We’ve been hearing it a lot: “Should I just quit paying attention to the apparent collapse of the Catholic institution and become Orthodox?” I’d like to start with the unequivocal assertion that this is a temptation to the grave sin of schism. Don’t do it. Also, as we will see below, it’s a bit of…
I’ll never forget the night I was sitting at my computer in my office, everyone else in my family was asleep, and I caught a flash of yellow light out the window. When I looked over, I saw the quietest tow truck I’ve ever heard quickly pulling our 12-passenger Nissan van — the one we…
On October 4, 350 years will have passed since the death of the Dutch Baroque painter and printmaker who loved light, darkness, and mystery: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). The musical side of Rembrandt — his baptismal name and his signature — can be glamorous. In some of his paintings, he portrays himself as a singer,…
On September 12, we celebrated the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary. The mysteries and marvels of the sacred name of Maria are so vast an ocean that the field of Mariology will never finish contemplating them, even through all the days of eternity. For the Name of Maria means and denotes, among…
In what seems to be growing concern about the true mission, vision, and motivation of the upcoming Pan-Amazon Synod, two Catholic bishops from the missions in the Amazon have made public statements questioning a foundation of the Vatican’s October event: the synod’s working document. How can, as one bishop put it, a synod “of this…
It is considered insensitive, even Hobbesian, to use the word “primitive” in speaking of primordial cultures. Encyclopedia Britannica identifies the phrase primitive culture as belonging to “the lexicon of early anthropologists.” Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, father of cultural anthropology, wrote Primitive Cultures in 1871, before the savage horror of World War I shook confidence in…
Epistle: Galatians 5:16-24 Gospel: Matthew 6:24-33 Keep, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy Church with perpetual peace; and because the frailty of man without Thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by Thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation. – From the Collect for the Fourteenth…
Already by the winter of 2017, I had spent nearly two years as a secular, “conservative” political commentator on various internet platforms. I observed and took part in many of the discussions that dominated the first years of the Donald Trump presidency in the USA, learning about “fringe” views which had for decades been exiled…
“Red-pilled” Catholic men these days who are thinking seriously about priesthood or religious life are wondering if it makes any sense to enter a Novus Ordo seminary or community. Could God be calling them to be “infiltrators” who usher in a more traditional future? Or should they interpret their growing love for the old Latin…
For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12) Years ago, when I was Protestant I had two spiritual experiences — one evil, one holy — that pushed…
Vaticanista Sandro Magister reported today that a video of 79-year-old Fr. Giovanni Nicolini, an Italian priest of some stature (and a “protagonist of Vatican II”), has surfaced in which Nicolini claims that in the Amazon region, married deacons are offering “mass” because of the priest shortage, and that Pope Francis not only knows about it, but…
