Custody of the Eyes by St. Alphonsus
The following was written for religious, but lay people can learn much from The True Spouse of Jesus Christ by St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. The following excerpt is also found at www.saintsworks.net. 'Turn away your eyes lest they behold vanity; (cf. Ps. 119:37) for license causes souls to perish.'—St. Poemen Almost all our rebellious passions spring from unguarded looks; for, generally speaking, it is by the sight that all inordinate affections and desires are excited. Hence, holy Job made a covenant with his eyes, that he would not so much as think upon a virgin. Why did he say that he would not so much as think upon a [...]
The Suicide of Altering the Faith
Before becoming Pope, Pope Pius XII wrote this in 1933: "I am concerned about the confidences of the Virgin to the little Lucia of Fatima. This persistence of the Good Lady in face of the danger that threatens the Church is a divine warning against the suicide that the alteration of the Faith, in its liturgy, its theology, and its soul, would represent. I hear around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments, and make her remorseful for her historical past. Well, my dear friend, I am convinced that the Church of Peter must affirm her past, or [...]
Why Is Celibacy Higher than Marriage?
Realizing that most of my readers are lay, and realizing how the priest—child scandals have tanked not only the low trust placed in celibates not only by secularists but even by good Catholics, this blog has to tread on pretty raw ground. Let me stay at the outset that although Divine Revelation definitively holds it as true that celibacy is a higher vocation than marriage, the saints are clear that the priest's salvation is normally harder to attain than that of a lay person, due to the higher level of scrutiny at his particular judgment. This is obviously due to the duties and high-calling he has ostensibly answered in life. [...]
Who Is Sister Mary Wilhelmina OSB?
From Fr. David: Mary Elizabeth Lancaster was born on the 13th of April 1924 in St. Louis, MO. She entered Benedictine religious life as a teenager. Later in life, Sr. Mary Wilhelmina founded the traditional congregation Queen of Apostles. There, she died on 29 May 2019. Four years later, on 18 May 2023, she was exhumed and found incorrupt. (Incorrupt means minimal corruption to a deceased body, and this is normally seen as a sign of God affirming great sanctity in the life of the deceased.) The following guest post is written by Mother of Wildlings, @ravenousreader. Who was Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster? Most Catholics know her as the “Incorrupt [...]
Spiritual Warfare in the US Military
From Fr. David Nix: Robert Green was my parishioner when I was a parochial vicar at a traditional parish on the East Coast. As the inside cover of his new book reads, Robert "has become one of the Navy's most vocal figures in the fight against the unlawful implementation of the military COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Banned from his building and fired from his position leading a 650-person unit, he is the author of numerous impactful internal Navy complaints, multiple whistleblower reports to Congress, and a key source of evidence for ongoing Federal Court cases related to the military vaccine mandate." Following Memorial Day, I believe this blog was best to [...]
A Tale of Two “Sisters”
As much as I dislike placing a blasphemous image of a "Sister of Perpetual Indulgence" (top left) next to a real saintly nun (Sister Mary Wilhelmina Lancaster OSB above to the right) it has to be more than coincidence that the two biggest stories in the US Catholic world this week both have to do with women religious. The top left is a group of men mocking female-religious in Los Angeles. The top right is a real Benedictine foundress of a female congregation found incorrupt in Missouri just this week, May 2023. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI henceforth, also top left pic) are a group of men who dress up in [...]
How to Offer Yourself at Holy Mass
As many of you know, the three parts of sacrifice as found in both the Old Testament and New Testament is 1) The offering and 2) The slaying and 3) the consummation of the victim. Regarding the second of those three, most of the Catholic world is unaware that the dual-consecration of the body and the blood entails the slaying. St. Gregory Nazianzus wrote, "The priest sunders with unbloody cut the body and blood of the Lord, using his voice as a sword." Keep in mind that St. Gregory was the Archbishop of Constantinople in the 4th century. That means he is very early and very Eastern in Church history, [...]
“I Will See You Again.”
A little while, and you will see me no longer, and again a little while and you will see me.—St. John 16:16 John 16 is one of the most intimate chapters of the New Testament. Jesus has just washed the feet of the Apostles (chapter 13) and then we have several chapters of Him explaining at the Last Supper the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for His own Apostles. This is just before the arrest of Jesus Christ. As most of you know, St. John spends nearly half of his Gospel on the Triduum prayer and the Passion and Resurrection, and a large part of this [...]
One of the Original “Canceled Priests”
The top left is the late Fr. Enrique Tomas Rueda and the top right is the late Bishop Bonaventure Broderick. Both are, in some sense, among the original "canceled priests." I re-publish this tragic but inspiring account of Fr. Rueda written with the permission of Remnant Newspaper. Tu Es Sacerdos in Aeternum—by Thomas Ryan I hadn’t heard from Fr. Rueda in at least two months when an email message, forwarded multiple times, showed up in my inbox last month indicating he’d died. In time, I would learn there was some rather bizarre news associated with that of Father’s passing. Fr. Enrique Tomas Rueda was a native of Havana, Cuba. In fact, he’d [...]
Complacency and Gratitude
The above is a picture I look of the art behind the main altar of the new Immaculata Church in St. Mary's, Kansas. While walking around the town of St. Mary's last week, and while praying in the new Immaculata Church, I started to wonder about all the Things We Lost in the Fire which was the title of last blog post regarding the history of the past 100 years in St. Mary's, Kansas and even the last 100 years of the Catholic Church at-large. The former seems to have been a microcosm of the former, especially in her demise under the Jesuits. But the renewal of the former (under [...]