Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Protestants all over the world celebrate “Reformation Day” on October 31. I don’t. In 2017, on the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther’s revolt, I wrote a lengthy essay on exactly why not, and I think it’s worth reprinting in its entirety. Five Hundred Years Today is the five hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. It is […]
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In your mercy, please pray for my parish of Holy Rosary in Tacoma. Our new Archbishop, Paul Etienne, has given our church a “stay of execution“, suspending the destruction order for the moment, while he prays and consults. Tonight, I’m asking you to pray, as tonight his Excellency will be consulting with our own Parish Council. He has already been […]
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Today is the 604th anniversary of King Henry V’s famous victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. As Shakespeare reminds us in his Henry V, this battle took place on the feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian. May you have the joy of the feast! Enter the KING WESTMORELAND. O that we now had hereBut one ten thousand […]
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Saint Luke is my kind of writer. Luke the historian and Luke the lyrical poet are both in evidence in his New Testament writings, his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. He freely admits that he never met Christ in the flesh, that he was not a witness to the events he describes in his Gospel. Like any good […]
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Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman Today, Pope Francis officially canonized John Henry Cardinal Newman. He had the distinction until this morning of being the theologian most quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church who was not a saint. No more. I will leave it to others to speak of the significance of Newman’s canonization, except to say that although […]
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More than a century ago on this very day in the town of Fátima, Portugal, a miracle occurred. This remarkable event occurred at the height of the Great War, and an estimated 70,000 people witnessed it. It is known as the “Miracle of the Sun”. Avelino de Almeida, writing for Portugal’s popular pro-government and anti-clerical newspaper O Século, said: Before […]
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On October 12, AD 40, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the Apostle Saint James near the town of Caesaraugusta in the Roman Province of Hispania, in what is now Zaragoza, Spain. He was discouraged. His mission in Hispania was largely a failure, with few converts and only a handful of ordained men to preach the Gospel here, at the […]
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Part 4 in an ongoing series of essays on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Now we begin at last to come to the crux of the issue as we move on to Chapter I of the General Instruction: The Importance and Dignity of the Celebration of the Eucharist, which begins to lay the foundations for addressing the rubrics […]
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Everybody knows a guy who just won’t shut up. Sometimes it’s not even that he has something to say, or that he likes the sound of his own voice. Sometimes these are the folks who are genuinely frightened by silence. Sometimes, they just don’t know how not to talk. If those folks had a patron saint, it would no doubt […]
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by G.K. Chesterton White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;For the inmost sea of all the earth is […]
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Rose Window, Church of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, Tacoma For most of the Catholic world, tomorrow is the feast of the Most Holy Rosary. For most of the Catholic world, this is a memorial of various sorts. Since, however, my parish is dedicated to Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, for us it is a Solemnity. And we’re […]
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Just about everybody knows Saint Francis. He’s the plaster birdbath guy, right? The saint who hung around with fuzzy pastel animals. Well, sort of. “Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.” (Saint Francis of Assisi) Not Saint Francis I very nearly took “Francis” as my confirmation name. It might have been awkward, though, what with being engaged to Francine at […]
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Do you pray to your Guardian Angel? Do you ask them for advice or help? Why not? The Church teaches that we all receive a guardian angel at birth, an angel assigned to guide and protect us, to watch over us. As it says in scripture: There shall no evil come to thee: nor shall the scourge come near thy […]
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Saint Jerome should be the patron saint of grumpy old men. Born in the Roman province of Dalmatia in modern Slovenia, he studied in Rome starting in about the year 360. During a journey to Syria in 373, he fell ill and had a vision that caused him to devote the rest of his long life to the service of […]
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Part 3 in an ongoing series of essays on the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. Testimony of an Unaltered Faith The Introduction of the General Instruction is at great pains to place itself, and the Missal that it prefaces, in continuity with the tradition of the Roman Rite. Despite what many modern liturgists seem to think, the Third Edition […]
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Although tomorrow is Sunday, which trumps the feast, it would otherwise be the “Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels” or, in the old calendar, the “Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Michael the Archangel”. Whatever you call it, the most common name is Michaelmas. Following the Vigil Mass tonight, our parish of Holy Rosary is hosting a Michaelmas […]
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What kind of life could the child possibly look forward to? He was born with a cleft palate, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida. In these progressive days, the child very well might have been aborted after the doctor showed the mother her first detailed fetal ultrasound. Blessed Hermann of Reichenau But the child had the great fortune to be born […]
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