A century ago, on December 16, 1921, a multifaceted musician, the undisputed protagonist of the second Romanticism in France, and a virtuoso pianist, organist and skilled improviser, prolific composer and eloquent music critic, died in Algiers (Algeria): Camille Saint-Saëns. He was born 86 years earlier, on October 9, 1835, in Paris. A child prodigy, after…
The Horrors of the New Springtime Born a “cradle Catholic” just as the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) was underway in 1962, I was blessed to grow up in a small Western Montana town that was home to the first Catholic Parish established in Montana Territory. Our small parish had a K-6 Catholic school and…
Pornocracy. The term was coined to refer to the period that Cardinal Baronius called “the dark age” (saeculum obscurum): the tenth century Papacy. Protestants attempted to use this term to discredit the Church as entirely corrupt, but they failed to realize that the Holy Ghost had used the same accusation against the Church of the…
Dear OnePeterFive donors, supporters and readers, It has now been confirmed by Rorate that this is going to be a “template for cowardly bishops” as OnePeterFive writer Raymond Kowalski said. The heretics who hate the Roman rite are hoping to implement their error-ridden motu proprio from the model in Rome. This egregious act of the Pontiff…
Rhythm has always conveyed steadiness, familiarity. Rhythm is our primordial sense of pattern, our recognition of repeatability. Rhythm expresses personal and cultural attachment to what gives security. Rhythm brings us the hidden wonder of both constancy and expectancy. Like the beating of one’s heart. To break rhythm – say, in dance, in an ensemble, an…
Today—and it has already been thus for some years—the intellectual firepower, not to mention the virtue of basic honesty when it comes to Church history and dogmatic theology, is all on the side of traditional Catholic writers. If one wishes to laugh or groan, one need only visit the blogs Pray, Tell or Where Peter…
Five centuries ago, on December 13, 1521, in Le Grotte, now Grottammare, a charming town on the Adriatic coast in the Marche region, was born the tough pope: Sixtus V, whose original name was Felice Peretti. The great Roman dialect poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791–1863) celebrates him in one of his gracious sonnets: Among all…
“In a filial and obedient spirit I disobey, I refuse, I rebel.” Although spoken by a 13th century English bishop, these bold yet paradoxical words to the pope represent well the tension found in today’s “Recognize and Resist” movement within the Catholic Church. We recognize that Francis is the legitimate pope and that as pope…
Christendom Defends Her Honour In 1531, Christian Europe, thanks to the Roman Catholic Church, had enjoyed over a 1000 years of Christendom. Ever since St. Constantine the Great – “Equal to the Apostles” – Catholic Christianity had been triumphing gloriously. In countless souls and societies of Christendom, Mary had crushed the serpent and Christ the…
Two weeks remain until the Nativity of Jesus Christ. In these final moments, the veil between Heaven and Earth becomes very thin. We stand at the precipice of the triumphal Incarnation of the Logos. For twelve months we have toiled and struggled through this Valley of Tears, but from the fiat of one Woman, we now edge…
Consider where we have been so far in Advent. On the first Sunday of Advent, we heard in the texts of Holy Mass that the Lord was still distant, but that He was coming. Then the pace picked up. In the Second Sunday’s Gospel, Christ explained that John the Baptist’s followers should tell the great…
