July is the month of the Precious Blood. In the traditional rite, the first day of the month is the feast of that name. In the Roman Martyrology, July 1 also commemorates Aaron the High Priest, the brother of Moses. This liturgical concurrence is appropriate, since Aaron’s priesthood — part of the alliance mediated by Moses — was a priesthood that offered many sacrifices prefiguring Christ’s Precious Blood.
In his Making a Monkey Out of Darwin, the formidable Buchanan reviews a recent book by Eugene Windchy, The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold. You gotta give it to Pat; he’s not afraid to slaughter a sacred cow… or …
It would take too long to point out all that’s wrong with Laurie Goodstein’s New York Times piece, “U.S. Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny,” so I’ll cut to the chase. The last sentence of the article reads:
But the investigation of American nuns surprised many because there was no obvious precipitating cause.
The same article reports that vocations in the group in question are down from 180,000 in 1965 to 60,000 today. It also mentions that
Brother Francis has taken a downturn. We received news last week that Brother has “a couple of months” to live, due to his worsening aortic valve stenosis. This prognosis is from his very competent cardiologist at Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, New Hampshire. As those who know Brother Francis can well imagine, he is taking the news very “philosophically.” Showing his resignation to the divine providence, he told one of the doctors, “I am in the Hands of God.”
Just after I posted an appreciation of the recent USCCB document clarifying the Church’s teaching on her mission and the Jewish People, I checked my familiar news sources to catch up on what’s going on.
Coincidentally, I discovered that “ADL president Abraham Foxman said that the bishops’ statement might be …
Our beloved Superior, Brother Francis, who will be 96 years old on July 19, is in need of prayers for his health. Brother was in the hospital last week with congestive heart failure, a condition he is prone to because he has long had aortic valve stenosis. He was discharged from Cheshire Medical Center last Friday, the Feast of the Sacred Heart. He is now at home, where the brothers and visiting health-care professionals are attending to him.
If you’ve not read Brian Kelly’s brief and delightful biography of Venerable Solanus Casey, please do yourself the favor. This Irish-American Padre Pio ought to be better known and loved across the nation.
Please Note: if any of our readers know some GM execs, could you please put a bug in their corporate ear? With all the trouble the auto-making giant is having these days, they should be reminded of Venerable Solanus’ past benevolence to Chevrolet, one of General Motors’ subsidiaries. As Brian writes:
Father Kenneth Baker, S. J., has written a short and delightful review of a recent book on Saint Francis of Assisi: “Preach Christ to the Muslims” The volume in review is St. Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of the Muslims, by Frank M. Rega, S.F.O.
These two excerpts are worth savoring:
Trusting absolutely in God and willing to die for the faith, Francis was at first beaten by the guards but eventually taken to the sultan.
Over at Taki’s Magazine, Charles Coulombe playfully takes readers on a fast-paced romp through the unfamiliar (for most people) political spectrum of what is called “Paleoconservatism.” His article, The Old Paleos and the New, seeks to explain the contrasts and often bizarre alliances within this recently-coined label.
Kirkians, Burkeans, the descendants of the Old Right, Monarchists, Strict-Constructionists (like Birchers), devotees of Richard M. Weaver, and even certain Libertarians — all these find a home under the Paleo umbrella.
A magnificent writer, Elizabeth Thecla Mauro, has a passion for the sport, and boy is she good at her craft. Her team? The Yankees. Well, that’ll just have to be overlooked. She finds a nobility in the game and in the players, or in many of them that is, and …
The annual Pilgrimage for Restoration is a sixty-five mile walk from Lake George to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, NY. For four days, pilgrims attend Mass together, walk, camp, sing pray, and compare blisters! It’s an unforgettable experience. This year’s dates are Wednesday, September 23 to Saturday, September 26.
