When I was growing up, I distinctly recall hearing, more than once, presumably well-meaning teachers and preachers say something like the following: “The Church kind of forgot about the Holy Spirit for a long time, and with Vatican II, we remembered Him. This is now the Age of the Spirit.” Intriguingly, the age of the…
Integralism is a word that gets argued over a great deal among the American Catholic Twitterati. A lot of them are still having their old dispute over the limits of the Church with regard to the State, that never-ending problem of “who’s boss” between the American Constitution and the pope. But the word “integralism,” understood…
On Thursday, May 22 of this year, the faithful entered the season of “Little Advent,” the Lord’s own novena given to the apostles: Ascensiontide. Just as in winter Advent, the Church waits in joyful and fearful expectation for the Lord’s coming in the flesh, the Little Advent of Ascensiontide awaits a mysterious and unknown power…
Due to the explosion of the Tambora volcano in 1815, we had a year without summer, for the atmosphere was filled with sunlight-inhibiting dust. This year we had a year without Easter, another gift from the Far East, but it is impossible to miss that although it began much earlier in China, in the West,…
One among the many irrefutable proofs of the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ that even serious non-Christians are forced to contend with is the testimony of Flavius Josephus, first-century Jewish historian and eyewitness to the remarkable fulfilment of Our Savior’s prophesies regarding the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Bp. Eusebius praises Josephus for…
And in the end of the sabbath, when it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalen and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. And behold there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and coming, rolled back the stone, and sat upon…
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”…
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…
