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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

‘England should be a Catholic country again’


Brother André Marie

That’s the motion that was debated last week in London, at an event hosted by the Spectator and held at the Royal Geographical Society. And guess what — “the 700-strong sell-out audience voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion”!

Excerpt from The Catholic Herald:

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, author Piers Paul Read and Dom Anthony Sutch, former headmaster of Downside, spoke for the motion.


No Way to Anime


Brian Kelly

Anime cartoons and their characters are a huge cultic phenomenon, the most popular of all escapist media venues. It is very addictive and very dangerous, to the soul and the mind. I don’t post weird stories, but this blog by Zoe Romanowski from Inside Catholic, along with another, even …


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.


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Lives of the Saints

The reason that the Church honors the saints is not just to give them glory, but to hold them up as exemplars for imitation. Many of the saints became saints themselves by reading the lives of saints. Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s by reading the Life of Christ and the Lives of the Saints. If these men can make such heroic sacrifices for God, then why can’t I, he wondered. Wonder turned into determination.

Some saints wrote biographies of other saints. Saint Athanasius wrote the Life of Saint Anthony of the Desert, a work that indirectly influenced Saint Augustine. Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote the Life of Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus. Saint Bonaventure wrote the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint Bede wrote the Life of Saint Aidan. Some saints wrote autobiographies: Saints Augustine, Thérèse of Liseux, Antonio Maria Claret, and Margaret Mary Alacoque are among them.

In a letter to her aunt, Isidore Guerin, Saint Thérèse wrote: “I love to read the lives of the saints very much. The account of their heroic deeds inflames my courage and spurs me on to imitate them.”

Forty-four priests, graduates of this college, were martyred between 1581-1679. Among the many things on display are records of Protestant spies who infiltrated the college in order to gather the names of the Catholic seminarians who, after ordination, were going to return to their country and work in disguise. Fascinating history of such great heroes.

CNS reports: The era of English priest-martyrs is prominently featured at Rome’s Venerable English College in an exhibit called, “‘Non Angli sed Angeli’: A Pilgrimage, A Mission.” The title refers to a quip legend says was made by Pope Gregory the Great, “They are not Anglos, but angels,” when he first saw fair-haired English slaves in the marketplace of Rome and began sending missionaries to the British Isles in the 6th century. Read more here.

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In 1997, Pope John Paul II decided that the internet could use a patron saint to guide Catholics in its proper use. He chose Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636), Doctor of the Church, and last of the Latin Fathers. His twenty-book opus (called Etymologia, after the subject title of one of the books), made him an easy choice. Read More »

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Around here, the news of December 19 was received with great joy. I refer to the publication of the decree, approved by His Holiness, Benedict XVI, clearing the way for the canonization of Blessed Brother André. Because this news is so recent, and because his feast day is coming up this week (January 6, which is also the Epiphany), I would like to invite our readers to share our happiness and consider with us the virtues of this little man. Read More »

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Dec 30
Brother André Marie

Blessed Gandolph the Gray?

by Brother André MarieDecember 30th, 2009

The complaint has come to me from friends that I am overly preoccupied with J.R.R. Tolkien. True, I’ve made a few references to the English Catholic fiction writer, but not all that many. As proof that these friends are all wrong about my alleged obsession, I confess that I am presently reading Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose nineteenth-century Imperial Russia is pretty far from Middle Earth in the Third Age. Read More »

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These were the gospel words with which Saint Ignatius won the heart of the student, Francis Xavier. Yesterday was the feast of Saint Francis Xavier, who is Brother Francis’ patron. After Saint Paul, he is considered to be the greatest missionary in the history of the Church. “Go, and set fire to the world,” Saint Ignatius told him as the Castilian and the Basque parted company in Rome four hundred and sixty-five years ago. Xavier was off to Portugal, from where, at the behest of King John III, he would sail to India and evangelize the East Indies. Three million souls would receive baptism from the hands of this son of Loyola during his ten years of missionary life. Read More »

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MUMBAI, India (AsiaNews) – “Thanks to God’s inexplicable mercy I was given the privilege of becoming a good friend of Padre Pio,” said Kersi Francisco Pio Mistry, 71.  Full story is here.

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Today is the feast of King Saint Louis of France. As the formerly Christian West is sliding further into the tyranny of liberalism, it is balm to the soul to consider that the people in Louis’ France were freer than we are today. They were free from big government meddling in their lives and their wallets. And they were free in the most important way, for Saint Louis believed in a Christian order wherein the State was neither inimical nor neutral to the Church, but was the Church’s helper in securing the happiness, temporal and eternal, of her subjects. Read More »

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It has always been believed that Saint Joseph died some time before Our Lord’s Passion. The Virgin-Father of Our Lord breathed forth his last surrounded by Jesus and Mary, and thus became the patron of a holy death. Whereas the most holy Virgin was predestined to participate directly and most closely in the Passion of Our Lord — so much so that she earned the title Co-Redemptrix — not so, Saint Joseph. To speak, then, of “The Passion of Saint Joseph” is to consider something other than the great carpenter’s direct participation in the events of Good Friday. Read More »

Imagine, even if your name is “Barney” you can become a saint. Barney, baptized Bernard, was the sixth of sixteen children born to Irish immigrants Bernard and Ellen Casey. The date of his birth was November 25, 1870. The place was a three room log cabin on a farm in Hudson, Wisconsin. His cause for sainthood was accepted by Rome in 1976 and, in 1995, he was declared Venerable by Pope John Paul II. If Venerable Solanus Casey were to be canonized soon he would be the first United States-born male to be raised to the altar. Read More »

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Apr 30

Saint Ignatius Loyola

by Thomas H. SennottApril 30th, 2009

In the sixteenth century the University of Paris was a fair-sized town. It had fifty colleges and schools and some sixteen thousand students thronged its numerous buildings. Read More »

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