The Christian Doctrine of Purgatory: the “Periphery of Hell”
"The slightest pain of Purgatory will exceed the greatest pain of this life."
The Fiery Prison of Purgatory and How to Avoid It
The common teaching of the saints and doctors is that the slightest pains endured in the terrible fire of Purgatory will be more painful than all the pains of the present life. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes, “[St.] Augustine (Enarration on Psalm 37, no. 3) speaks of the pain which purgatorial fire causes as more severe…
Colligite Fragmenta: 21st Sunday after Pentecost
As the liturgical year draws to its close, the Church’s voice takes on autumnal gravity. The Sundays after Pentecost turn our eyes toward the final harvest, when the Lord will take all things to Himself. This Sunday’s Collect, Epistle, and Gospel form a single meditation on mercy and judgment, protection and peril, the divine household…
The Theology of Death Penalty
Many can no longer concretely distinguish between Catholic thought and Masonic thought.
Colligite Fragmenta: Christ the King
The royal families of Europe were falling one by one. Secularist atheistic materialism was on the rise. In the wake of the gory First World War, Pope Pius XI looked out over a world in chaos. Industrialization and imperialism, aggravated by political alliances, had ignited the hideous war with its trench warfare, modern artillery, and…
Colligite Fragmenta: 19th Sunday after Pentecost
When this Sunday comes around, with its snappy Collect, I am minded of the early fourth-century martyr St. Expeditus. The Latin text of the Collect reads: Omnipotens et misericors Deus, universa nobis adversantia propitiatus exclude: ut mente et corpore pariter expediti, quae tua sunt, liberis mentibus exsequamur. Translated slavishly: Almighty and merciful God, having been…
Colligite Fragmenta: 18th Sunday after Pentecost
As the northern hemisphere drifts from the fullness of summer into the crisp melancholy of autumn, Holy Church too moves into a season of spiritual harvest. In her ancient cycle of Sundays, formed in the lands where the light fades earlier each day, she begins to turn her gaze toward the final realities – the…
Colligite Fragmenta: 17th Sunday after Pentecost
The 17th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo sets before us Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, a prison letter written probably from Rome, probably not far from where I sit in Rome writing this, in which he exhorts: Brethren, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of…
Colligite Fragmenta: 16th Sunday after Pentecost
Is there a vice which God hates more than pride? It was pride that brought down Satan and the other apostate angels. It was pride that brought down the entire human race in our First Parents. Pride turned angels into devils, turned Paradise into this vale of tears. What does pride do to your interior…
Colligite Fragmenta: 15th Sunday after Pentecost
We come now to the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, known in older Roman reckoning as Quinta post Sancti Laurentii, the fifth Sunday after St. Lawrence, so beloved by the Romans. In the ancient system, most Sundays of the year had station churches, not only the Sundays of Advent or the days of Lent. Blessed Ildefonso…
Colligite Fragmenta: Exaltation of the Cross
When Benedict XVI chose precisely the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross for the coming into force of Summorum Pontificum in 2007, he taught that the Cross is central to the Roman Rite.