We here at Saint Benedict Center are in between two big fall events — the Pilgrimage for Restoration, which has us limping and aching, and our annual Conference, which has us feverishly preparing. Because of that, my time to write … Continue reading
Category: Spiritual Life
An Anti-Modernist Meditation on the Woman of Canaan
One of the methods to my madness in selecting subjects for my show, Reconquest, is to take scandalous current events in the Church as occasions of edifying my listeners by giving the proper Catholic outlook on a question — citing … Continue reading
July is the Month of the Precious Blood of Jesus!
Following immediately after the month of the Sacred Heart, July is the Month of the Precious Blood. The first day of the month is the Feast of the Precious Blood. In the nineteenth century, there was a real flowering of … Continue reading
Bless God at All Times!
The following is the speech I gave at IHM School’s graduation yesterday. Readers should know that our school in rural southern New Hampshire is very small. We had one graduates this year (we had three last year!). HERE we are once more in the month of … Continue reading
The Grail in Summer
Memorial Day begins the American civil Summer; the Fourth of July marks its apex, and it ends on Labour Day (of course, the first Halloween decorations shall have started to appear in the stores the last week in July). Enjoyable … Continue reading
Aristotle and Saint Thomas on Happiness
“The pursuit of happiness” — along with life and liberty — is one of the unalienable rights that we were endowed with by our Creator according to the Declaration of Independence. But in spite of the word being so deeply … Continue reading
A ‘Lex Orandi’ Appetizer
This Ad Rem is an ‘appetizer’ for a longer piece on our site. This past weekend, I was a presenter at the third annual “Crusader Knights Congress” put on by Mike Church and sponsored by the Crusade Channel and LifeSite. … Continue reading
Lex Orandi: Why What Happens in Church Matters outside of Church
This past weekend, I was a presenter at the third annual “Crusader Knights Congress” put on by Mike Church and sponsored by the Crusade Channel and LifeSite. Here is the text of that talk.
A ‘Carmelite Defense’ of Father Feeney’s Crusade
The purpose of this article is not to show that Carmelite saints believed in the dogma outside the Church there is no salvation in the same sense that Father Leonard Feeney believed it. That would be too easy, and this … Continue reading
Penitential Joy, Joyful Penance!
This Lent finds me in rather a saddened frame of mind — perhaps appropriate to the season. Bishop David O’Connell, an auxiliary bishop of my home diocese, Los Angeles, has just been shot dead. Two online friends whom I have … Continue reading
A House of Mirrors
Dear Reader, have you ever been to an amusement park and wandered into a house of mirrors? The various formations of the mirrors produce entertaining reflections, such as a very tall and unusually skinny “you”, or a squat and fat … Continue reading
The Tropology and Anagogy of Our Social Life
Continuing as promised where I left off last Ad Rem, I pick up here on the second half of the four senses of Scripture as they apply to our religious life together, and as they may be applied, mutatis mutandis, … Continue reading
Supernaturalizing Our Social Interactions
What follows is a series of meditations that represent a concrete application of some wisdom I gratefully learned to a topic of both practical and theoretical importance for me and my fellow Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, namely, … Continue reading
True Devotion to Mary and Trinitarian Prayer
One fortnight ago in this space, I took up the question, “Must I Pray Only to Mary?” I promised then that I would return to develop further “the idea that, because Marian Consecration is fundamentally Christological and Trinitarian in nature, … Continue reading
Must I Pray Only to Mary?
A woman once came to speak to me about some difficulties she was having. At some point in the conversation, it came out that she could not pray to God the Father, but insisted on addressing all her prayers only … Continue reading
