Catholic Glasgow
On an intersection in Scotland’s largest city, at Glasgow Cross, the Jesuit priest Saint John Ogilvie, after brutal tortures by the ‘King’s Men’ in...
Kavanaugh’s Inquisition
One knows not what to say at times, as events spiral faster than one’s capacity to comment on them; even one’s reflection is superseded:...
Aloysius’ Bent Iron and Summer’s Light
The memorial of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga (+ 1591), a Jesuit scholastic who died at what we might consider the too-young age of 23 while...
Resisting Reform
As many saints, scholars and sundry others have discovered, reform is a difficult business. Reforming oneself is hard enough, in others, more difficult still,...
Hurricanes, Stocks and Good Pope John
The weather and the economy are both volatile, of late, with the aptly-named Hurricane Michael (‘who is like God’) smashing into the Florida panhandle, the...
The Patronage of Saints
When the Church canonizes some of her faithful as ‘saints’, she is declaring that they lived a Christian life more perfectly, practising charity in...
Ite Ad Joseph, the Mighty and Provident
The strong and silent saint from the Gospel, is a fitting one for our troubled times: The husband of the Virgin Mary, and foster...
A Triptych of Saints
Propitiously, we celebrate a triptych of saints on this November day:
The first, in time, was Saint Clement (+99 A.D.), traditionally accepted as the third...
Fabian and Sebastian’s Choice
Pope Fabian (+250) was put to death on this day in the persecution of Emperor Decius, for refusing to offer idolatrous sacrifice, and this...
Bill 89: Whose Children Are They?
Cardinal Carlo Carafa, then President of the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, in a 2008 interview reported that he had...