Category Archives: Articles
Articles
This is where the feature articles, most of our site content, are deposited. “From the Laptops,” columns, the News Portal, Downloads, and Books (soon to be added) finish off our site content. All of these are navagable by the category links at the top and bottom of every page.
Everything Old Is New Again
The past five decades have seen religious life in the Catholic Church go into two very different directions. On the one hand, in the wake of Vatican II, many orders – especially of women – jettisoned their unique habits and rules (and in the case of the Dominicans and Carmelites, their liturgical rites). This revolutionary era was immediately followed by an enormous drop off in … More →
The Priest, the Sister, the Statue — and a Louisiana Connection
Catholics know and love Our Lady of Fatima. We are familiar with the miraculous happenings of 1917 when Our Blessed Lady appeared to the three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal. We know the promises of Our Lady, we know the prayers that she taught the children, Lucia, Jacinta and little Francisco. We know of the great “Miracle of the Sun” … More →
Clicking on the Comment Button
Men have always tended to an exaggerated idea of the importance of events that take place in their own time. They have also always wanted to talk about what seems important to them. We can imagine a circle of them, once upon a time, airing their views over a fire in the back of a cave. Today, of course, other means exist for them to … More →
Hilaire Belloc’s Canterbury Tale
In 1905, just before he entered the House of Commons for four discouraging years (1906-1910), Hilaire Belloc published a variegated and copious book, entitled The Old Road, about his eight-day journey afoot from Winchester to Canterbury, the latter also being the place where, on the 29th of December in 1170, Saint Thomas à Becket was martyred. Click here to VIEW full size, DOWNLOAD as PDF … More →
May/June 2013 Mancipia
The May/June 2013 Mancipia is now posted (scroll down for PDF). Back issues of this newsletter are linked from our downloads page. If you would like to receive our bi-monthly newsletter via U.S. mail, please sign up to get it regularly. Click here to VIEW full size, DOWNLOAD as PDF file, and/or PRINT.
The Fall of Constantinople
To Americans to whom the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is already a hazy memory and anything before World War II ancient history, an event in 1453 would seem to be one that took place an immeasurably long time ago. People didn’t even have cell phones then. Yet the event, like the first voyage to the New World of Christopher Columbus 49 years later, … More →
Reacting to Pope Francis
I am a convert. If I wanted to be my own Pope, I’d have stayed Protestant. That is to say, I accept that it is the exclusive right of the Church headed by the Pope, not mine as an individual, to decide what is authentic Christian belief and practice. She teaches, I can only repeat the teaching (and try to live by it). One of … More →
Sanctifying the Earth, and Our Parishes
Looking at any traditional missal, one will come across a couple somewhat puzzling observances: the Greater and Lesser Litanies — the former on the feast of St. Mark (April 25), and the latter on the “Rogation Days” (the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday preceding the feast of the Ascension). These required violet vestments, proper Masses, and processions during which the Litany of the Saints was chanted. … More →
‘And You Cannot Build Upon a Lie’
In 1920, ten years after Hilaire Belloc had stepped down from his four maturing years of publicly elected service in the House of Commons, he published a lucid book-length essay, entitled, The House of Commons and Monarchy. It is a forthright and equitably proportioned work with a clearly stated thesis; and the development of Belloc’s presented evidence and argumentation will help us still better understand … More →
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Mystery, Obama’s Brain Research Project (and the Pope)
One supposes it may be seen as in questionable taste to cite one’s own work, but that is what I am about to do here. I hope the reader will indulge me. I’m not simply plugging a book. There is a point. Young Tony and the Priest; Coming to Belief in an Age of Unbelief, a novella by me published by Loreto Publications, is a … More →
Hilaire Belloc and a High Mass
In October of 1927 Hilaire Belloc first published his book, Towns of Destiny, which contains his grateful depiction of a unique and unrepeatable event that so unexpectedly manifested itself to him in southern France on the High Feast of the Holy Ghost: a sacred action in a very special setting. In my view, this book often reveals to the attentive reader some of our beloved … More →
‘Come, We Go for Our People’
There are probably millions of stories of personal heroism and courage during the time of the Nazi regime in Europe. We recently wrote of one heroic German Franciscan, Father Karl Goldmann, and his exploits as a German SS soldier. The heart-wrenching story of Edith Stein, now known as Saint Benedicta of the Cross, is another to come out of this horrific time of the twentieth … More →
Why Human Rights Are Wrong
Modernity offers many substitutes for God and for the Christian religion that was the sole foundation of Western civilization and culture for most of two millennia. Some of these substitutes aren’t what they used to be. For instance, racism, according to which men worship their genes and which was very big in the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth, is no longer espoused … More →
Restoring a Catholic Memory
On How to Develop a Catholic Sense Without a Catholic Culture To restore to his people a true memory Alexander Solzhenitsyn has accepted almost unspeakable sacrifice and loss, and especially the cross of patience. Solzhenitsyn has attempted to draw his people forth from an asphyxiating rubble of distortion just as he has himself been drawn forth: trusting and contending, marked and transfigured by grace, an … More →
The Porteño Pope and That Hideous Strength
For this great Argentine [Peron] Who worked tirelessly, That there should rule in the people love and equality. — Hugo del Carril, Marcha Peronista The shadow of that hyddeous strength, sax myle and more it is of length — David Lyndsay, The Monarche The election of Pope Francis, the first ever Argentine Pope, has left commentators and normal people alike scratching their heads, desperately trying … More →
