For this Ad Rem, I would like to share with our readers a brief gem that we hope to publish soon as part of a larger work. But before doing that, I will recall something more fundamental. And in so doing, I will reveal the “setting” of this gem.

Speaking of the work of Saint Benedict Center and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Brother Francis often said, “We are three things at once: a crusade, a religious order, and a school of thought.” Usually, he would embellish this utterance with little summaries of each of the three. By crusade, he meant our two-fold apostolate for the conversion of America and the restoration of doctrinal sanity, beginning with that very fundamental dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Read More »

Reminiscing over the days when I would spend hours at a time leisurely listening to Brother Francis teach and asking him questions, I thought of the countless times we played the numbers game. Brother loved to make all studies as light and enjoyable as possible. Someone would throw out a number and the players would have to give an example of that number’s use; but it had to be something to do with the Faith: i.e., scripture, tradition, or perennial philosophy.  Take the number 153.   Read More »

(This is the paper written in preparation for a talk given at the 2005 St. Benedict Center Conference.)

(Saint Anthony Mary Zaccharia, July 5, 2005)

The Contribution Of Catholic Letters To The Conversion Of Our Country

A deepening, savored knowledge of the nature and scope of Catholic Letters will inspire and fortify those of the Catholic Faith to share its more abundant life and rootedly radiant generosity with their countrymen, and also the growing immigrants, unto their true conversion to the Faith. The long, articulate tradition of this Catholic literature – vivid non-fiction as well as fiction – throughout the several centuries and various cultures of the Faith and the once-existing public order of Christendom, will also, if we form ourselves fully to partake of it, increase our gratitude. Read More »

(28 January 2006, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Peter Nolasco)

Forming a Catholic Resistance and Deeper Culture of the Faith in Times of Permeating Disorder: Evelyn Waugh’s Edmund Campion (1935) and Some Combatant Lessons from the Sixteenth Century

The scope and depth of Evelyn Waugh’s grateful and manly book, Edmund Campion, will, when receptively savored, illuminate and fortify those of the Catholic Faith today amidst their own special composite of challenges. For, as Waugh wrote in 1935: “The Church has vast boundaries to defend, and each generation finds itself called to service upon a different front.”[1] Read More »

If you have survived the magniloquent name of this little piece, you should easily get though the rest, for the grandiose title heads a subject matter well within reach.

It occurred to me while I was deep in thought — philosophers do that, you know — that a firm grasp of the concepts “first” and “second” is highly useful in explaining certain key Catholic truths, such as those pertaining to the Church, the sacraments, the papacy, priesthood, episcopacy, Our Lady, and other points of Catholicity. Read More »

(Dealing with two common objections against the Faith.)

A Note of Introduction: In its first part, this article employs the use of some fundamental concepts of logic, the art and science of correct reasoning. As an aid to the reader, there is a miniscule glossary of philosophical terms at the end of the piece: “A Little Logic.” Read More »

All Americans know that the pursuit of happiness, like life and liberty, is an “unalienable right”. The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, edited by Benjamin Franklin and famously approved by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, says so. Read More »

Reproduced below are about two pages of the thinking of Richard Weaver, the philosopher whose work we recommended in our third installment of the recent series on American culture. The subject of Weaver’s text: “the great stereopticon.” Borrowing the name of the nineteenth-century pre-film viewing device, the reality the Platonic philosopher critiques is the technologically enhanced thought control to which we are subjected by newspapers, film, radio, and television. Read More »

Summary:

1. Several Announcements

2. Romano Amerio: The Rehabilitation of an “Integrist” Read More »

Summary:

1. News Notes: Conference updates, site update, etc.

2. The Natural Law — Not a bygone concept, an essential reality. Read More »