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Hello! My name is Charles Coulombe and I am one of the contributing editors here at OnePeterFive. I am pleased to write to you from the vantage of my humble bedroom here in Vienna on this momentous day: the 114th marriage anniversary of Blessed Karl of Austria and his wife, Servant of God Zita. As…
Above: Napoleon’s invasion of Rome, 1798. On October 21, 1775, Giuseppe Baini, an important figure in 19th-century sacred music, was born. In 2025, we celebrate both the 500th anniversary of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s birth and the 250th anniversary of Baini’s, a fortuitous convergence, as Baini was Palestrina’s first biographer. As the first “Perpetual Maestro…
For those who cherish his life and memory, Blessed Charles of Austria conjures up a mixture of emotions. A cheerful devotee of the man will never fail to experience nostalgia for a Catholic empire long since passed and reminisce about the glorious achievements of Charles’s ancestors. However, a more honest observer cannot ignore the melancholy…
Author’s note: I am immensely grateful to Her Highness Archduchess Anna-Carolina von Habsburg-Lothringen for her translation of excerpts from Elizabeth Kovács’ biography of Blessed Karl, “Untergang oder Rettung der Donaumonarchie?” In October 2024, I was blessed to attend a conference entitled, “Blessed Karl of Austria: A Light for Our Times.” Among the impressive line-up of…
Recently, I have been more disappointed than surprised to hear three unimpeachably faithful and admirable priests attempt in their preaching to ground Catholic belief in “experience.” One argued that reception of Communion by supporters of abortion is “incompatible with the ‘experience’ of Catholic truth,” another encouraged those “who have ‘experienced’ God’s truth” to “share the…
Since the October 7 attacks of 2023, I’ve heard more about “Judeo-Christian values” than I have about the Beatitudes. Every pundit and politician now drops the phrase like it’s a secret handshake. Say it, and you’re in the club. Don’t say it, and suddenly you’re suspect. The message is simple: a good Westerner waves two…
When this Sunday comes around, with its snappy Collect, I am minded of the early fourth-century martyr St. Expeditus. The Latin text of the Collect reads: Omnipotens et misericors Deus, universa nobis adversantia propitiatus exclude: ut mente et corpore pariter expediti, quae tua sunt, liberis mentibus exsequamur. Translated slavishly: Almighty and merciful God, having been…
Of all the many dark centuries in the history of Christendom, there is no denying that the 20th century was one of the darkest. It was also the deadliest. In terms of the sheer body count, the last century, with its wars of irreligion, fought with industrialized weapons of mass destruction, was the most murderous…
I have just dropped off my five-year-old to his Catechesis of the Good Shepherd class. The young children enter a beautifully decorated room, adorned with holy images and bathed in a subdued light; what proceeds is the quietest gathering of preschoolers you have ever heard. Two floors down, my oldest son is engaged with the…
“He’s gay. She’s straight. They’re happily married,” reads the title of a recent Washington Post article, discussing a couple who has been in a monogamous relationship for almost ten years. “A new crop of couples are making content about their mixed-orientation marriages, divorced from sexual attraction but not love,” the article stated. Partners Samantha Wynn…
