This should come as no surprise but I had never heard of Frederick William Faber until recently.  I was playing around while adding titles to the YIM Catholic Bookshelf (250+ titles now!) and discovered this founder of the London Oratory. A former Calvinist and convert to Catholicism, Faber wrote a great number of hymns, sermons, and devotional books in prose as well as poetry. Heck, I added over a dozen of his books to our shelves. He wrote an epic poem... Read more

It’s summer time, the kids are out of school, and the days are long and warm. There is less time to spend reading blogs and writing posts. More time to spend outdoors and enjoying life. Like working in the garden, for example, and on the yard. Smelling the flowers, and picking vegetables. Taking the kids swimming, or to a matinee. Catching fireflies and frogs. You understand what I’m saying and so do these artists with their songs. There are seven... Read more

Today we celebrate the feast day of Cyril of Alexandria, a Doctor of the Church.  Like Athanatius before him, he defended the dogma of the Incarnation of Our Lord against the heretical ideas of Nestorius, who had gained a substantial following with his beliefs that denied that Jesus was both fully man and fully God. As we have discovered while reading Belloc’s The Great Heresies, we have been realizing that attacking the mystery of Our Lord’s Incarnation is a generally accepted... Read more

Heads up Book-clubbers!  I’m postponing the meeting until next Thursday for the next chapter of Belloc’s The Great Heresies. The reason? Well, it is two-fold. A) This is a long chapter, very involved, and will need to be read a few times. That and nobody volunteered to take it up.  B) I have a high school chum who is passing through my town on his way while moving to Maine from Texas. So, if you read the chapter already, bear... Read more

Most of us who have heard of Andy Warhol think of him as the avant-garde filmmaker, as the celebrity with wild hair and big glasses who frequented Studio 54 in the 1980s, as the father of Pop Art, or as one of the most influential visual artists of the second half of the 20th century. Now, we can also think of him as a devout Catholic. Warhol, who was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh in 1928 to Slovakian parents, died... Read more

I discovered a new Catholic poet yesterday and added a selection of his work to the YIM Catholic Bookshelf. His name is Aubrey Thomas de Vere. I don’t recall how I discovered him actually, because it really wasn’t my doing, I just found him in the Treasure Chest, so to speak. I remember seeing that he had dedicated a book of poems to Cardinal John Henry Newman, though,  so I sat up and took notice. He is an Irish poet of some... Read more

This morning was one of those mornings. Nothing went well at home after the boys left for school and I felt bogged down by minutiae. Folding seemingly endless laundry, preparing for a teacher-training class tonight, mopping up from a bloody nose one of my sons had on the kitchen and bathroom floors, hauling in a huge bag of dog food from the back of the van, losing a piece of writing I had spent hours on, making sure I had... Read more

Since I became a Catholic, I run into thoughts and words from the saints that sometimes just stop me in my tracks and cause me to consider and re-consider my way of living. Here is an example from The Ladder of Divine Ascent written by St. John Climacus (or “Of the Ladder”).A man who takes pride in natural abilities— I mean cleverness, the ability to learn, skill in reading, good diction, quick grasp, and all such skills as we possess... Read more

I was so intrigued by researching the life of Saint Paulinus of Nola for his feast day. He is beloved, in part, because of his correspondence with such heavy hitters as Jerome and Augustine. I just had to find some of the poems and letters he wrote. This was easy. I merely clicked on the YIM Catholic Bookshelf you see on your right, and typed in Paulinus. What a treasure awaited me. Among the jewels I encountered were letters Paulinus... Read more