A sub-category of News.
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…
When the first rites of blessing for same-sex couples came out in the Anglican church, they were accompanied by a lot of bluster about how they were not to be equated with marriage rites and that they did not constitute a change in doctrine. In 2003, the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster in Canada published…
When I visit Rome, at least once during my time there I go to the Ara Pacis or “Altar of Peace” of the Emperor Augustus Caesar (+14), which is housed in dreadful building that looks like a gas station. I don’t go in to see the actual altar. What I revisit is the supporting wall…
The Glory of Paradise St. Benedict sums up the spiritual necessity of the Four Last Things in his chapter “What Are the Instruments of Good Works”: To have wholesome fear of the day of judgment. With fear to shrink from hell. To long for eternal life with all spiritual desire. To have the expectation of…
