My first thought when I saw in my e-mail one morning a few weeks ago that Sister Mary Bernadette had died: What would things be like at the Center now that she was gone?

I wasn’t wondering what they would be like for me when next I was in Richmond. When I was there in October for the latest SBC conference, Sister no longer recognized me. I saw then that my personal link to her, such as it was, was already broken. Read More »

As something of a follow-up to The Real Gospel of Life, I compiled a small collection of supernaturally pro-life statements that have the authority of Holy Scripture or the Church’s Liturgy. These will help us establish our pro-life priorities, and provide us with abundant material for meditation. Read More »

The moral teachings of the Church are of a piece with her teachings on faith. Christ’s supernatural revelation to the Church, along with the natural law also entrusted to her, constitute a “seamless garment”¹ of truth about God, man, and the destiny of man in God. To abstract one or another of the constituent truths out of this totality, and reduce the rest to a status of lesser importance, is very dangerous. Doubtless, there is a hierarchy of truth, with some doctrines being higher in rank than others, the Trinity and the Incarnation taking the uppermost places. Read More »

There is a lot of talk about the Pope’s new book. I have not read Volume II of Jesus of Nazareth, so I cannot and will not comment on it. Rather, I will use one short article about the book as a springboard into a purely theological, biblical, and, if you will, “missiological” issue of tremendous import. This issue touches on the very heart of our Crusade. Read More »

I’ll never forget my maternal grandfather telling me this boyhood recollection of his Catholic upbringing in New Orleans. It seems that the good Sisters who taught him in grammar school imposed upon the children a vivid awareness of the Holy Souls in Purgatory, and the communion that exists between the militant Church and the suffering Church. They taught their young charges a little ditty that was set, appropriately enough, to the melody of Chopin’s “Funeral March” (from the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35). Read More »

[Questions Asked by Protestants on Purgatory, Indulgences, Predestination and Relics briefly answered by Father M. Philipps, Rector of St. Joseph’s Church, Buffalo, NY. Cabinet of Catholic Information, 1903 Imprimatur: Archbishop John Farley]

Purgatory

Does the Bible say that there is a purgatory?

The Bible does not mention the word purgatory, but it says we should pray for the dead: “It is, therefore, a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.” 2 Mach. 12. These dead cannot be the dead in heaven, because they do not need our prayers, nor the dead in hell, where there is no redemption, but it means the dead who are still in a purgative state. Read More »

The doctrine of Purgatory, central to Christianity, is brutally attacked by certain non-Catholic polemicists. Their typical view of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory is that it was either concocted by the Church in the Middle Ages for filthy lucre’s sake, or that, if there are any ancient precedents for it among the Church Fathers, it gradually developed in scope and meaning so as to become something the early Church did not believe it to be. ^{1 Read More »}

This is a very inspiring story from Jim Graves of the National Catholic Register. The Church needs lay leaders like Jesse Romero, who are not afraid to take the Faith out into the marketplace and highways and byways. His last comment highlights the touchstone of his spiritual “reality check”:

“After nearly a quarter century of evangelizing, Romero has maintained his zeal, in part by meditating on the “Four Last Things” (death, judgment, heaven and hell). He concluded, “I’m writing my eulogy right now. When I’m gone, I want my kids and friends to say, ‘That guy loved Jesus and his Church.’” Full story can be read here.

Summer begins on my calendar after our May Procession. In meteorological time, it begins June 1. What this means is that the season of summer extends through the warmest months of the year, which in the Northern Hemisphere are June, July, and August. I only discovered today, while beginning this article, that in Great Britain and Ireland (and other northern countries) summer follows weather, or meteorological time. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream the play takes place during the shortest night of the year, June 21, although this is not, in meteorological time, mid summer. That would be mid July.  Read More »

It need not be the one, expecting to depart,
The one with the ailing lungs or failing heart.
Not always one engaged in a bloody strife
Or one embracing danger in a ventureful life. Read More »