Manos
Lent Preparation: Earn an eternal merit badge this year
I’ve written before on the notion of lent being a time to fast and on the power of fasting to cast demons away. Today, people have totally shifted their concept and consider a fast “too much.” Those who say that have that luxury only today because the Church has mitigated the impact of the second law. Consider…
Do the American Bishops hate fasting?
I was shell shocked today by an omission I can hardly believe. At Mass, I heard the Gospel about the possessed boy out of whom the Apostles could not drive the demon. We all know the tale: Our Lord drives the demon out, and the Apostles ask, “Why could we not drive out the demon?” And Our…
Catholic Dictionary: Menticide?
I was looking for something recently in my copy of Fr. John Hardon’s Modern Catholic Dictionary when I noticed an entry that caught my eye: Menticide. Mind killing. “The systematic effort to break down the beliefs and allegiances of a person by physical or psychological means, in order to substitute one’s own. Also called brain-washing, it…
FEMEN and the Gerasene Demoniac… Full of Devils
News today that Femen has raided a cathedral in Spain. They are screaming “Abortion is sacred.” The woman is naked, has an upside down cross painted on her back, violent, and seems to have a problem with identity, “My name is Femen, for we are many.” I can’t help it but to think of the demoniac…
Cincinnati’s Curious Masonic Church
Cincinnati has long appeared to have a revolving door between the Masonic lodges and the Catholic Church. Having grown up there, I can recall discussions of various people who were both in Knights of Columbus and Masons, and rumors of parishes that were pagan experiments. People talk, and that sort of talk happened way before blogging. In…
Who is this Savior Born of Mary?
Christmas is wrought with contradictions and hope. I love it. I always have to wonder just Who people think Jesus is and what His Incarnation means for us today, though. Besought with an authoritarian government, the encroachment of Marxist demoralization, and myriads of distractions foisted on us by the mass media, it is difficult sometimes…
Bishop Paprocki is Stealing their happiness? !
You’ve seen the headlines by now: Bishop Paprocki of Springfield diocese is going to perform an exorcism at the same time as the Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois signs a bill into law that enacts so-call marriages between persons of the same sex (as if that were possible anywhere in God’s creation). The story is…
Until the Choir Sings “Amen” – One Easy Secret to a Happy Death
“Life is a play in which for a short time one man represents a judge, another a general, and so on; after the play no further account is made of the dignity which each one had.” –St. John Chrysostom It’s that time of year when we ought to have been focused on the eleventh and…
Fire From Heaven and St. Michael’s Tears
Somewhere in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty there is claimed to have been placed a plaque inscribed with a passage from the sonnet The New Colossus written by Emma Lazarus. The passage compares the two bronze statues for purpose: Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land…
Dark Night Arrives
Finally, today, I had a box in my mailbox — I was hoping, and it turned out to be the box for which I have been waiting. The Fall catalog of Roman Catholic Books advertised this saucy title from Dr. Alice von Hildebrand: It is precisely what it says: a critique of the Theology of the…
