Saint Bridget, Sweden’s Charitable Bibliophile

Long before Sweden was known for ABBA and IKEA  – two exports not to everyone’s taste, even if billion-dollar brands – along with a...

Mary Magdalene’s Marvelous Metanoia

A blessed feast of Mary Magdalene, which - or who - was raised from memorial status in the liturgical revisions of 1969 to a...

Saint Apollinaris of Ravenna

The See of Ravenna – on the north-east coast of Italy – was once, way back in the Middle Ages, nearly on par with...

Same-Sex Marriage Contra Naturam

(As the first line of this reflection I wrote a few years ago states, Canada legalized so-called 'same-sex' marriage on this July 20th, back...

Saint Arsenius the Great, and the Silent

Saint Arsenius, called ‘the Great’, (350 – 445), whom we recall on this 19th of July, was one of the early monks of the...

A Few Words on Infallibility

On this July 18th, 1870, the First Vatican Council, at the impetus of Pope Pius IX, proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility. Some were...

The Witness of the Carmelites of Compiègne – Le Temoinage des Carmelites de Compiègne

It was on this day in a Parisian summer in 1794 - one day after the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel - that sixteen...

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Around this time of year in the Office of Readings, or Lauds, we follow the travails of the prophet Elijah from the Book of...

By an Inch: Trump, JP II and Fatima

July 13th was the 107th anniversary of the one of the visions to the children at Fatima, this one concerning hell, the consecration of...

The Seraphic Doctor: Saint Bonaventure

Some of the 'Doctors of the Church' have epithets, and Saint Bonaventure, whom we celebrate today, is the 'seraphic', perhaps for his transcendent teaching;...