Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
I begin this reflection from the beautiful and prayerful grounds of Buckfast Abbey, not far from the coast at Brixham, where I have been staying, and where, as I wrote the other day, William of Orange landed from Holland on that fateful November 5, 1688 (which also, ironically, is Guy Fawkes day, commemorating the foiled[…]
As I begin this reflection, I am on my way to the Devon coast, having just passed through Bath, set up by the Romans for those seeking the curative properties of the region’s hot springs. This morning, the train departed from the small station at ‘Monks Risborough’, the oldest ‘parish’ in England, founded in 903.[…]
A few words from dreekit Devon, with the heavy rain coming down here in the village of Brixham, on the south coast of England, most famous, or infamous as your proclivities lean, as the landing spot of William of Orange on November 5, 1688, the beginning of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, making Protestantism permanent in England (well,[…]
Just as the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, we might say that the first step on the road to sanctity is the realization that we are in exile, strangers and sojourners, knowing somehow, someway, we belong somewhere else. Ever since Adam and Eve got themselves cast out of the Garden, we have[…]
On the way to the Highlands, about thirty or so miles north of Dumbarton, one passes through a valley of sombre beauty and history, Glhinne Cunhamm, Glencoe, made infamous on February 13, 1692, when members of the clan MacDonald, numbers vary, but about two to three dozen, were massacred in cold blood, in the middle of[…]
When one first arrives in Scotland, everything seems a wee bit, well, smaller or, as they might put it, ‘wee-er’. The streets are narrow, even cramped at times, the houses built close together, the cars and trucks -sorry, lorries- are more compact, even on the ‘highways’, if such they can be called, cars and buses[…]
Anthony Esolen captures in a vivid and clear way what is wrong with the manner in which the Novus Ordo Mass is usually celebrated: Quodlibet-ally, as we might put it, or, as he does, ‘whatever’, as in whatever strikes the fancy of the priest, the choir, the congregation, the youth, the elderly the, well, the[…]
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 1615 (one of which was keeping him awake for nine days in a row, in mockery of Catholic novenas) was hung, drawn and quartered; the charge brought against him was ‘high[…]
How often have we heard it said that beauty is in the mind of the beholder, that it has no objective existence of its own? The proof offered by some is that abstract art has an appeal unmatched by representational art, whereas others see “objective” art as obviously superior to the “empty forms” of abstract[…]
As some may know, I am on a pilgrimage-holiday, first to my native Scotland (whence I write at present), then on down to Rome. Hence, the writing and publishing may a bit erratic over the next while, as I do what I can with limited internet with a limited ‘smart’ phone, alas. So be patient,[…]
