Fraternal Trust and Care of the Sick

As has been the custom for the last thirty-eight years, on Thursday 11 February, precisely on the liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes,...

Fifth Sunday: The Church’s Mission to Each Individual Soul

I do it all for the sake of the Gospel, so that I may share in its blessings (1 Cor. 9:23). St. Paul’s passionate words...

Keeping the Republic

The most marked political tendency of the American people has been to interpret their government as a pure and simple democracy, and to shift...

St John Bosco: Our True Spiritual Companion

On January 31 the Church celebrates the feast of Saint John Bosco, the founder of the worldwide huge Salesian family. Don Bosco (1815-1888), as a...

The Gospel of Mark: The Multiplication of the Loaves

There are two multiplication of the loaves, which makes it evident that they are concerned with more than merely feeding the crowds. The first...

A Heritage Lost? Jean Langlais and Post-Conciliar Sacred Music

Catholics have sung our praise to God for the entirety of the Church’s history. For at least a thousand years, Gregorian chant formed the...

Let us Imitate the Patience of the Saints

As the madness continues and we deal with patently irrational policies enforced in both the secular and the ecclesiastical realm, it is important for...

Hunted by Sophists

Plato had something against the sophists, those itinerant teachers of rhetoric who rose to prominence in the fifth century BC, mostly in Athens.  The...

Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power

(I thought a re-post of these thoughts from nearly five years ago now (!) was a propos, given our current Alice-in-Wonderland-cum-1984 world, making our...

Everyday Advice from Saint Thomas

One of the greatest minds of all time is certainly that of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), whose feast we celebrate on this January 28th. Even...