Ruminations of an Amateur Monastic
Today in the calendar of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is the feast of this blog’s patron, Saint Bede the Venerable. Today in the older calendars, it is the Solemnity of the Ascension. More on that later, probably. The amazing Saint Bede was a Benedictine monk, priest, historian, and a Doctor of the Church, all while dealing with […]
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Who doesn’t like top ten lists? Well, since we’ve been up and running here at Amateur Monk for nearly a decade, I figured it was time to look at what’s been popular here. These are the top ten hits on the blog for this past year. Not all of the posts receiving the hits were necessarily written this year. Apparently […]
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On this day, ten years ago, this blog was born. It’s had a bit of a bumpy ride, changing venues a couple of times in the process. This is what I said in that first post: So much has changed in that short decade. These days, when someone tells me I’m a traditionalist, I’m forced to correct them. I’m a […]
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Today in the calendar of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is the feast of this blog’s patron, Saint Bede the Venerable. This amazing man was a Benedictine monk, priest, historian, and a Doctor of the Church, all while dealing with Viking attacks. I took the name Bede when I made my final oblation as a Benedictine. Bede occupies […]
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Eleven years ago today, on the night of the 26th of March 2005, I was baptized into the Church at the great Vigil of Easter. Last year, I wrote a retrospective on my first decade as a Christian. I don’t think I have much to add to that. I remain absurdly grateful to God for the life He has seen […]
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My hosting provider has been wildly unreliable for the past 24 hours, with the site going down intermittently sometimes for hours at a time. As they keep telling me, “we are really sorry for the inconvenience”. Even making this post has been an exercise in pain and frustration.
» Read moreWell, that’s a first. Due to an unremitting stream of vile and abusive comments from a particular individual, I’ve had to break out the nuclear option. I’ve blocked her IP address from even seeing the blog. Hopefully the plug-in works as advertised. I imagine I’ll hear all about it if it doesn’t. Given the number of plug-ins available for this, […]
» Read moreAfter futzing around with it for the past two nights, it’s at least working again. I’ve lost a bunch of functionality that will be restored in bits and pieces, but for right now I’ve emerged from the labyrinth of the WordPress dungeons, and I’m done with it.
» Read moreFor no reason that I can ascertain, the template on this blog has suddenly reset to the defaults. This means that all of the sidebars, all of the formatting, even the header, are gone. Poop. That’s going to be a long fix.
» Read moreSo, this little blog doesn’t get an enormous amount of traffic. Normally, we peak during Advent and around Easter – about what you’d expect. The other day, however, I had the largest number of hits ever in a single day. That was the day I published my post about Father Maurer’s farewell. Go figure!
» Read moreThe blog was down for several hours today, and for that I apologize. The problem was related to the update of a plug-in that it’s not even using right now. The offending bit of code has been exorcised from the blog. Hopefully that will put an end to it. If you happen to notice anything weird (well, weirder than usual), […]
» Read moreThis Saint Benedict’s feast (or memorial, depending on your calendar), I thought I’d do something a little different. I had hoped to attend Mount Angel Abbey’s Saint Benedict Festival today, but unfortunately we had a meeting this morning, and Francine has a wedding shower this afternoon. Maybe next year. The Benedictine Order celebrates two feasts of Saint Benedict: that of […]
» Read moreToday is the feast of this blog’s patron, Saint Bede the Venerable. This amazing man was a Benedictine monk, priest, historian, and a Doctor of the Church, all while dealing with Viking attacks. I took the name Bede when I made my final oblation as a Benedictine. Bede occupies an important niche in Church history by bridging the gap between […]
» Read moreWhen I began this blog, years ago now, I was trying to discern whether God was calling me to the Diaconate. I talked a little bit about that, and of vocation more generally, a little over a year ago in a post called The Vocation of Living. The upshot was this: at that time the Archdiocese of Seattle had no […]
» Read moreIf you live in western Washington, I invite you to join us for the Easter Vigil at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Tacoma. The Vigil will begin at 9:00 PM, but you’ll want to get there early. Featuring: A bonfire. A dark church and a thousand candles. Chant (in Latin AND English). Seven readings from the Old Testament […]
» Read moreIt’s been a while since I’ve posted links to some of the many interesting things I’ve been reading online lately. I blame FaceBook. It’s easy to just post a single link there, and then I never get around to posting groups here. Well, since I’m off Facebook for Lent, I’m reviving the ancient custom. I’m cheating by starting with a […]
» Read moreI‘ve long been an admirer of the Catholic Gentleman blog, so much so that I recently added a link in the “Blogs of Note” section on the left. Today they’ve got a great article up on The Four Ends of Mass. Let’s begin with what the mass is not. The mass is not a community meal designed to strengthen our […]
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