The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right. (G.K. Chesterton)
Year: 2019
Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder
Remember, remember the fifth of November. Yes, it’s Guy Fawkes Day, when the English people of a certain religious persuasion – or of none at all – celebrate – or used to anyway when religion was more to the fore in people’s minds – the foiling of the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ of 1605, when a group[…]
Parents beware: The effects of teaching same-sex attraction during pre-adolescence
(At the request of the author, we are re-posting this reflection by Leeda Crawford from September 2010, sage advice for parents with children in the public system, especially that goes by the appellation ‘Catholic’. I, for one, consider the system inherently compromised, worse now ten years on, by forces not only secular, but outright inimical[…]
We must meditate before, during and after everything we do. The prophet says: “I will pray, and then I will understand.” This is the way we can easily overcome the countless difficulties we have to face day after day, which, after all, are part of our work. In meditation we find the strength to bring[…]
The True Reformation of Charles Borromeo
The memorial of Saint Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) commemorates one of the great pillars – along with Saint Robert Bellarmine, Philip Neri and countless others – of what is unfortunately known as the ‘Counter Reformation’, which is really nothing other than the Catholic Church’s vigorous response – lately grown complacent, complaisant and enervated in the luxury[…]
Salvation is a Gift, to Those Who Seek It
For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save what the lost. (Lk. 19:10) ⧾ The conversion of Zacchaeus may be said to be a consequence of our Lord’s preaching. Last Sunday we heard the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee and given the sequence in the narrative, it is[…]
Open thy gate of mercy, gracious God, My soul flies through these wounds to seek out thee. (Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester’s, dying words, as quoted in Shakespeare’s History of Henry VI)
On Evil Euphemisms
Somebody has sent me a book on Companionate Marriage; so called because the people involved are not married and will very rapidly cease to be companions. I have no intention of discussing here that somewhat crude colonial project. I will merely say that it is here accompanied with sub-titles and other statements about the rising[…]
Canada in Pieces
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats, 1919 After a six-week campaign, marked with nastiness and recriminations,[…]
It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins (2 Maccabees, 12:46)