Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Weekly Insight

SSPX Plans to Cross the Rubicon…but the Wrong Way: Alea Iacta Est?

Well, perhaps it was inevitable, given the intractability: The SSPX has decided to go ahead with the ordination of bishops on July 1st, 2026, which is just about 38 years to the day after the...

Saint Polycarp: Boldness and Baked Bread

The Church has had martyrs since her earliest days, and will have them unto the end of time. A number of prophecies attest that the number of martyrs towards the end will exceed those...

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 Ash Wednesday we began the observance of the holy season...

Leaning on Peter’s Chair

The Chair of Saint Peter, is a comforting one, a symbol of the 'pillar and bulwark' of the truth, which is the Church, signifying by synecdoche the office of the papacy, instituted by Christ,...

Pope John Paul II and the Chair of Peter

EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION WITH THE NEW CARDINALS HOMILY OF JOHN PAUL II Thursday, 22 February 2001 Feast of Saint Peter's Chair 1. "'Who do you say that I am?'. Simon Peter replied, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the...

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 clergy he condemns in his vivid Book of Gomorrah, as...

Blessed Jacinta and Francisco Marto – The Youngest Canonized Saints, but Not the Least

On this day in 1920, February 20th, nine-year old Jacinta Marto died after great suffering, as she lay alone in a hospital bed. She had endured for weeks, including a vain attempt to alleviate...

The Ministerial Priesthood and St. Maximillian Kolbe

Nothing is more doomed to failure than a layperson trying to tell the clergy what they ought to do. Well, perhaps if such a person held several academic degrees in Theology or Mariology, or...

SSPX and the Staying in Barque of Peter

Things are, shall we say, fractious in the Church, when an Irish priest likens receiving Communion on the tongue to ‘feeding animals’, while the bishop of Charlotte forbids altar rails and discourages kneeling. Latin...

Remember Man, That Thou Art Dust…Pope Benedict and Ash Wednesday

BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE Paul VI Audience Hall Wednesday, 9 March 2011 Ash Wednesday Dear Brothers and Sisters, On this day, marked by the austere symbol of ashes, we enter the Season of Lent, beginning a spiritual journey that prepares us...

The Seven Servite Saints of the Virgin Mary

The Seven Founders of the Servite Order commemorate the group of merchants who in 1233 left everything to follow Christ, with a special devotion to the Virgin Mary, particularly in her own union in...

Distributism: The Original ‘Third Way’ for Shared Ownership, Social Justice, and Economic Equality & Democracy

(Contributor Tadgh Quil-Manley offers a reflection here on distributism, an economic philosophy derived by Chesterton, Belloc and others from Leo XIII's landmark encyclical, Rerum Novarum. Readers, myself included, may take some pause over the...

Nietzsche and Tumbler

Nietzsche either warned or advocated - depending on your point of view - the transvaluation of all values, which is to say, the inversion of the moral law. After all, from his perspective, after...

Saints Cyril and Methodius, and, Yes, Valentine

On this fourteenth of February, in the universal calendar we celebrate the ninth-century monks and missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, patrons of Europe, who translated the Liturgy into Slavonic, with Cyril constructing the Glagolitic...

Harvesting the Living

The words themselves are chilling: 'Pre-death approval by the coroner': And on it goes into the abyss: "17: The Chief Coroner may allow the removal of organs or tissue after the death of a person notwithstanding...