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
We need some good news stories, and I was witness to one yesterday, as Sister Margaret Mary MacGrath of the Sisters of Our Lady Immaculate made her final profession of vows in a beautiful and sublime Mass, celebrated by Bishop Douglas Crosby, with glorious music provided by the Sisters’ own Schola. Sister MacGrath is an[…]
As I was leaving Rome, watching out the window of the da Vinci airport, after five days of hot, sunny weather, the rain began bucketing down. It must have been almost exactly that time that a bridge suddenly collapsed in Genoa, 300 miles to the north, killing at least 37 people and injuring untold more.[…]
A blessed and joyful solemnity of the Assumption, the greatest of the feasts of Our Lady, commemorating her entrance into heaven, body and soul, ‘at the end of her earthly life’, as the 1950 Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus of Pius XII put it. Besides her many other attributes, and the signs that the life of[…]
The powerlessness of Jesus. In a word, it is one of our modern heresies, but it lies hidden in the heart because it is logically absurd, and we are embarrassed to admit that we could simultaneously believe in the divinity of Christ while denying His power. Yet it happens all the time. Why are so[…]
I am here at the Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome, waiting for my (delayed) flight back to Toronto and, well, back to life as it was. Or perhaps not. Bilbo was not quite the same hobbit after his journey, whose tale Tolkein subtitled ‘There and Back Again’, with the implicit emphasis that the hobbit[…]
A blessed feast of Saint Lawrence to all our readers, the third century martyr whose quite literally legendary life echoes through the ages, his generosity, his sense of humour (bringing the ‘poor’ to the Magistrate when he demanded the Church’s ‘treasures’); his cheerfulness, even in the midst great agony. As the legend goes, while being[…]
A blessed feast of theTransfiguration to all our readers, which finds me newly arrived in the historic town of Canterbury, made famous by Augustine (the English one, not African), Thomas a Becket and Chaucer, amongst numerous other historical worthies. More to follow on that, as I explore tomorrow. I have a few thoughts on the Marian shrine[…]
Norfolk, in south-eastern England, remained staunchly Catholic during the ‘reformatory’ troubles begun by Henry VIII. The Dukes of Norfolk held fast to the Faith through the travails the the Tudors, Henry and his daughter Elizabeth and son Edward, along with their successors. The 15th Duke of Norfolk, Henry Fitzalan-Howard, provided much of the funds to[…]
Already suffering the sustained heat of this long, hot summer, Catholics everywhere have also been stunned by the sudden fall from grace of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the strange sense of foreboding that goes with it. Is this a turning point in Church history, they’re wondering? Has Holy Mother Church reached a nadir? And if[…]
There have been two tragic and public suicides in the news of late, which I have picked up on these pilgrimage travels, praying for the souls of the departed: Oksana Shochka, a member both of ‘Pussy Riot’, a musical band, of sorts, as well as ‘Femin’, a feminine group, again, of sorts. The former were[…]
