Today we celebrate the memorial of Pope St Leo the Great who died in the year 461. Famous for persuading Atilla the Hun from sacking Rome, he is also a Doctor of the Church for his writings--not only on the defense of divinity of Christ (Leo's Tome) but also his stout defense of the faith against [...]
There was a tempest in a teacup over on Twitter this morning over the proper color of liturgical vestments. A Catholic priest of a more traditional hue posted a picture of a priest celebrating an All Souls Mass wearing black vestments. Another priest rather self righteously said they wore white vestments to celebrate the resurrection. This [...]
During this month of November I plan to write a series of blog posts on death and dying, bereavement and loss. Yesterday at OLR Greenville we celebrated Mass with the usual display of relics set up around the church. I am always very moved to see the faithful circulating to venerate the relics as the Litany [...]
Today is the feast of St Simon and St Jude. They come last in the list of the apostles (just before Judas Iscariot) and scholars believe the list of the apostles indicates a kind of hierarchy as Peter is invariably first on the list. St Simon and Jude are therefore low down in the batting order. [...]
I must plead guilty to a click bait title for this blog post, but I wanted the title to be arresting because there it is an important question to be asked. The question was prompted by a story I heard recently from a youth worker. A certain youth organization was being sued because on one of [...]
The other day I was wasting time on the internet, and on reflection, started to realize the effect it was having on my perceptions of reality. What I came up with was not good, and if I recognize it in myself it must be true on a massive scale in our society, our church and most [...]
I have spoken elsewhere and blogged here about the dream I had of the bloodthirsty bear--a symbol of Soviet Atheism lumbering into the West. Consider these traits of Soviet communism and compare to America (and the UK) today: The secular state controlled education. Children were aggressively indoctrinated into the regime's atheist, materialistic ideologies. The secular state [...]
The saying "the gloves are off" is, as far as I know, a reference to boxing gloves coming off, and that the fight is entering a new, brutal, bare fisted phase. I learned in my screenwriting class many years ago that in any action movie the climax has to be between the hero and his nemesis, [...]
Before returning to the USA from my long years in England I had never heard of the Jesuit martyrs of North America. Once back in my homeland I was intrigued to learn the stories of St John de Brebeuf, St Isaac Jogues and their companions--whose memorial we celebrate today. When we began construction of the new [...]
Is it wrong to celebrate Columbus Day by celebrating Columbo-- the greatest TV detective ever? I know I'm a grumpy old guy, but who can dislike the rumpled detective who always had "just one more thing" to ask? Did you know that the character was inspired by Porfiry Petrovich--the sly and witty detective in Dostoevsky's Crime and [...]