Of the Christian Mysteries, the concept and reality of the Permissive Will of God is one of the most challenging doctrines, and a great personal test of the Faith of a Catholic. For, it is believed that God (the Holy … Continue reading
Category: Articles
Changing Church Teaching
However readers of the present lines first read or heard the news on August 2, the report included the words. “Pope Changes Church Teaching”. The full headline in the Washington Post was, “Pope Francis changes Catholic Church teaching to say … Continue reading
A Summer Place
As I write these words, Summer is halfway through. Now, to many people, especially those living in colder climes, this is a magical season — warm, inviting, filled with vacations from work and especially school, sojourns at lake- or seaside … Continue reading
Ignoring Church Teaching
Here is a question for any reader who is a lifelong Catholic younger than 50: Have you ever heard a homily preached against the evil of contraception? My guess is that you have not. I know that I never have … Continue reading
July/August 2018 Mancipia
The July/August 2018 Mancipia is now posted (scroll down for PDF). Back issues of this newsletter are linked from our downloads page. If you would like to receive our bi-monthly newsletter via U.S. mail, please sign up to get it … Continue reading
Barbarian Triumph
It was one hundred years ago, on July 17, 1918, that Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II and his family were murdered — shot, bayoneted and bludgeoned — on the orders of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Since his canonization by the Russian … Continue reading
The Daunting Six Days of Winter SEAL Training (1974-1975): The Personal Report of a Graduate, Dr. Robert Adams
A close reading of Dr. Robert Adams’ 2017 book will, if we are honest, challenge all of us to the depths. For sure, it will inform us—and inspire us with its vividness—about many important, but still little known, things concerning … Continue reading
Why the ‘Catholic Revival’ Failed
In our last outing, after considering the horror of a society in which the medical murder of little Alfie Evans could occur — especially one as “God-invoking” and “nice” as that of the 21st century West — it was promised … Continue reading
A Miscalculated Demolition: Evelyn Waugh’s 1942 Wartime Letter to His Wife
Some Modern Catholic (or Neo-Modernist) Churchmen have advocated –at least since Pope Pius XII’s 1950 Encyclical, Humani Generis, or soon thereafter — “the demolition of the bastions,” seeming to refer to a timely removing of the barriers between the Catholic … Continue reading
Science vs. God
Modern man derives much of his sense of himself as master of all he surveys from science and technology in general, but nothing feeds his notion of being the master of life itself more than the new birth technologies. They … Continue reading
A Christian Soldier Under Caesar? Was it Licit?
And the soldiers also asked him, saying: And what shall we do? And he said to them: Do violence to no man; neither calumniate any man; and be content with your pay (Matthew 3:14). Then Jesus saith to him: Put … Continue reading
Cardinal Sarah and The Prisoner
Catholics of traditional bent were elated when they learned that Robert Cardinal Sarah was the celebrant of the culminating Mass of this year’s Pentecost Chartres Pilgrimage. If they listened to his homily on You Tube or read the English translation … Continue reading
Joseph Ratzinger on the Priesthood and on the Resurrection
In the latter part of 2006, after the April 2005 installation of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, I had occasion to tell a professor friend of mine confidentially that I have always had difficulties reading with understanding the varied … Continue reading
Hilaire Belloc’s Memorable 1911 Depiction of a Sussex Squire: Fuller of Brightling
One year after Hilaire Belloc’s four-year term in the British House of Commons (1906-1910), he published The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), wherein he memorably depicts the robust and eccentric and magnanimously generous Squire Fuller of Brightling, an honored native … Continue reading
‘The Last Secret’ of World War II
When the Allies invaded Europe at points along the Normandy coast 74 years ago on D-Day, June 6, 1944, ten percent of the men in German uniforms they took prisoner were Russians. Many belonged to German army labor battalions who … Continue reading
