Not that anyone has ever challenged me on this, so I don't know why I repeat myself on this, but my donors do not pay for my pilgrimages. When I go on a professionally led-pilgrimage, the other lay pilgrims pay the way of the priest. This is quite common in the Catholic world. But, as always, I do thank you my donors for all your generosity to me for my normal room and board and ministry. We still have some openings for a pilgrimage I will help lead to the Holy Land with Jesse Romero in October 2023. You can find details here. Dr. Taylor Marshall invited me to be one of the two chaplains for a Latin Mass pilgrimage to the Marian Shrines of Portugal, France and Spain. He asked me to be a chaplain along with a traditional [...]

My brother in law, Luke, in an Alaska charter fisherman for four months a year. His boat is seen above. He takes clients to catch salmon and halibut in Southeast Alaska. His wife (my sister) goes up there with their five kids to overlap with him about three of those four months. The rest of the year, they live in Denver (as do I.)  The last time I was up there I was just a newly ordained priest. Luke and I were half-joking and half-serious how much simpler it was when I last visited around 2012. He and my sister had only one daughter. They had not yet had their treasure of a daughter born profoundly deaf (seen in the headband with cochlear implants below, about whom my sister wrote Remedies for Sorrow, published by Penguin Random House just this [...]

Earlier today, some conservative non-traditional Catholics on Twitter got mad at me for pointing out that what Pope John Paul II did in Assisi in 1986 was just as bad (or almost as bad) as the Pachamama event of 2019.  If you doubt the evil of Assisi '86, read this OnePeterFive article.  One paragraph in that article explains one of the most horrendous things that happened in Assisi in 1986: At this meeting, under [Pope John Paul II's] presidency, representatives of many Christian churches, together with an assortment of Hindus, Tibetan lamas, Japanese bonzes, tribal snake worshippers, and animists of all sorts performed their respective rites, some of the less mainstream officiants showing a little embarrassment at having to exhibit their customs outside the privacy of their native groves. For a day, the town of St. Francis was given over [...]

If I met me, the question I would ask me is:  What do you do all day?  As I said on a recent podcast, the hermit-thing isn't a total farce or lurk.  I keep mornings entirely for prayer and exercise.  Doing the old Divine Office means a few hours of Psalms in Latin every day.  Perhaps because I didn't learn the old Roman Breviary in seminary (for we did the Liturgy of the Hours—something we traditionalists now call the Liturgy of the Minutes—since it is so short!) I didn't carve enough time out of my day at the beginning of my religious life for both several hours of prayer and daily exercise.  Or perhaps I just get cabin fever in my condo-hermitage. Either way, I go walking and praying as one event most days.  A large part of my day [...]

When I left diocesan life, but obviously remained a priest, it was time to design a habit. One question I got a few times was "Why don't you just model your habit after one religious order or another?" It's a pretty innocent question, but I would have to explain to people that it would be the equivalent of "stolen valor" in the military. The Franciscan habit is not just a way to look pious or homeless. The Dominican habit is not just a way to look clean or erudite in learning. The Carmelite habit is not just a way to look deep or quiet. All of these habits carry the spirituality of the founders, much as a Green Beret uniform carries a different code than the Navy SEAL uniforms. A uniform describes what you sacrifice for, what you believe, and [...]

In the Spring of 2017, I was on loan to a TLM-parish in the diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana. Gibson is in the bayou and I often point out I had alligators as closer geographic neighbors than humans. But I often spent time in New Orleans when I got lonely in the swamp. One day, I was walking near the horse track in New Orleans before Mardi Gras. I think it was the Monday before Mardi Gras, but you have to understand that "Mardi Gras season" in NOLA begins in January, and lasts for months. Now, even the homeless (and the street-people with homes) get tired of seeing certain costumes among tourists, especially tourists who dress up like priests or nuns. That's the background to where this story begins. I re-discovered it on Facebook from what I posted on 27 Feb [...]

Happy Easter, Christ is Risen!  Christ is Truly Risen!As you know, I was taking care of my mother medically and sacramentally before she fell asleep in the Lord.  I thank you all so much for the prayers for the repose of my mother's soul.   To keep up my normal life of prayer this Spring of 2023, I could only keep up on my website, not the videos or podcasts, at least while helping my family and others locally.  However, most of my productions are coming back this Spring.  The following items are quite boring and long-winded, so I put the following topics in order of importance, starting with the most important on my production schedule: Thank you to all who support me spiritually and materially. As you know, I receive health-insurance from my Archdiocese as a priest in good [...]

I was interviewed by Nasz Dziennik, a large Catholic production in Poland.  A writer named Beata asked me political and religious questions regarding my recent article called Good Catholics Need to Tackle the Hard Topics More.  Here were her questions and my answers: Beata: Were Catholics too easily persuaded that they meddle too much in politics? Who and how is working on it so that we would think so? Me: The Catholic Church in the United States was exploding with baptisms and vocations before Vatican II.  Since the Council, we lose four Catholics for every Protestant convert that comes to us.  Our clergy are afraid to lose more people, so usually they go for the lowest-common denominator in spirituality.  It usually becomes something like, "Jesus is your friend and doesn’t care what your political beliefs are." Ironically, many evangelical Protestant pastors [...]

My mother, Claire Nix, got sick just before Christmas 2022.  Before offering my own low-Mass on Christmas day, I remember attending a sung midnight Mass at another traditional Church near me.  Before Mass, I was kneeling on the prie-Dieu in the sanctuary as I listened to a Christmas carol called Lully, Lulla, Lullay.  It's a silly name, but it was one of the most beautiful carols.  I had never heard it before.  Although dark before that midnight Mass, I hid my face because I was crying.  Deep inside, I knew my mother would not beat this illness, even though she was admitted to the hospital with rather mild symptoms.  She then went unresponsive in the hospital and I gave her extreme unction. She recovered a bit.  Then, she ended up in the hospital again.  I asked her pastor to hear [...]