Our Lord seems to have been speaking of our modern crisis when he warns in the Gospel that scandals are sure to come, and woe to him by whom they come, with the finishing touch about millstones and the depths of sea.
It is also a propos that the Apostles...
(These remarks are developed from a talk I offered at the Saint Gregory the Great Institute during their annual conference on October 3th, 2026)
SUNDAY IN THE BEGINNING
When my family arrived here in Canada from Scotland when I was but a little lad, life was different. No internet, no cell...
BENEDICT XVI
ANGELUS
St Peter's Square
Sunday, 11 November 2007
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today, 11 November, the Church remembers St Martin, Bishop of Tours, one of the most celebrated and venerated Saints of Europe. Born of pagan parents in Pannonia, in what is today Hungary, he was directed by his father to a...
It's Remembrance Day here in Canada as well as Britain and the rest of her dominions and territories; in America, it’s Veterans' Day. Both commemorate the signing of the armistice ending the war to end all wars on the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month....
BENEDICT XVI
GENERAL AUDIENCE
Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Saint Leo the Great
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Continuing our journey through the Fathers of the Church, true stars that shine in the distance, at our meeting today we encounter a Pope who in 1754 Benedict XIV proclaimed a Doctor of the Church: ...
Pope Saint Leo, the first pontiff to earn the title 'the Great', reigned from 440 until his death on this day in 461, was known for many things. With his wise mind, his magnanimous soul and zeal, he helped solidify the papacy, and the role of the 'Holy Father',...
You may have heard of the province of Ontario’s ‘pausing’ OSAP payments in the middle of this current semester. For those who may not know, OSAP is the ‘Ontario Student Assistance Program’, offering grants and non-or-low interest loans to needy students to complete their degrees. This sudden ‘pause’ has...
Brothers and sisters, you are God’s building. ... For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. (1 Cor 3:9, 17)
Today we celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of the Cathedral Church of Rome by Pope Sylvester I in the year 324. Originally known as the Archbasilica of the...
BENEDICT XVI
ANGELUS
St Peter's Square
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The liturgy today has us celebrate the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, called the "mother and head of all the Churches of the Urbe and Orbe". Actually, this Basilica was the first to be built after the Edict of the...
Before this Octave Day of All Saints and All Souls ends, a bit of joyful music of praise of God and His providence is in order. So here is William Byrd's Laudibus in Sanctis, a setting of Psalm 150, composed in 1591. It's in triple meter, and has almost...
Holiness is rooted in the life we live each day, offering it to God. Within families, this means loving one another through the demands and trials of daily life. The newly beatified Georgia Martyrs offer a distinctly Franciscan witness to holiness: a life of penance expressed through prayer and...
In an effort to win support for legalized abortion, its advocates will point to the hard cases. The idea is that anyone who would deny an abortion to a woman in difficult circumstances is cruel and uncaring. But pro-lifers understand that if you care about someone you tell them...
So the blue tsunami has hit the shores of America, with the Democrats handily taking both the Senate and the House, making Donald Trump a ‘lame duck’ president for the two years that remain to his term.
He seems to have been his own – and in many ways America’s...
Ryan Grant has a post on OnePeterFive on the really happened with infamous the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which does not seem to be what people think it is, or, more to the point, what the agents of James I and the gentry newly-enriched by Henry's despoilation of the...
Remember, remember! the fifth of November.
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up...
With November being dedicated to the Holy Souls, I've found myself thinking about death, the human body, and something that might seem rather unusual to people outside the Catholic Church: our veneration of saints' bodies and relics.
We Catholics are often accused of idolatry. Two examples that frequently raise eyebrows...
The memorial of Saint Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) commemorates one of the great pillars - along with Saint Robert Bellarmine, Philip Neri, Teresa of Avila and countless others - of what is unfortunately known as the ' Catholic Counter Reformation', as though the Church were resisting the ‘true reform’ of...
A poem by Carl Sundell
When Death comes
banging on my door,
let him in.
I'd count it no sin
to surrender my skin
to the old pale Prince.
If I've not done
what God meant me to do,
it's the Devil's right
to claim what's due.
Best to box and bury me nice,
Even if fire and ashes suffice.
Souls do...
The term 'midterm' has various applications, from tests in the middle of the semester - which is how I usually think of things - to elections held in the middle of a presidency, taking place as I write in the United States. Will it be a red or blue...
Some of the saints signify sanctity in a way that goes beyond the norm, if ‘norm’ can be applied to a thing like sanctity, which itself is characterized by going beyond the normal requirement of virtue, into the realm of the heroic.
One of those was today’s humble Peruvian lay-brother...
On this All Souls' Day, here are two Requiems, which commemorate the dead with beauty and transcendence, and may accompany our prayers this day.
The first is Mozart's famous rendition, which he left incomplete on his death on December 5th, 1791, and completed by his disciple, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, in...
