Italian Reality Check As I sit in my salotto to write this in my apartment in Garbatella, the same Roman neighborhood where Giorgia Meloni was raised, outside there is some sort of political gathering. I don’t know which one of the numerous Italian parties it is, but it is a rather pathetic gathering of maybe … Read more
Above: Columbus before the Queen by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816 – 1868). Editor’s note: the feast of Our Lady of the Pillar is October 12th which explains why Columbus Day matters to Our Lady. On Hispanidad Hispanidad is a concept that the sentinels of political correctness have completely banished even from our Spanish language, but … Read more
We are at very curious time in ecclesiastical history. On the one hand, the shaky ecclesiology of the Orthodox Churches, already shaken further when Constantinople and Moscow excommunicated each other over the status of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, has received another blow when the section of the latter body that had given its allegiance to Moscow broke … Read more
Above: Taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, 15th July 1099, Émile Signol (1847). The First Crusade was nothing short of miraculous, in which our fathers left their homes and families to lay down their lives for Christendom. Yet this event was not without its critics, then and now. For traditional Catholics, it is important to have … Read more
In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton uses an analogy to describe the modern inability to properly critique religion. He paints a mental picture using the image of a Cathedral with stained glass. He explains that if we enter into the Church we can see the beauty from the inside, and by extension will see the point … Read more
Readers past a certain age may remember the momentous role played in our lives as Catholics by the book-length interviews released by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and, later, Benedict XVI. The first of these and in some ways the most impressive for its time was The Ratzinger Report of 1985. Reading it today can still raise … Read more
“Forty Days” After His Resurrection Falling as it does between the great feasts of Easter and Pentecost, Ascension Thursday gets short shrift from modern Christians. Although it remains an unmoved (usually) Holy Day of Obligation for Roman Catholics (and, to state the obvious, the only one of such days that can never fall on a … Read more
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Probably not. You might not even remember when it happened. Please indulge me as I refresh your memory. The Backstory On Wednesday, November 17th, 2021, the USCCB was holding its Fall General Assembly at the Marriott Baltimore Waterfront hotel. There were quite a few items on the … Read more
450 years ago, on May 1, 1572, the great Pope of the Catholic Reform promoted by the Council of Trent, the “Pope of the Rosary”, glorious in crushing the enemies of the Church – external, like the Ottoman Turks, and internal, such as the followers of Luther and Calvin or as the exponents of the … Read more
Illuminated manuscript (above): depiction of the Second Council of Nicaea from the Menologion of Basil II His teaching 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 … Read more
The following talk was given at a Call to Holiness event at Assumption Grotto in Detroit on Sunday, March 6, 2022. Please note that the sound quality in the video improves at the 2’15” mark, at which time the lapel mic begins working. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, at an … Read more
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