This event is not sponsored by Saint Benedict Center, but we participate in it every year, with great enthusiasm. The sponsors are the Company of St. René Goupil, with the…
If there is one common theme in today’s Mass it is confidence: confidence in God, in the promise of the Holy Ghost which we received at Pentecost, confidence in the Church, and confidence that present difficulties can and will come to a happy issue for those in the love of God. Confidence is in this Mass from beginning to end: Read More »
(Note: When Mr. Potter sent me this piece for consideration, he said, “I can think of several reasons why you might decide not to post the piece I am attaching for your consideration. If you so decide, there’ll be no upset feelings at my end.” He’s a magnanimous gentleman, Gary Potter. Although some superficial folk will doubtless object to the remarks that follow as “pro-Obama” (which they are certainly not), I think this risk worth taking. Gary’s remarks are worth considering — which implies they must be read carefully and thought about — especially by those conservatives whose conservativism conserves nothing in particular; nothing, that is, other than victory for Republican candidates and whatever their agenda might be, foreign or domestic, pro-life or not, jingoist or no. As I recently tried to point out, we Catholics are not called to be ideologues, but disciples. And we are certainly not called upon to be party cheerleaders. —Brother André Marie)
There are four things I should like to say in the lines which follow, written in real time somewhat more than a month after President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame and also following his speech at Cairo University. The first has to do with his Notre Dame appearance. Read More »
In what Catholic World News termed “an unusual clarifying statement,” two organs of the the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops jointly released a note highlighting and correcting the doctrinal ambiguities in a 2002 document on the Church’s mission and the Jewish people. “A Note on Ambiguities Contained in Reflections on Covenant And Mission,” was released by the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine and its Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs on June 18. The ambiguous document it seeks to correct is called Reflections on Covenant And Mission. Read More »
How few parents realize the immense power they possess for moulding the character and shaping the future career of their children. The tiny babe just born to them comes from God’s hand with vast possibilities for good and evil; like the young forest tree, its soul may be trained to grow straight and beautiful, or bent and twisted, made horrible and deformed. Read More »
Today can be called the Sunday of Merciful Love. The Divine Mercy is brought before our eyes in manifold ways it the propers of the Third Sunday after Pentecost. This liturgy predates the feast of the Sacred Heart, so it is something of a divine arrangement that the Feast of our Lord’s Heart would immediately precede this Sunday which so much extols his merciful charity to sinners. The theme is taken up straightaway in the Introit: “Look Thou upon me, O Lord, and have mercy on me; for I am alone and poor. See my abjection and my labor; and forgive me all my sins….” Read More »
Imagine, even if your name is “Barney” you can become a saint. Barney, baptized Bernard, was the sixth of sixteen children born to Irish immigrants Bernard and Ellen Casey. The date of his birth was November 25, 1870. The place was a three room log cabin on a farm in Hudson, Wisconsin. His cause for sainthood was accepted by Rome in 1976 and, in 1995, he was declared Venerable by Pope John Paul II. If Venerable Solanus Casey were to be canonized soon he would be the first United States-born male to be raised to the altar. Read More »
We are still in what used to be the Octave of Corpus Christi. Even though this octave was done away with in the 1962 rubrics, its ghost still lurks about the liturgy. We will, this Friday, have the feast of the Sacred Heart, whose placement was determined by its relation to the octave. What follows are some considerations on the Epistle for Corpus Christi (I Cor. 11:23-39). It is not an in-depth reading or scholarly exegesis. These are merely some meditations I offer for your consideration. Read More »
The Religious State can be the portion only of an elite: that is to say, of chosen souls. A special vocation is required of those who aspire to walk this narrow and uphill path. Read More »
Pray for the fragile daughter,
And the frail, infant son,
Whom, at the font, the baptismal water
I pour upon. Read More »
(This was written in preparation for a series of conferences on vocations and states in life that I gave at Saint Benedict Center in the Spring of 2005. Please see the end of this piece for a small table of contents with links to the other conferences.)
In the previous conference, we introduced the general subject of states in life. We said that the importance of choosing the right state in life, which we call a “secondary vocation” has to do with the fact that your primary vocation — to the life of grace here and of glory hereafter — is very much related to it. Read More »
