A sub-category of News.
At last, the election year of 2024 is crawling toward its close. Many are joyous that Trump won; others are dismayed. In Europe, the Ukraine War continues, while the feckless political leadership from London to Vienna are more concerned with destroying both dissent and the farming sector than they are with public safety. The less…
The Vatican has recently approved of some considerable alterations of the Novus Ordo celebrated in the Mexican diocese of Chiapas. These alterations are put forward as springing from immemorial Mayan traditions. The controversy leads me to think again about what it means to have any kind of culture at all, especially as against the phenomena…
Jesus taught in synagogues and preached in fields. He said, “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), sending His followers to lead sacrificial, charitable lives, with many paying the ultimate cost of martyrdom. But now, in the age of online Christendom, there’s a new kind of preacher on the scene: the Catholic…
“And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” — John 1:5 Amidst this dead of night within the Church — wherein all seems obscured by a disorienting darkness; by mists and shadows; by strange and unfamiliar shapes and sounds that unsettle our senses, challenge our confidence and shake the very…
On the 1st Sunday of Advent it was the Church’s duty, which as a good Mother she fulfilled, to urge us to do penance in view of the end times and judgement at the Second Coming. This week she points to the joy that awaits us after penance and judgement, encapsulated in “Jerusalem”. We are…
Around the turn of the last century, a prominent London newspaper called The World put the following question to its readers, offering a prize for the best possible answer: “What’s wrong with the world?” Not the newspaper, of course, whose good health the owners took for granted. But the planet, about which there was a…
The Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor, on December 7. By liturgical standards, he’s important. Not only is his an obligatory memorial (i.e., you have to celebrate it), but it’s an obligatory memorial in Advent. Saints—especially saints of the early Church—were often the subjects of classical art. Great painters often depicted…
In the aftermath of Pope Francis’ lovely encyclical, Dilexit Nos (He loved us), there is an inspiration to pursue in some depth a psychology in the true sense, i.e. a study of the psyche (ψυχή), the Greek word for soul. Dilexit Nos deals with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and so prompts questions about the…
A few weeks ago, a seemingly harmless change was announced. At Pope Francis’ request, a revised Order of Funerals for Roman Pontiffs was adopted. Among other things, the ritual of three coffins, practiced in the church since the eleventh century, has been replaced. I cannot help but be disappointed whenever a long-standing tradition is “modernized,”…
As all Catholics no doubt recall vividly, on April 15, 2019, the Gothic 12th-century icon of Catholicism dominating the Île de la Cité in the middle of the Seine River, Notre-Dame de Paris, was ravaged by flames accidentally caused by renovation work. As the roof, famously comprised of a “forest” of oak beams, blazed and…
