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
Their name comes from a riposte of Flannery O’Connor, who said once: Everybody who has read Wise Blood thinks I’m a hillbilly nihilist, whereas . . . I’m a hillbilly Thomist. Well, the ‘Hillbilly Thomists’ are professed members of the Dominican Order, who play Christian bluegrass on the side – of their more Dominican pursuits –[…]
On January 31 the Church celebrates the feast of Saint John Bosco, the founder of the worldwide huge Salesian family. Don Bosco (1815-1888), as a spiritual father and a splendid teacher as he was, managed, by God’s grace, to be an excellent mix between nature and grace. He was profoundly human, rich in the qualities[…]
There are two multiplication of the loaves, which makes it evident that they are concerned with more than merely feeding the crowds. The first came after the raising from the dead of the daughter of Jairus, when Jesus had said to her parents, “Give her something to eat” (5.43). This very phrase was repeated when[…]
Catholics have sung our praise to God for the entirety of the Church’s history. For at least a thousand years, Gregorian chant formed the basis of a Catholic musical patrimony and identity, with a revival of the art form occurring in the late 19th century and onward, as a result of the work of the[…]
As the madness continues and we deal with patently irrational policies enforced in both the secular and the ecclesiastical realm, it is important for us to formulate a properly ordered perspective that acknowledges the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Sacred history teaches us that this is ultimately the end result in every struggle between[…]
How does one gently and reasonably point out to someone the clear and present destruction caused by lockdowns, who is convinced that they are somehow a good idea? And by ‘destruction’, we mean not only the obvious economic havoc wreaked, especially on small businesses, which are the bulk of whatever wealth-production is left, but also[…]
Plato had something against the sophists, those itinerant teachers of rhetoric who rose to prominence in the fifth century BC, mostly in Athens. The sophists claimed to be able to convince anyone of anything, whether true or false, and presumed to be able to teach the same – at significant cost, of course. They were[…]
(I thought a re-post of these thoughts from nearly five years ago now (!) was a propos, given our current Alice-in-Wonderland-cum-1984 world, making our way, as others have said, through a blizzard of lies. Having lived through the terrorism and boot-in-your-face of the Nazis, Josef Pieper warned four decades ago of the evil warping of[…]
One of the greatest minds of all time is certainly that of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), whose feast we celebrate on this January 28th. Even if he lived at the zenith of the Middle Ages, however his teaching is so clear, strong and persuasive that it has stood its ground for some eight millennia, making[…]
BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, 2 June 2010 Saint Thomas Aquinas Dear Brothers and Sisters, After several Catecheses on the priesthood and on my latest Journeys, today we return to our main theme: meditation on some of the great thinkers of the Middle Ages. We recently looked at the great figure[…]
