It is not my custom to write about the latest scandal. There are good reasons for this. The world is fallen and scandals abound, even in the best of times. To dwell on them risks losing sight of the good … Continue reading
Category: «Ad Rem» A Weekly Email Message from the Prior
Modernism as a Thought Crime
Plato said that God is thought thinking thought. As Father Leonard Feeney wrote, this is about as close as a philosopher can get to the knowledge of the Holy Trinity with his unaided intellect, and it is a loose approximation … Continue reading
Have Confidence!
In the film For Greater Glory, there is a dialogue between Mexico’s Freemasonic head of state, Plutarco Calles and the American Ambassador, Dwight Morrow. Morrow is diplomatically attempting to convince Calles of the wisdom of ending the persecution of the … Continue reading
Science, Technology, and God
One of the two major reasons that people become atheists is that secondary causality is, so they think, sufficient to explain all that exists without any reference to God. This and the existence of evil are the two objections to … Continue reading
Fatherhood, Beauty, and Discipline
This is a speech I gave at IHM School’s recent graduation. Besides being the auspicious occasion of Juliana’s graduation from IHM School, today is also Father’s Day. This is a secular observance that, here in the United States, began in … Continue reading
The Irish Abortion Referendum: But How?
What Oliver Cromwell could not do, what an Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger) could not do, what hundreds of years of Anglo-Protestant persecution could not do to the Irish Catholic people — namely, rob them of their faith and morals … Continue reading
A Remedy for Young Turks and Old Fools
There is an excellent fourteen-minute sermon called “The Error of Juvenilism” available online for the hearing. It is much worth a careful listen. The observations of the preacher, and the questions that arise in his wake, provide us with a … Continue reading
To God’s Image and Likeness
The internal counsels of the Blessed Trinity when He deigned to create man have been mercifully revealed to us in the book of Genesis: “Let us make man to our image and likeness” (1:26). The passage, frequently cited, is not … Continue reading
To Honour and be Honoured
Our culture is one that enshrines the dishonorable. In the place of statesmen, we honor stooges and scoundrels; in the place of religious and philosophical truth, moral goodness, and genuine artistic beauty, we exalt overpaid athletes, morally bankrupt Hollywood celebrities, … Continue reading
Heaven is for Ladies, Hell for Men?
“My wife does that stuff.” How disheartening it is to hear those words from a man when the question is whether or not he practices his Catholic Faith or imparts its dogma and morals to his children. Given the necessity … Continue reading
He Descended into Hell
We have entered into the drama of Holy Week. As the events of these days are each momentous, there is too little time, especially during the Triduum, to confront each of them as they are presented to us by Holy … Continue reading
Show Us Thy Face and We Shall Be Saved
The experience is probably a common one. You find yourself out in public and see a person from the back or side and say to yourself, “Hey, that’s Mike! (or Sarah, Ted, Mary, etc.),” only to discover when the person … Continue reading
Is Jesus Really Our Friend?
There is a popular old Protestant hymn by Charles Crozat Converse that readers may have heard: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” The hymn dates from 1868, but the words were borrowed from an 1855 poem called “Pray Without … Continue reading
The Jewish Nation will Enter the Church
Though it is not a defined dogma, the future conversion of the Jewish nation to the Faith is a common teaching of the Fathers and Doctors, inferred directly from Holy Scripture. This mass conversion (which need not be absolutely total) … Continue reading
The Catholic Quest
Certain common tropes appear in much of the world’s literature and drama, old and new. This is so much the case that the same theme of forbidden love due to family rivalry meets us in Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe (ca. … Continue reading
