A sub-category of News.
Several years ago, I visited the church and convent of Santo Domingo in Lima, where St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617) once lived and prayed. Beautiful Sevillian azulejos—a form of Portuguese and Spanish painted tin-glazed ceramic tilework—covered the walls of the main cloister. On one such azulejo, passersby can spy a date: 1606, one year before…
In his magisterial history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon identified the loss of civic virtue as the “secret poison” that undermined this sprawling global empire and inevitably led to its demise. The Catholic Church is not about to disintegrate in the same fashion as the Roman Empire, but its unity,…
I am absolutely amazed that we have come so far in our fundraising campaign, but we’re still short. 1P5 is the website for Catholics, built by Catholics. Whether it’s analysis of current events or theological explorations of the teachings of our faith, we’re providing a perspective on the Church that is unique in today’s world. But the only way we…
For the ancient Greeks, on whom we depend for the life and inheritance of the classical world, the goddess Mnemosyne, daughter of the earth-goddess Gaia and the sky-god Uranus, was designated Mother of all the Muses, from whom the charisms of art and poetry, science and song, draw their inspiration. And while her name literally…
St. Paul was wrong! His first Letter to the Corinthians, the apostle not hiding his anger and frustration, is loaded with corrections to the neophyte Christian community. And here is Paul’s first complaint against them: Two thousand years later, according to a peculiar “development of doctrine,” the man expelled by Paul, and his mistress/stepmother, far…
As we know, the popes are infallible under certain conditions. According to Vatican II (repeating the teaching of Vatican I), the Roman Pontiff is infallible when, “as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith, by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals.”[1]…
“The high tide,” King Alfred cried. “The high tide and the turn!” Such was the battle cry of Alfred the Great, rallying the Anglo-Saxons against the pagan Danes, as imagined by G.K. Chesterton in his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse. In singing the praises of the great Anglo-Saxon king, Chesterton was joining…
An announcement that Pope Francis wants to be buried in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore was an inevitable reminder that the flax is burning low in this pontificate. Rather like a flame that burns brightest before it is extinguished, there has been a flurry of papal pronouncements, paving the way for what may be…
Liturgical Living in the Home Recently, a young mom asked me how to incorporate all the beautiful feasts and seasons into family life. Now, as I believe this is quite a saintly ambition, it is also not without the potential for undue stress and setting oneself up for failure. These statements are not to discourage…
It was on Christmas Eve 800 years ago when St. Francis of Assisi, in a cave near Greccio, Italy, created the first ever live Nativity scene. It is believed that his inspiration to do a live representation of the birth of Jesus came from his stay in the Holy Land in the years 1219 and…
