Anne Bancroft as Mary Magdalene Good news that Mary Magdalene's memorial has been promoted to be a Feast. Go here for the info. I've always liked that detail from the film Jesus of Nazareth where Mary Magdalene tried to get through the cordon to stand at the foot of the cross. The Virgin and John have [...]
Elijah in the Cave at Horeb I see that I have not blogged at The Suburban Hermit since February! Today's Mass reading of Elijah in the cave at Mt Horeb has prompted the Suburban Hermit to break his four month silence and return to the keyboard. Go here to read today's post about Elijah [...]
The news is so uniformly bizarre and the world so amazingly insane and the storm clouds on the horizon so terrifying that I really would like to be a Catholic ostrich. In other words, I want to put my head in the sand, hunker down, mind my own business, try to do what I can to [...]
My Article at CRUX this week questions the effectiveness of our charity efforts. The poor-whether they are genuine or not-congregate around Catholic churches because the needy know we care. Down through the ages Catholics, along with other Christians have rolled up their sleeves and got to work feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, healing the sick, [...]
The New Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Greenville, SC OK. This is a MUST READ if you or your parish are planning to build a new church or planning to renovate an ugly modern church. I learned these things through building the new Our Lady of the Rosary Church at OLR Beauty [...]
My article at Aleteia this week is a discussion of Cardinal Sarah's encouragement of ad orientem celebration of the Mass. Last week the French publication Famille Chretienne published a lengthy interview with Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in which he urges a return to Mass being celebrated ad orientem and [...]
What is it about a pipe organ that is so important that the fathers of the second Vatican Council actually recommended its use in worship? In Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963, it is stated that “… the [...]
Embed from Getty Images I hate to be a harbinger of doom, but the mob violence we are witnessing in the United States is going to get worse. Don't imagine that this is a "right wing" or "left wing" problem. The mobs inside the Trump rallies and the mobs outside the Trump rallies are driven by the [...]
We're building a new church in our parish and we've taken the bold step of buying a pipe organ. The pipe organ adds beauty and dignity to our Catholic worship. It's a traditional instrument for the solemn significance of our Catholic Mass. We have factored the purchase price into our financial plan, but we need some [...]
Don't give it to me. Just give it. My blog post for the National Catholic Register this week explains why. Read that Gospel again. That’s exactly what the rich young man said to Jesus. He told Jesus how good he was. The underlying principle is very simple—“you cannot serve God and money”—and a sad majority of [...]