Quinquagesima Sunday
When I was a child, I spoke as child; I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a...
Saint Peter Damian and Pope Benedict
Not many in the hierarchy write like Saint Peter Damian (+1072) anymore, whose direct and blunt condemnation of the unnatural sexual sins of the...
Enforcing the Party Line – Or is that Lie?
We shall proclaim destruction – why? why? – well,
Because the idea is so fascinating. But we must get
a little exercise. We’ll have a few...
The Psychology of Fasting
Fasting was an essential aspect of primitive Christianity, as it had been in Old Testament times. That the followers of Jesus would fast is...
Chastity: Appreciating An Underappreciated Virtue
”Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged” (John 19: 1)
The visions of the 19th century German mystic, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, vividly depict...
First Sunday of Lent: Purified and Perfected by Penance
After Jesus was baptized, the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan (Mk. 1:12).
On...
The Feast of the Chair of Peter
On Monday February 22 we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of St Peter. What do we mean by the Chair of Peter and...
A Brief History of Eminent Atheists
Here is a sober thought. Let us suppose we might be looking for the first atheists in the history of the world. My candidates...
When I Die, Do I Want to Be a…Tree?
This phrase recently appeared in the Ottawa Citizen in an article on the greening of death, a quote from Susan Koswan, a Waterloo writer...
Almsgiving in the Twenty-first Century
“Grace builds on nature.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas)
This statement from Saint Thomas’s Summa expresses in succinct form the theological insight that creation and redemption are...