Category Archives: History
History
Brother Francis has a tremendous appreciation for the history of the Church. He likes to call Church history “the laboratory of wisdom.” Why? Because the history of the Church is the history of human salvation, and choosing the best means to save one’s soul is the highest prudence. And prudence, says St. Thomas Aquinas, is wisdom in action.
History is the laboratory of wisdom, but the application today of the lessons learned from history is prudence.
How, for example, are we to understand what St. Pius X meant when he said that “modernism is the synthesis of all heresies,” if we are ignorant of the history of the Church’s battles against heresy? How are we to evaluate the causes of what Pope Benedict referred to a “crisis of Faith,” if we unfamiliar with any of the twenty ecumenical councils that preceded Vatican II?
There are twenty-two books of the Bible that are history books: the first nineteen of the Old Testament, the two books of Machabees, which end the Old Testament, and the Acts of the Apostles in the New.
A knowledge of Church History is a knowledge of the life of the Body of Christ extended in time throughout the past twenty centuries. It is a glorious history, with its martyrs, confessors, saints of the desert, great doctors and popes, apostles of nations, proliferation of contemplative orders, active orders, teaching orders, advances in science, medicine, the arts, missionary life, and victories over the enemies of true religion, who engaged her by pen and sword.
Without a knowledge of history, of its facts, dates, and events, a Catholic is ill-prepared to defend the Church against those who would gainsay her by misrepresentation, misinformation, or deliberate disinformation. Nor can we forget that we all have an obligation to instruct the ignorant who have been misled by error and who, in their hearts, nurture an affinity for the truth.
The Relationship of Americanism to Modernism
It would be a gross oversimplification to put an equal sign between the words “Americanism” and “Modernism,” as if the former were merely the American embodiment of the latter. However, while we must avoid this facile identification of the two, so too must we appreciate the points of agreement between them.
What did St. Pius X mean when he called Modernism “the synthesis of all heresies”?
This phrase – “the synthesis of all heresies” – shows up toward the end of the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, placed in the context of a rhetorical question.[1] After an apology for taking so long to explore the entire scope of the Modernist doctrines, even disclosing “certain uncouth terms in use among the Modernists,”[2] the saintly author asked this question: “And now, can anybody who … More →
How the Renaissance Papacy contributed to the Reformation
The Catholic historian, A. Dufourcq, called the papacy of 1447 to 1527, la papauté princière, “the papacy of princes.”[1] This trenchant appellation conveys Fr. Maurice Sheehan’s meaning when he says “these popes were more men of culture or rulers than popes.”
Holy and Roman
Voltaire, whose corrosive wit did so much to dissolve the faith of the pre-revolutionary French aristocracy in their right to rule (not to speak of their adherence to the Faith) once quipped that “the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy nor Roman.” To those who heard the remark at the time, it would have had a special edge since the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, … More →
Crushing the Infamous One
T he Dialogue of the Carmelites, by Francis Poulenc, is one of the few operas composed in the past half century worth hearing. Poulenc based his 1958 work on a drama of the same title that was written by Georges Bernanos, probably best known in the English-speaking world for his novel, Diary of a Country Priest.
In the Company of Ignatius
“Therefore every scribe instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old. ” (MT 13:52) Throughout the long history of our Catholic religion, holy men and women have dedicated their lives to God. While it is (or should be) the aim of every serious Catholic to live his … More →
July 20 – 1944
It is a date that means nothing to most Americans, but this July 20 there will be commemorated in Germany, especially by the nation’s remaining Catholics, the sixtieth anniversary of an act that possibly could not have been committed by anyone except the man who performed it. That he could do it, when others could not, made it for him a duty he was bound … More →
Three Valiant Women
“Who shall find a valiant woman? Far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her.
Venerable Father Basil Moreau – A Man Against His Times
(Note: On September 15, 2007, Canon Basil Antoine Marie Moreau was beatified. He is now to be called “Blessed Basil Moreau.”) It is an age-old argument: Do the events of history create the great (or evil) men who will change the world, or do great personalities come along at the right time profoundly to change history itself? There are valid arguments for both points of … More →
The Age of the Enlightenment is Not Over
“The Enlightenment” is the name by which are known both an intellectual movement and an historical period usually considered as having begun in the 17th century and reaching their height in the 18th. However, insofar as ideas spawned by the movement — ideas about God, authority, order and freedom — are ones held by the majority of Americans today, there is a real sense in … More →
Hosea Ballou – Son of Richmond – Father of Universalism
Editor’s Introduction: The following piece is about a home-town boy of ours, one from Richmond, New Hampshire, where this journal is published. While for us it has “local flavor,” we think it worthy of publishing for two reasons.
The German Positive School
The Catechism’s first question has to do with the reason for man’s existence on Earth. Q: For what end are we in this world? A: We are in this world that we may know God, love Him, and serve Him, and thereby attain Heaven.
Saint Mary of Victory – The Historical Role of Our Lady in the Armed Defense of the Faith
In 1982, Argentina, a nation that loved Our Lady enough to have her by law as Commander-in-Chief of its armed forces, was beaten by Great Britain in a short but costly war fought in and around islands the Argentines know as the Malvinas and that the Brits, who have claimed them as a colony since the 19th century, call the Falklands. This was after an … More →
Valor and Betrayal – The Historical Background and Story of the Cristeros
Part I Apart from its having actually come to power nearly everywhere in the world two centuries after first exploding in France in 1789, the ever-unfolding Revolution 1 has succeeded in other ways. Perhaps its greatest success is the extent to which it has persuaded the great mass of mankind that it is their movement, a struggle of the majority for freedom and opportunity against … More →
The First Thanksgiving
The event of the first Thanksgiving in this land is not that which was celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621, as the vast majority of Americans have been taught. The first Thanksgiving to the one true God was celebrated eighty years before the Pilgrims’ feast.
