concentric asymmetrical lectionary cycles, the new calendar’s pandemonium makes one pine for the days of semi-doubles.…
And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night watches over their flock. And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them; and they feared with a great fear. And the angel said to them: Fear not; for, behold, I bring…
Christmas of 1223 witnessed one of St. Francis of Assisi’s greatest flashes of poetic brilliance. “To excite the inhabitants of Greccio…to commemorate the nativity of the Infant Jesus with great devotion,” St. Bonaventure tells us, St. Francis thought of setting up a scene outdoors like that of the shelter in Bethlehem: they would fill a…
I had not yet seen HERE the celebration of the Pachamama with Bergoglio in front of the altar at Saint Peter’s Basilica last October 4 at the opening of the Amazon Synod. It is stunning. Now I understand why people are talking about idolatrous profanation and of the need to reconsecrate Saint Peter’s Basilica. Perhaps…
As our secular culture mandates, ’tis the season to break the bank and lavishly buy gifts for those close, and not so close, to us. It is difficult to find the perfect present for that special someone (should I buy my wife the ThighMaster?). One could say a spirit of listening and discernment is needed.…
