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
On this day, August 4th, in 1859 – the same year that Darwin published his specious Origin of Species, and one year after Marx’s Communist Manifesto, both of which, sadly, shook the faith of many – the world witnessed the quiet passing into eternity of a most remarkable man, a simple country priest who lived[…]
The Church commemorates two pastors today, separated by a millennium and a half: The fourth-century Eusebius of Vercelli (+371), the first bishop we know of in northern Italy, who has gone down in history as one of the great foes of the insidious heresy of Arianism, which taught that Christ was not truly God. Eusebius[…]
Saint Alphonsus Ligouri (1696 – 1787) was a renaissance man, whose kind was a rarity in his post-renaissance era, and even more so now in our age of specialization, often in esoteric subjects that would have puzzled anyone before, say, 1960. Alphonsus received a double doctorate in civil and canon law at the tender age[…]
The contrast between the disintegrating situation in Britain and Pope Leo IV’s sunny words on migration is a prompt for this brief reflection. We take to heart the Holy Father’s exhortation to welcome and show charity. However, with a possible civil war imminent in England and Ireland, and similar scenarios unfolding across the once-and-sometime civilized[…]
When we read the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) he at first glance seems to belong more to the early days of the desert Fathers, or, perhaps, to the mediaeval ‘fools for Christ’, who gave up all to follow Him – begging for alms, sleeping outside, pilgrimaging from place to place. Saint Ignatius[…]
Saint Peter Chrysologous (+450) was, as the traditional account has it, chosen bishop of Ravenna in 433 after the then-reigning pontiff, Pope, Sixtus III, had a vision of Saint Peter the Apostle and Saint Apollinaris (the latter a former bishop of Ravenna) who pointed out a young man as the next episcopus. Soon afterwards, a[…]
This memorial of Saint Martha, in accord with a decree from the Congregation of Divine Worship, now also includes her brother Lazarus, the one raised from the dead, and her sister Mary, leaving aside the controversy over whether she is the same ‘Mary’ as the Magdalene we celebrated a week ago, as some small-t traditions[…]
Today we celebrate the great feast of Saint James ‘the Greater’, not because of any intrinsic superior quality to the other apostle James, ‘the Lesser’, traditionally held to be the author of the New Testament epistle, whom we venerate with Saint Philip on May 3rd, but likely because this James was older. Today’s James was[…]
On this feast of Saint Bridget of Sweden, one of the four co-patrons of Europe (along with Saint Benedict, Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), it’s fitting to post this final reflection on my pilgrimage, on those last few days in Rome. Rome, the Eternal City, the Centre of Christendom[…]
Long before Sweden was known for ABBA and IKEA – two exports not to everyone’s taste, even if billion-dollar brands – along with a soft version of socialism and moribund demographics, the northern nation was was a land of saints, of a people devoted to the Faith, after the conversion of the Baltic regions between[…]
