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The Innate Qualities of the Child

Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (1877-1964) was one of the greatest theologians of modern times. He was a staunch anti-modernist, who engaged and exposed the twerpy upstarts responsible for the neo-modernist Nouvelle Théologie (”New Theology”). Much more than a controversialist, the Dominican Friar could write of the deepest spiritual truths with a relish and lucidity that make his theology engaging to study.

In a series of three Ad Rem, I purpose to present his thoughts on “spiritual childhood.”

by Brother André Marie March 11th, 2010

CDF Prefect Affirms: ‘Union with the Catholic Church is the goal of ecumenism’


Brother André Marie

One of the commentators on the relevant CWN article expressed it well: “It’s past time someone said this. Too often ecumenism is taken to mean the weakening of the teachings of the Church and the addition of non-Catholic ritual and beliefs.” A-m-e-n-!

Past time is better than no time — or, “better late than never.” All the scandal that has transpired, and is ongoing, in the name of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue should cease at these words of Cardinal Levada defining its purpose (or “final cause” to you Aristotelians out there): “Union with the Catholic Church is the goal of ecumenism.”


2010 Saint Benedict Center Conference


The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Our 2010 conference will be held on October 8 and 9 at Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire.

The information currently available is as follows:

Theme: “The Romance of Wisdom”

Cost: $100 for both days (Friday and Saturday). This includes meals. Single days without meals: $40.

Note: This year, Friday and Saturday will both be full days. There will be eight speakers giving presentations in addition to the master of ceremonies, our Prior, Brother Andre Marie.


Why Buddhism Is Open to Suicide


Brian Kelly

Archbishop Alberto Bottari de Castello, apostolic nuncio to Japan, has a very perceptive insight into the subversive effects Buddhist doctrine  has on the soul of a suffering devotee confronting hopelessness.  From Sandro Magister’s latest column: “Why Life is Worth So Little in Prosperous Japan.”

“The Japanese do not have a personal …


Is the False Apparition in Medjugorje Finally to Be Condemned?


The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

[March 5, 2010 - Rome Reports (with hat tip to Rorate Caeli)]

Benedict XVI has formed a commission to investigate if Our Lady truly appeared in Medjugorje, a small town in Bosnia.

The commission is part of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Camillo Ruini will preside over the commission. Ruini is the pope’s former vicar of Rome’s diocese. Ruini goal will be to explain to the pope what’s happening at the sanctuary which has become the third most visited in Europe.

Allegedly, at least 6 people have witnessed the Virgins apparitions there since 1981.


Yet Another Defense of Pius XII


Brother André Marie

When the enemies of the Church, the enemies of Christianity in general, and those who want to “hold” the Catholic hierarchy’s “feet to the fire” constantly jabber about Pius XII’s supposed complicity in the Nazi murder of Jews, it becomes necessary to defend the truth as well as the honor of the Holy Father. He was, after all, not only innocent of the crime of which he stands accused by an angry mob, but was also proactive in the protection of innocent Jews. That’s history. Catholics have a particular duty to defend the Church’s honor, but even secular historians of the era ought to vindicate Pius XII, if only to protect the integrity of their science.


The ‘Woman’ of Genesis


Brian Kelly

In changing the traditional Douay-Rheims rendering of Genesis 3:15 from “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” to the Catholic Revised Standard Version translation (based on the King James Bible), “I will put enmities between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel,” the scriptural foundation for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is compromised. So, too, is the traditional doctrine concerning Our Lady’s essential role in salvation history, which has been translated into her more modern title of “Co-redemptrix.”


Iraq’s Dechristianization Continues


Brother André Marie

“The United Nations estimated that 683 Christians fled Mosul between February 20 and February 27. Chaldean Catholic Bishop Emil Shimoun Nona of Mosul estimated that ‘about 400 families’ had left the city’s community of 4,000 Christians.”

This disheartening data comes from an article in Catholic World News. The Iraqi Catholic bishops themselves are bemoaning the situation. But that’s not all they are doing; they are also praying, fasting, and organizing their people to protest peacefully. The facts are not to be denied, and they are not the “spin” of liberal news pundits trying to make a Republican effort look bad.


Manchester Bishop John B. McCormack to Lead Pilgrimage for Brother André’s Canonization


The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Bishop John B. McCormack is inviting New Hampshire Catholics to join him on a pilgrimage to Rome and other Italian holy sites from October 15-25 in celebration of the canonization of Blessed Brother André Bessette.

Pope Benedict XVI recently announced that Blessed Brother André will be formally declared a saint at a ceremony in Saint Peter’s Square on October 17, 2010.

The pilgrimage will be organized by Canterbury Tours of Bedford, NH. It will also include visits to other Italian holy sites in Rome, Assisi, and Siena.


Abbé Georges de Nantes, R.I.P.


Brother André Marie

The Abbé Georges de Nantes, a very controversial figure in the traditionalist movement, and one of the most brilliant, who surrounded himself also with very gifted consecrated souls dedicated to the spirituality of Venerable Charles de Foucald, has died. Rorate Caeli has a small tribute to him, and the web site of the Catholic Counter Reformation in the XXIst Century has further details.


Blessed Brother André to Be Canonized October 17


The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Montreal, February 19, 2010 (St. Joseph’s Oratory) — With a palpable sense of elation, a number of priests and brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross (the religious family of Brother Andre), members of the archdiocese of Montreal, and Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal assembled today in the Consistory Hall of Vatican City to hear Pope Benedict XVI proclaim in their presence and in the presence of the College of Cardinals that Brother André will be canonized the October 17 in Rome.


