The Gift of Bread

Last Sunday, the Gospel was from the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, transferred on this year’s liturgical calendar to this time just before Advent. Saint Matthew provides us with the vivid image of Our Lord as Teacher, using richly textured parables, taken from the fiber of common life, to teach us about the kingdom of heaven. [...]

After Three Hundred Years England Gets a Cardinal: The Great Nicholas Wiseman

Anxious to restore the English hierarchy at the earliest opportune time, Blessed Pius IX, in 1850, created Bishop Nicholas Patrick Wiseman Cardinal (1802-1865), appointing him to head the Church in England as Archbishop of the newly created See of Westminster. Although English Protestant leaders were not hanging, beheading, disemboweling, and quartering Catholics in the nineteenth [...]

Abortion Opposed From Heaven

When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, she was asked about her consistent approval of abortion. Repeating her frequently stated stand, she insisted that she is “an ardent, practicing Catholic” and then claimed that no one knows when life begins. Moderator Tom Brokaw promptly told her [...]

An Interview with Myself

Today, the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, there is an interview with me published on the Renew America web site. Brian Mershon, a traditional Catholic journalist interviewed me several months ago, and this is the result:
One year later…the forgotten document: A reaffirmation of the one true Church of [...]

Remember: The Holy Souls Need Your Prayers

Every evening we come before our Blessed Mother, bringing her a collection of our day’s efforts. She gracefully produces a gift of value and, in November, we are emboldened to ask if any of it could be applied to the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
November is the month dedicated to the Holy Souls, and they are [...]

The Boston Pilot's Great Fenian Editor John Boyle O'Reilly

One of the earliest and most popular editors of the Catholic newspaper, The Boston Pilot, was an escaped “convict.” John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-90) was unjustly sentenced in 1867, by the English, to twenty-three years of penal servitude in Australia for his anti-British activism as a member of the Irish Fenians. He escaped the [...]

Blue is for Purity

In Catholic religious art the color blue, not white, is symbolic of purity. The white wedding gown originated in the nineteenth century in imitation of Queen Victoria who wore white for her wedding to Prince Albert. The blue that brides were instructed to wear “something borrowed, something blue” on the wedding day was in honor [...]

The Capuchin Cemetery: (Catholic) Faces of Death

I’m back from this two-week trip to Rome, but I haven’t gotten the Eternal City out of my mind. Not by a long shot. Thus, this entry, which has a ghoulish picture in it. I think it’s an appropriate meditation on death for November.
In Rome there is a famous church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, [...]

Boston College Sinks to New Levels of Depravity

The following is a press release from the Catholic Action League, condemning a deal between Boston College and Victoria’s Secret:
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today criticized Jesuit administered Boston College for entering into a business relationship with Victoria’s Secret, the self-described distributor of the “world’s sexiest brands” in women’s lingerie, sleepwear [...]

What Was the First Diocese Established in North America?

The first diocese established in North America was not Mexico City or Quebec but Greenland. Viking Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, brought along Catholic missionaries when he sailed to Greenland from Norway in the year 1000. His father, exiled from Norway, had established a colony there in 986 at Brattahlid. Leif was raised [...]