Our Divine Lord, hanging on the Cross in the sight of the assembled multitudes, insulted, scorned, and blasphemed by His enemies, turns to His Eternal Father, and beseeches Him to forgive them, for they know not what they do. Consider — 1. The charity with which Jesus prays. After a prolonged period of silence, our…
Painting: Christ Crucified (1632) by Diego Velázquez. Pauline mortification part one, part two/three. A fourth reason obliging us to mortification or abnegation is the necessity of imitating Jesus crucified. He Himself tells us: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily” (Lk. 9:23). St. Paul adds: For…
Read the last chapter before this one Table of Contents Start reading from chapter 1 Chapter 15 Malthus my boy, I just received your message, and I thought it wise to send you a quick note. My mouth has not watered this excessively in quite a while. You see, a fish rots from…
Above: woodcut of Constantinople by Giovanni Andreas Vavassore, circa 1535. Editor’s note: see part 1 in this series: “Eastern Orthodoxy and the Pathology Against Charity.” The Fourth Crusade is perhaps the greatest wound of blood between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. In the year 1204 crusaders came and sacked Constantinople, the greatest Eastern Orthodox city…
I was in the car with my friend on the way to Vespers at the Russian Orthodox church. I remember it vividly for some reason; driving down the streets of the old Slavic immigrant neighborhood on the westside of my city (which encompasses also the Ukrainian Catholic parish and the Polish Catholic parish). This would…
Photo: consecration of Russia by Pope Francis, March 25, 2022. By Diane Montagna. Perhaps this will be seen as one of those negative Traditional Catholic spiels. Perhaps I am a pessimist at heart. For everyone it seems is on board with the conversion prayer for Russia, including the SSPX. Perhaps however I am only a…
Photo: Gary Wills in 2015. Recently, I have been reading books and periodicals dealing with the post-Vatican II era in the Catholic Church. Of course, we in the year 2022 are also a part of this post-conciliar era, and there is no shortage of literature discussing the Second Vatican Council some fifty, sixty years later.…
Ever since we set out on our spiritual journey on pre-Lent Septuagesima Sunday, step by step we have approached Holy Week. While a measure of weariness might distress us as we slog along the paths of penance and discipline, of self-denial and self-examination, our hearts rise because we draw nearer to the goal of victory…
Read the last chapter before this one Table of Contents Start reading from chapter 1 Chapter 14 Malthus my boy, It is welcome news you tell me that the parental divide has ossified into a standoff with practically no verbal exchanges for long periods of time. As tempting as it is to facilitate magnificent…
It’s hard to believe it’s been over three months. Three months of praying. Three months of pondering. Three months of pleading with Cardinal Cupich to give us back full access to the Latin Mass. In February, when the Cardinal’s ban of the Traditional Latin Mass on first Sundays and some Holy Days went into effect,…
Photo: Saint-François de Molitor, Paris, France. Why was the tabernacle removed from the high altar or kept away from the center of so many churches during the past fifty years? There are many reasons one could give for this decentering of our Lord Jesus Christ in the miracle of His abiding Eucharistic Presence among us,…