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Catholic Living

We are members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Therefore, we are not solitaries. We have a duty to help one another achieve our common salvation. We have a duty, first and foremost in our own homes, to work toward the restoration of the Catholic culture that our ancestors enjoyed. If we “cultivate” that culture ourselves, we can attract others. What we must realize is that we are not each our own species, like the angels (so taught St. Thomas), but we are members of one human race. God wills to restore and even more wonderfully recreate that original unity (disassociated after the dispersion at the Tower of Babel) in the one true Church. The articles found in this section emphasize the beauty of Catholic social and cultural life in its varied and sundry forms, as well as the harmony that flows from the incorporation of many into the one living Body of Christ. Viva Cattolicesimo!

Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?, by Michael P. Foley; published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

When I picked up this intriguingly titled paperback, I expected it to be a zippy read, informative, but light and amusing. It is informative all right, and amusing in parts, but it is anything but light. A quick read only because it is so interesting you don’t want to put it down, this little tome educates as well as entertains, informing the reader, as the book’s subtitle says, of the Catholic origin of just about everything! While that may be a bit of an exaggeration, it certainly is astounding to learn of how many words, practices, and historical developments our Catholic Faith has been responsible for, in whole or in part. Read More »

Father Michael Jarecki is our chaplain. At ninety-two years of age, he is not yet quite as long-lived as Brother Francis (who died at ninety six), but he’s close. I fear that his recent hospitalization is a sign that he is soon to exit this world. Truth to tell, he wants to do just that, because, as he has told us many times, he wants to go to Heaven soon. Whether his departure is anon or no, I think a few words in tribute to this heroic alter Christus are appropriate now, even while he is still with us. Read More »

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CNA reports: For many elderly or disabled individuals, winter is a unsettling time filled with depression brought on by escalating utility bills, social isolation and many other factors.  “There is a fear factor in winter when you are alone,” began Susan, 59, who suffers from Rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments that leave her unable to work. She recently received 100 gallons of oil from Bishop Thomas J. Tobin’s “Keep the Heat On” challenge, a program that the grateful recipient emphasized will make a significant difference in the quality of her life this winter. Full article and interview here.

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This Christmas season (yes, it’s still Christmas season!) is a perfect time to pause, between bites of chocolate torte and sips of sparkling wine, and consider if we have learned to feast appropriately. This is less of a financial issue than one of leisure and union with the liturgical year. And it also involves a serious look at how we receive us this day our daily bread and embrace the times of fasting. It is only by the contrasts of these three that we can know if we are connected with hundreds of years of Catholic practice. Read More »

Sister entitled her Conference talk, “Towards a Deeper Understanding of the Powers of Life as they Transcend the Material: The Acquisition of Wisdom and The Transmission of Culture.” (To purchase the entire talk on DVD or CD, go to our store site.)

This presentation is a well-organized and systematic application of the heart of Brother Francis course on psychology as it applies to wisdom and culture.

Read More »

I was in the Brothers’ Priory earlier today, espying on the activities at their Richmond-based Command Central, and was particularly struck by the reading material available to these religious — specifically, the variety thereof. On the same shelf as Dom Gueranger’s Liturgical Year and Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s Three Ages of the Interior Life was Barnacle Parp’s Chain Saw Guide by Walter Hall. Read More »

With the invention of movable type, the Catholic, Johann Gutenburg printed a Latin Bible (and a Papal Indulgence), thus inaugurating the age of modern publishing in a very Catholic way. But his invention came in time for certain anti-Catholic forces to use it as a weapon against the Church and Catholic Spain. The “black legend” would not have been so widely diffused without Gutenburg’s achievement. Read More »

(Going through Brother Francis’ papers, I came upon a binder containing notes for classes, and other materials. Brother had many such notebooks. As I flipped through it, I found this article, or rather, this collection of “reflections.” Brother did not write much, but when he did take up the pen, he tended to put down a series of pithy aphorisms, rather than a flowing narrative — similar to what one would read in the Wisdom books of the Old Testament. These would be the fruits of, and further stimulus for, his own life of prayer, but they were also the seeds he would further develop in his lectures. This piece, which had about three or four corrections in his own hand, has never been published, and was perhaps never intended to be. Best I can tell, it was written in early 1989. –Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.) Read More »

CATHOLICISM is not only a matter: a truth to be told; it is also a manner: a way of telling it. Manner makes meaning quite as much as matter does. To say what Christ said, but not in the way He said it, (that is to say: without enthusiasm, determination, excitement, wonder, challenge, indignation, summons and alarm) is an evasion and an apostasy. The Christian Gospel is good news, but with an emphasis on the news. It is exciting enough to have had the Heavens open at Our Lord’s birth for its sake, and to have had angels in the sky shouting and singing it to shepherds. Read More »

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Aug 8
Eleonore Villarrubia

A Visit To L’Acadie

by Eleonore VillarrubiaAugust 08th, 2009

On a recent trip to Nova Scotia, my husband and I visited the museum and memorial to the Acadians at Grand Pre, near the shores of the Bay of Fundy.

It was from this beautiful and fertile land that the Catholic Acadians were expelled from their homes and lands in 1755 by the Protestant British.  Hailing from Louisiana as we do, we were particularly interested in the details of the events because the greater numbers of the expelled Acadians found their way to the Bayou Country in the southwestern part of our home state.  Read More »