Perhaps the oldest devotion to Our Lady in Europe is the devotion to Our Lady of the Pillar. In Spain, Pilar is a popular girl’s name, as is Mercedes for Our Lady of Mercy. (In fact, General Franco named one … Continue reading
Category: History
Spain’s Crusade, 1936-39
When news media late last winter reported that a plaque was to be placed in the New Hampshire capitol building to honor natives of the state who served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, … Continue reading
Santiago De Compostela
When the Apostles divided the earth and drew lots for their portions, Spain fell to Saint James the Greater. The seeds he sowed grew well, and the roots of the Faith in Spain go deep. Upon his return to Jerusalem … Continue reading
Louis IX: King, Crusader, and Saint
François Marie Arouet, known to literature and history as Voltaire, a name he assumed while serving time in prison, was an enemy of the Faith who did much to generate the intellectual atmosphere in which the French Revolution, once it … Continue reading
Origin of the Angelus
In Catholic countries, before the year 1000, it was a pious custom for the layfolk to recite three Hail Marys to honor Our Lady in her singularly exalted role as the Mother of God. This was done towards evening, usually … Continue reading
Pope Remembers Ukrainian Victims of Stalin’s Forced Famine
It is beyond our imagination. To die of starvation. Such was the sacrifice of three million Ukrainians and many other peoples under the satanic regime of Joseph Stalin. It took only one year. “And how many divisions has the Pope?” … Continue reading
Saint Olaf and the End of the Viking World
One thousand years ago, an entire world was coming to an end. It was the world of the pagan Vikings. It would be replaced by another: that of Christian Scandinavia. The vanished world and the one that replaced it are … Continue reading
Québec and French America: What Might Have Been
In a country like the United States, which has never been Catholic – nor in which has the undiluted Faith taken root deeply enough to shape to any extent the life of society – those who still cling to the … Continue reading
Boniface VIII against the Revolution
The thirteenth century – regarded as the "Greatest of Centuries" – was coming to an end. The century of the glorious Crusades, in which selfless men of faith sacrificed their lives to recover the revered relics of Christendom; the magnificent … Continue reading
Philip II: a Book Review
Enormous accumulations of evil encircled the sixteenth century, making it one of the most disturbed in the history of Christendom. The enemies of the Holy Catholic Church had been tearing at her in bits and pieces, but it was not … Continue reading
Slaves Held Washington Became a Catholic on His Deathbed
The following two pieces appeared in the Denver Register in the 1950s: From the Denver Register, February 24, 1957 CONVERSION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON New York- It was a long tradition among both the Maryland Province Jesuit Fathers and the Negro … Continue reading
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: A Tribute
When the enemies of Christian social order attack one of its champions, they are never satisfied simply to say he is wrong. They also invariably seek to discredit the man as a man by casting doubt on his integrity or … Continue reading
Robust Catholicism, Fiddles, and Berries
Here at the monastery in Richmond, Dr. Maike Hickson, Joseph Topalian, and Third Order Prefect, Brother John Marie Vianney, M.I.C.M., Tert. gave very inspiring talks on their respective topics. Mrs. Hickson, with her husband and their new born, Isabella Maria, in the audience, whetted the listeners’ appetites for good Catholic literature. Mr. Topalian provided a fascinating tour of his own eventful life, filled with adventure and challenge, in the navy during World War II, in an eastern-rite seminary, and as a Catholic Armenian in America. Continue reading
Charlemagne and the Finding of the Body of St. Anne
The following will no doubt be taken by some as a Baroque — or worse, Romantic — example of an unenlightened and backward Catholic fascination with legend. So be it.
The History of the Rosary
Since the expulsion from Heaven of Lucifer and the other fallen angels — an event antecedent to Adam’s creation — the Blessed Mother of God has been the razor by which the good are divided from the bad, the children … Continue reading
