One part of my life is answering the theological questions of friends and benefactors.  Below is an email I got from a friend today.  I didn't think I'd turn it into a blog post until after I hit "send," but I needed something for my Life-Update section (especially so you know what I do with a small portion of my week.) I think you'll find his two theological questions fascinating: His email: Fr. Nix, Two confusions which have been floating around in my mind for a year or two. I have seen a pamphlet, I think by Fr. A., stating that we can pray now for a suicide victim who [...]

Last week, some friends offered to pay my way to Chicago and back to see Mass of the Ages 3 (henceforth, MOTA 3).  I was featured in episode one and two, but not three, so I didn't have a lot of reasons to come out.  But a free flight and seeing friends who would be attending the premier sounded like it might be worth it.  Besides the fact we all had a great trip, the movie was excellent.  (There were a few caveats to this, like how the movie got wrong a major-premise to the current state of papacy, but that is not the point of this article.) What I [...]

Here's why I offer the old Roman Sacraments: Mass:  The Traditional Latin Mass uses only the Roman Canon, which the Counsel of Trent infallibly states is something Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles as I wrote about in this article. Confession:  The old-rite absolution automatically includes the lifting of excommunication of certain sins like abortion by the very fact that it includes the word "excommunication" as what is relieved just before the words of absolution, as I explained in this podcast.  This is not the case in the new formulation of absolution, but apparently a "tag on" prayer has been added for just such sins. Extreme Unction:  In the [...]

In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whosoever is not just, is not of God, nor he that loveth not his brother. For this is the declaration, which you have heard from the beginning, that you should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of the wicked one, and killed his brother. And wherefore did he kill him? Because his own works were wicked: and his brother's just. Wonder not, brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not, abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother [...]

I just finished reading an outstanding book called God's Will.  It's about the incorrupt African-American Benedictine nun, Sr. Mary Wilhelmina, Foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of the Apostles.  She was born Mary Elizabeth Lancaster on the 13th of April 1924 in St. Louis.  She died on the 29th of may 2019.  She was found incorrupt on the 18th of May 2023.  To be "incorrupt" means the body of the deceased has miraculously refrained from the normal post-mortem decomposition process. I (top-right) have no plans on being incorrupt like her (top-left) but I noticed a few similarities in our intellectual conversions from modernist Catholicism to traditional Catholicism.  Before entering [...]

With the beginning of a new liturgical year, we heard in the Epistle today from St. Paul, "The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light."—Rom 13:12 Seeking what resolutions to pursue for the new year, I recently heard this talk by Fr. Ripperger. That talk opened my eyes to the depth of graces offered to people who endure temptations from enemies invisible (and probably visible.)  Also, as in other talks, Fr. Ripperger encouraged his listeners to ask Our Lady of Sorrows to reveal their primary defect. This time the answer in [...]

The above picture is a Latin-Rite (Western) Church in an Eastern Orthodox country.  More specifically, it's the Franciscan run "Church of Our Lady of Victory" in Rhodes, Greece.  I spent time praying there as well as helping with corporal works of mercy.  Above the altar within the above Church is a plaque found from centuries ago when the Holy Theotokos showed up to liberate the island from a Turkish Muslim invasion. Rhodes is an island where St. Paul visited (and he apparently loved it.) Over a millennium later, the island was built up by the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem (Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti [...]

We landed on 7 Oct 2023 in Tel Aviv, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.  As most of you know, this feast commemorates the Naval defeat of the Turks by the European armies after Pope St. Pius V got all of Europe praying the Rosary for a miraculous defeat.  That is exactly what was granted.  But just before landing in Tel Aviv five hundred years later, one boy (of our group of 60 pilgrims) saw in the distance smoke coming up from the Gaza Strip from the initial strikes at the beginning of the war. As we landed, an Israeli woman next to me helped me interpret the [...]