[Dedicated to Rev. Michael A. Jarecki] I was there when it was time to baptize a new member, Also before Mass to help you vest when you couldn’t remember. I was there bright and early for you to absolve me … Continue reading
Category: Literature and Poetry
November
My thoughts are now all deathly dark In this November tide. The Holy Souls, so sad and stark, My mercy do betide. They languish all in helplessness No merit them to gain. It would be horrid heartlessness To pity not … Continue reading
A Conversion Story for Our Time
Review of Young Tony and the Priest: Coming to Belief in an Age of Unbelief, by Gary Potter. Loreto Publications, 2012 This, my friend Gary Potter’s first foray into fiction, is a lovely story. Lovely in that it is filled … Continue reading
Probatica
Dedicated to the healing angel who fixed my rosary the other day. From burning empyrean sphere An angel does leap down, Descends to Bethsaida’s mere And stirs its waters round. The healing angel, Raphael It is we may be sure … Continue reading
The Isolation of the Soul
Examining the theme of loss and the isolation of the human soul through the thinking of Chesterton, Belloc, and Baring, this paper considers some of the theological, moral, and psychological matters — both the causes and the effects — while … Continue reading
Precious Blood, Holy Grail
Medieval romances generally fell into four categories: the Matter of Rome, which dealt with such classical heroes as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar; the Matter of France, whose tales were inhabited by Charlemagne and such heroes as his nephew … Continue reading
Appreciation
This poem is dedicated to judgmental people everywhere.1 Your virtues, they are vices; Your deeds are each a sin. Inside no tad of goodness; Your bright veneer is thin. Your thoughts must all be darksome Your plans self-serving, too. That … Continue reading
The Presentation of Malitia and Guile in Melville’s Billy Budd
Through the kindness of the author, Professor Mitchell Kalpakgian, I was unexpectedly invited to comment on his own recent article in the April 2012 issue of New Oxford Review. What he wrote was a trenchant literary essay concerning Herman Melville’s … Continue reading
Joseph Pierce on Roy Campbell
Joseph Pearce recalls the extraordinary life of Roy Campbell, who hid St John of the Cross’s letters from anticlerical Spanish militiamen. As you read Pierce’s piece, recall that here in the good old U S of A, people were led … Continue reading
UN Consultant Group Aims to Get Dante Banned
Rome A world-renowned work of literature, Dante’s epic poem Divine Comedy, has been described as racist, homophobic, anti-Islamist and anti-Semitic by Gherush 92, a human rights organization that acts as a consultant to United Nations groups. More here.
Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton’s Review of ‘The Leonard Feeney Omnibus’
THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW, Feb, 1944. THE LEONARD FEENEY OMNIBUS. A Collection of Prose and Verse Old and New. New York, Sheed and Ward, 1943. Pp. xiv + 399. $3.00.
The Pygmies
I count my pygmies, one by one, The nearly finished, half-begun, Bedraggled poems I have written, Companioned by a clock and kitten, On littered desk, by candle-light, Locked in my chamber late at night,
Finale
When the Angel has blown on his trumpet a rat-a-tat-tat, And the final encounter of armies is finished and fought;
Three Soldiers
Three soldiers rose up from their tents And went to join their regiments. And one said: “Captain, I report Because I think the war is sport!”
Miserere
One’s faith has little nightmares It easily survives: — Divorcing lust and Luther, Henry and lots of wives.
