The Catholic Church alone can trace the origin of her authority across nearly 2000 years and over two hundred-sixty successive men to Simon Bar Jona, the man renamed by Christ as “Peter.” In fact, a very simple description of a … Continue reading
Category: Articles
Pelagius Lives
(See the From the Housetops editor’s introduction to this article.) The February 1991 issue of the Catholic magazine 30 Days featured a very striking cover designed by Romano Sicillani. Michelangelo’s famous painting from the Sistine Chapel, the Fall and Expulsion … Continue reading
It’s NOT the Economy, Stupid
Most Americans have money much on their minds these days. The nation, it is said, faces the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, if it is not already in its grip. Sometime early in the new … Continue reading
Blessed John Mazzucconi and the New Guinea Battlefield
A few weeks ago I was browsing in the biography section of our monastery library, when a book with an attractive blue cover caught my eye. On the cover was a color photograph of a beach in the Pacific islands … Continue reading
Jesus and Mary: The Perfect Harmony
For two thousand years now, scholars, theologians, and poets have attempted to plumb the depths of a certain human being in order to gain a better understanding and appreciation of God’s love for suffering humanity. They have studied the doctrines … Continue reading
Royal Russian Converts: The Two Princes Galitzin
The name Galitzin should be known and loved by every American Catholic. Prince Dimitrius Augustine Galitzin was the second priest ordained in the United States, and the first to receive all of his clerical orders here. He worked as a … Continue reading
Salvation in the Psalms
Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in the way, and opened to us the scriptures? (Luke 24:22.) This is what the two disciples on the way to Emmaus were saying to each other, after hearing the … Continue reading
The Great Nineteenth
One of the most justly celebrated works of Catholic history written in the last one hundred years was The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries, by James J. Walsh. Figured as the apogee of the Age of Faith, the thirteenth probably has … Continue reading
Sermon on True Penitence
“Be not affrighted: you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen: he is not here” — Mark XVI:6. I hope, my dear Christians, that, as Christ is risen, you have, in this holy paschal time, gone to … Continue reading
America’s Jesuit Apostle: Father Arnold Damen
Having an aversion to serialized articles on the Internet, I have opted not to call this “Father Arnold Damen, Chicago’s Jesuit Apostle: Part II.” A clunky name, that. This is, nonetheless, a second article on Father Damen, but a “free-standing” … Continue reading
Five Hundred Years of Loyalty: The Gallantry of the Pope’s Swiss Guard
Imagine yourself a contestant on Jeopardy. The answer is… “The world’s longest-standing, but smallest, army in the world’s smallest independent state.” And what is the question? The only possible question is, “What is the Swiss Guard”? Officially, the name of … Continue reading
Bluegrass Belgian: Kentucky’s Missionary Dynamo, Father Charles Nerinckx
“Mitte Belgas” (send Belgians), implored Saint Francis Xavier in a letter written from India to his Father General, Saint Ignatius Loyola. The Indian mission of the East required religious who were not only proven in virtue but strong in physical … Continue reading
A Mother and Her Child
(Editor’s Introduction: Not much needs to be said to introduce this piece. We are satisfied merely to say that it was an address Fr. Feeney gave in 1942 on the very popular “Catholic Hour,” Bishop Fulton Sheen’s Sunday night radio … Continue reading
The English College at Douay
In the year of Our Lord 1558, the last Catholic queen of England, Mary Tudor, died. Her successor, Elizabeth I, upon taking the throne, implemented the well-organized and devised scheme of re-establishing English Protestantism.[1] Through the infamous Act of Supremacy … Continue reading
The Woman at the Well
“This is indeed the Saviour of the world.” John 4:42 Fools miss the sublime truths of Holy Scripture. While the story of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman is one of the most well known episodes in Holy Scripture, few … Continue reading
