Want to listen to this post instead? Check out our audio recording of this essay. Musical accompaniment by Frank LaRocca, “Miserere,” taken from the album “In This Place“: The sky was overcast, steel-gray clouds admitting only a few rays of light as I ascended the hill. It looked like rain, but none had yet broken…
Entirely unsurprisingly, yesterday’s article from Roberto De Mattei on the liceity of vaccines — even those derived from/tested on fetal cell lines — stirred up a lot of controversy. I should like to point out to those commenters who essentially declared that this long-respected Catholic scholar has destroyed his credibility that such a histrionic response…
Today is Holy Thursday, also known colloquially as “Maundy Thursday,” which begins the Easter Triduum. What does “Maundy” mean? It’s a derivative of the language used in the “new commandment” given by Christ as he washed the feet of the apostles at the Last Supper. “Maundy” comes from “Mandatum” in the expression, “Mandatum novum do…
Editor’s note: Today we are pleased to reprint, with the author’s permission, the following essay from Prof. Roberto de Mattei, an eminent scholar of Church history and one of the most notable thought leaders of European traditional Catholicism. Herein he offers helpful guidance on the matters of both the moral liceity and the questionable efficacy…
Recently, I bumped into a friend who expressed her surprise that 2019 was the first time I had ever attended the pre-1955 (i.e., ancient or unreformed) Holy Week liturgies. She was under the impression that someone who travels, reads, thinks, and writes a good deal about the sacred liturgy would surely have done this long…
Of sexual immorality and impurity, St. Paul says, “Let them be not so much as named among you” (Eph. 5:3). He further counsels that we think on those things that are noble, pure, lovely, and admirable (Phil. 4:8); but there comes a time to look into the Abyss and call it by name. The specific…
Memento Mori is an ancient monastic expression that has had a bit of a gothy rebranding and promotion in the Catholic underground. Of course, the nomenclature is timeless and sound–we are all going to die, and we should live as if we understand that; to paraphrase St. Robert Bellarmine, those who live well, die well.…
Imagine you’re in a movie theater watching the latest blockbuster, thoroughly captivated by the plots and subplots, the beautiful faces and lush scenery as the movie progresses inexorably toward its climax. Your cell phone alerts you to an incoming call. (Of course, you silenced the ringer before the movie began.) Much as you hate the…
“The teaching of Saint John Damascene thus finds its place in the tradition of the universal Church, whose sacramental doctrine foresees that material elements taken from nature can become vehicles of grace by virtue of the invocation (epiclesis) of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by the confession of the true faith.” (General Audience, 6 May, 2009,…
From The Book of Lemaitrians, Chapter 1, Verses 1 & 2: In the beginning was the dot, no larger than the end of a human hair. When it exploded, that dot released everything that exists and has ever existed in the Universe: time, space, light, energy, and all the matter that makes up the stars,…
By William Po In 2013, Francis, the first Jesuit pope, canonized the Jesuit Peter Faber (1506-1546) who, with founder St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552) and four others, vowed poverty, chastity and obedience on Montmartre in 1534 in forming the Compañía de Jesús (which was Latinized into Societas Jesu) – the Jesuit order.…
