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.

Liberal Education vs. Liberalism

At St. Benedict Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, our forefathers had a saying that epitomized their apostolate in the academic circles in which they moved: “We are against liberalism in religion, but we are for liberal education.” This was in the … Continue reading

Saint Benedict Center in the News

RICHMOND, N.H. — Friday, June 25, 2010 — An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney has secured a $1.15 million settlement on behalf of Saint Benedict Center of Richmond in a lawsuit over the town’s unconstitutional zoning restrictions. The center contended officials singled it out for discrimination after certain officials expressed their view that the church’s moral positions on matters such as abortion and homosexual behavior are “abhorrent.”

The settlement payment–coming after two state court orders in favor of the church–marks one of the largest settlements in U.S. history involving the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that protects churches from unequal treatment in land use disputes with local governments. Continue reading

Holy Desires

The corruption of the flesh weighing upon us so heavily during our earthly sojourn, we often find ourselves desiring what is base and wicked. But our wills can be motivated to love what is truly good, and therefore to desire … Continue reading

In Praise of Triumphalism

“Triumphalism” is a bad word in some circles. That those circles have been influential in academic, ecclesiastical, and civil society in recent decades helps to explain our sad lot. I’ll not forget the perplexity that overcame me when I read … Continue reading

The Agony of the Resurrection

Every year around Holy Week, the publishers of America’s popular reading material let loose a volley of blasphemies against our Lord’s Resurrection. Citing one or another perfidious “noted scholar,” the glossy-covered journals that accost us at the checkout counter vie … Continue reading

What Distinguishes Spiritual Childhood from Natural Childhood

To remain little is to recognize one’s nothingness, to expect everything from God, as a little child expects everything from his father; it is to be disturbed about nothing, not to earn a fortune.

Even among poor people, as long as the child is quite small, they give him what he needs; but as soon as he has grown up, his father no longer wishes to feed him and says to him: “Work now, you can be self-supporting.” Well, so as never to hear that, I have not wished to grow up. Continue reading

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 … Continue reading