My last Ad Rem, “The Iran War and the Battle for the Soul of America,” garnered strong reactions, both positive and negative. Grateful as I am for the positive comments I received, the negative ones need to be addressed here. … Continue reading
Category: «Ad Rem» A Fortnightly Email Message from the Prior
«Ad Rem» is our Prior’s fortnightly email message offering news and commentary regarding the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Crusade of St. Benedict Center, and issues affecting the universal Church. Each number offers brief, ad rem (“to the point”) commentary on timely or otherwise important matters. Click here to subscribe to our email list and receive the «Ad Rem» each time it’s published.
The Iran War and the Battle for the Soul of America
A man once told Brother Francis, when our Lebanese mentor had initiated a religious conversation with him, “There are two things we don’t talk about here!” Brother responded, with all the apparent naïveté of a foreigner, “What are they?” “Religion … Continue reading
A Death in Lent (RIP, John Wassmer)
Blessed Abbot Columba Marmion, O.S.B., wrote that “Christianity is a mystery of life and death.” By virtue of our Baptism and Eucharistic Communion with Jesus Christ, our life and death, and our new life after death, are intimately bound up … Continue reading
Ambassador Huckabee’s Heresy and the Catholic Alternative
Last Friday, a Tucker Carlson interview with the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, premiered on YouTube: Tucker Confronts Mike Huckabee on America’s Toxic Relationship With Israel. It is long, about two and a half hours, with an eleven-minute introduction … Continue reading
Five Things You Can Know about the Holy Trinity
Some time before Vatican II, a certain prelate in a major U.S. archdiocese gave the invocation at an interfaith meeting at which Jews were present. So as not to offend, he began his prayer thus: “In the name of God. … Continue reading
Jesus in the Eucharist: Suffering or Glorified?
Since 1970, scientists have made some fascinating discoveries from rigorous lab tests of various Eucharistic miracles both old and new. Among other things, the findings reveal both an identical Blood type common to each miracle (and to the Shroud of … Continue reading
Mary and the Holy Ghost at Christmastime
True to his intense devotion to the Incarnation and the divine economy flowing from that great Mystery, Saint Francis of Assisi gave the Church the first living Nativity scene, in order to show, in a vivid and very present manner, … Continue reading
Filioque and Marian Mediation: Connecting Two ‘Downgraded Doctrines’
In the article, “Leaving Behind the Filioque?”, I briefly analyzed two passages of the Holy Father’s apostolic letter, In Unitate Fidei (“In the Unity of Faith”), expressing the concern that a decades-old, ecumenically driven agenda of downgrading the dogma of … Continue reading
The Blessed Virgin is and Must Be Called Our ‘Co-Redemptrix’
On November 4, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published a Doctrinal Note that had previously been approved by Pope Leo on October 7, Mater Populi Fidelis (MPF). Without issuing any dogmatic definition, formal condemnation, or canonical … Continue reading
On the Boy Jesus and the Doctors of the Law
Saint Luke, the only Gentile author of the New Testament, and the “historian of Christ’s meekness” (as Dante styles him), narrates several episodes in the life of Jesus that no other evangelist writes of, including the second, fourth, and fifth … Continue reading
The Ordinary Magisterium vs. ‘A Teacher Established in the Church,’ Who Errs
As was the last Ad Rem, this number is an edited excerpt from the talk I am soon to give at Saint Benedict Center’s annual conference. In Chapter ten of the Commonitory, Saint Vincent considers what we should do when … Continue reading
Holding the Line: St. Vincent of Lérins vs. the Neo-Modernist Tempest
How do we navigate the turbulent waters of twenty-first century Catholicism? We see many good things in the Church today, to be sure, but we also see massive blow-back against them from a dying generation of neo-modernist clerics in high … Continue reading
The Jewish Mystery and the Universal Church
There was an informative exchange on Catholicism.org when Charles Coulombe’s article, “Which Christian Nation Are We Defending?,” provoked a reply from the redoubtable Henry Sire, “The Kingdom of God in Human History.” The exchange was a friendly one between two … Continue reading
The Architecture of Love: Faith, Hope, and Charity
We have a question box here at Saint Benedict Center, and, recently, there were two questions about love that I had to answer. As this material might be of broader interest, I am turning my answers into this short Ad … Continue reading
The Catholic Church Is the True Israel
There are reasons why Michael Bard, writing for the ideologically Zionist Jewish News Syndicate, says that “Public opinion for Israel shows an alarming trend”: Sympathy for Israel peaked at 62% between 2010 and 2019 but has dropped every year since, … Continue reading
