(Last time, I promised to follow up Ad Rem 89 with some concrete advice. This will come, God willing, but first something more timely for November.)
Fingerprints burned into a prayer book. A clearly visible charred hand print on a wooden table. Similar marks on shirt sleeves, a night cap, and aprons. These are among the curiosities to be seen in Rome’s Purgatory Museum.
When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, she was asked about her consistent approval of abortion. Repeating her frequently stated stand, she insisted that she is “an ardent, practicing Catholic” and then claimed that no one knows when life begins. Moderator Tom Brokaw promptly told her [...]
Today, the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, there is an interview with me published on the Renew America web site. Brian Mershon, a traditional Catholic journalist interviewed me several months ago, and this is the result:
One year later…the forgotten document: A reaffirmation of the one true Church of [...]
Every evening we come before our Blessed Mother, bringing her a collection of our day’s efforts. She gracefully produces a gift of value and, in November, we are emboldened to ask if any of it could be applied to the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
November is the month dedicated to the Holy Souls, and they are [...]
One of the earliest and most popular editors of the Catholic newspaper, The Boston Pilot, was an escaped “convict.” John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-90) was unjustly sentenced in 1867, by the English, to twenty-three years of penal servitude in Australia for his anti-British activism as a member of the Irish Fenians. He escaped the [...]
In Catholic religious art the color blue, not white, is symbolic of purity. The white wedding gown originated in the nineteenth century in imitation of Queen Victoria who wore white for her wedding to Prince Albert. The blue that brides were instructed to wear “something borrowed, something blue” on the wedding day was in honor [...]
I’m back from this two-week trip to Rome, but I haven’t gotten the Eternal City out of my mind. Not by a long shot. Thus, this entry, which has a ghoulish picture in it. I think it’s an appropriate meditation on death for November.
In Rome there is a famous church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, [...]
The following is a press release from the Catholic Action League, condemning a deal between Boston College and Victoria’s Secret:
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today criticized Jesuit administered Boston College for entering into a business relationship with Victoria’s Secret, the self-described distributor of the “world’s sexiest brands” in women’s lingerie, sleepwear [...]
The first diocese established in North America was not Mexico City or Quebec but Greenland. Viking Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, brought along Catholic missionaries when he sailed to Greenland from Norway in the year 1000. His father, exiled from Norway, had established a colony there in 986 at Brattahlid. Leif was raised [...]
The word “saunter,” which means to “wander about,” is derived from Saint Terre (Holy Land). The connection is this: After the age of the catacombs, with the ascent of Constantine and Theodosius to the imperial Roman throne, Christians were free to make pilgrimages to Palestine. This was always a dangerous journey, especially after the seventh [...]
Zenit News has a very interesting article affirming the fact, with documentation, that Pius XII saw the sun dance in the sky and change colors four times, October 30, 31, November 1, and November 8, 1950. He defined the dogma of Our Lady’s Assumption on November 1 that year. The pope testified to this in [...]
The thirteenth century - regarded as the "Greatest of Centuries" - was coming to an end. The century of the glorious Crusades, in which selfless men of faith sacrificed their lives to recover the revered relics of Christendom; the magnificent cathedrals with spires that reached into the heavens to adore Him on High; the great universities, dedicated to the education of a God-centered people, that gave to the world men not only learned, but holy - such as Saints Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Albert the Great. In a word, the thirteenth century had been everything that is Catholic.
On the Eve of Christmas, in the year of Our Lord, 1294, a new pope was elevated to the Chair of Peter. Concomitant with his accession, however, a menacing new spirit of revolution had entered the world. Catholic princes of Europe were brazenly repudiating the Sovereign Pontiff’s supreme authority.
It was amidst this tumultuous sea of rebellion that Boniface VIII had been chosen by the Holy Ghost to take the helm of Peter’s Barque. His ten-year reign is marked by ceaseless but unavailing efforts to reconcile and pacify the enemies of the Holy See. Sister Catherine, MICM noted this in Our Glorious Popes:
Pope Boniface VIII, the last of the Glorious Popes of the Middle Ages, tried with every breath of his priestly heart, every effort of his extraordinarily gifted mind, … every power, to stem the tide of revolution, only to go down to terrible defeat before the same diabolic forces which achieved the religious revolution of Luther in 1517, and the French Revolution of 1789.
Probably no pope in the history of Christendom has been more maligned, more slandered, than this great pontiff. His unyielding defense of the Church’s supreme authority over every temporal power - granted by Our Lord Himself - earned the unrelenting contempt of the enemies of Jesus Christ. In one of the advanced degrees of Freemasonry, for example, the initiation ritual includes thrusting a dagger through a ceremonial skull, which stands for that of Pope Boniface VIII. Why Boniface? Because everything that Freemasonry despises - the power and authority of Jesus Christ invested in His Vicar - was exemplified and upheld most formidably by this holy pope. And he was holy indeed. Three centuries after his death, his body was found to be incorrupt - a compelling sign, to the contradiction of his implacable enemies both within and with out the Church, that his life and works and teachings were wholly pleasing to God. It is for this reason that we believe Boniface VIII may one day be canonized a saint.
Elsewhere on this site, we have reprinted in full, the text of his famous Bull, Unam Sanctam, issued in 1302. We have also published a more detailed discussion of the historical circumstances that occasioned this thunderous exposition of Catholic dogma and pontifical authority. It is enough to say here that the message of Boniface VIII is as clear and challenging - and every bit as valid- today as it was some seven hundred years ago. It is the same challenge that our Founder, Father Leonard Feeney, brought to the attention of the entire world over forty years ago: There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, nor without personal submission to our Holy Father the Pope!
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