Views of a new Catholic in an old world on the joy and inexhaustible meaning found in the Faith
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception*
—Solemnity, Mary, Mother of God
For most of us, today is a Holy Day of Obligation. It’s the day where we recognize the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as the Mother of God. In this post, we’ll look at something one of my friends from the group I call the Dead Jesuits wrote, exploring another dimension of Our Lady’s role as the Theotokos. [Read more...]
The title of this post says it all. Why bother becoming a Christian unless you believe this? “God became human to save us all.” And if you do believe it, why not practice the ancient faith of the earliest Christians? The one that, despite criticisms attempting to prove the opposite, has developed since Christ ascended to heaven, and yet has not done so at the expense of Biblical (and doctrinal) truth.
This post is not an attempt to explain all of that. That is what this blog, and a lifetime of study, prayer, and reflection, is for. Today though, just for a few minutes, pause from all the crises and craziness of your daily life to ponder the fact that God became a human being. [Read more...]
Remember my affection for the Harvard Classics, the Five Foot Shelf of Books? Admittedly, I haven’t looked them over much since I became a Catholic. Not because I’ve outgrown them, but because there have been far too many other books to occupy my time since the spring of 2008. Mostly stuff from authors whose names begin with “S”, as St. Philip Neri suggested when he counseled that reading the works of the saints is profitable.
But I dipped a toe back into the HCFFSB water today and found these thoughts of Sir Francis Bacon. [Read more...]
This is part VII of my conversion story, tagged as 2BFrank in the Tag Cloud. I run it every year on this day to commemorate the death of Thomas Merton, who was also known as Father Louis.
Yes, I am well aware that he is not a canonized saint, but the salient point about Fr. Louis’ life is not whether he was a good Catholic, or a bad Catholic. The main thing isn’t even that his writings helped bring me into the Church. [Read more...]
Once I met up with Thomas Merton, it didn’t take long for him to introduce me to St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Not exactly the founder of the Cistercian Order, as that distinction belongs to the trio of monks Robert of Molesme, Alberic, and Stephen Harding, all in the Communion of Saints now too, he nonetheless grew the Cistercian Order into a powerhouse of prayer.
Bernard, a Doctor of the Church, was indefatigable in his allegiance to Christ and to the Catholic Church. He was a contemplative, but was constantly being called into action, attending Church councils, while providing counsel to monarchs, and even preaching the Second Crusade. Repairing schisms and matching wits with Peter Abelard (and others constantly), it’s a miracle he had time for prayer, or anything else for that matter.
Personally, I don’t think he slept much. [Read more...]
Let me preface this post with an acknowledgement of the fact that philosopher George Santayana died as an atheist. But as an atheist, Santayana put pen to paper on some Catholic ideas that lack only one thing, really. And that one thing is the simple faith of a child in order to believe them.
As minds of adults go, George had an intellect that was top notch. But as Our Lord said,
Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Johnny Cash and Jesus Christ share the initials “J.C.” Johnny Cash is an adopted son of my home state of Tennessee. Johnny Cash wrote a novel called Man in White, which I read as I began my journey to the Catholic Church. It is the story of the conversion of St. Paul, and it was so good that I couldn’t believe Johnny Cash wrote it. [Read more...]
Well, it’s pretty close, from what I can tell. And it makes a handy little pocket guide for the changes coming upon us when the New Translation kicks in this first Sunday of Advent. I didn’t have to invent the Flux Capacitor to find out about it either.
Caveat emptor: the language is more along the lines of what is found in the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible. There are Thee’s, Thy’s, and Thou’s, rather than the more modern version that is on the handy cards you’ll probably be consulting in your parish pews. [Read more...]
I had someone leave a comment on a post who lamented questioningly,
“After all, do Christians proselytize to others as they wish others would proselytize to them? The very notion is ridiculous.”
Below is a great video clip, courtesy of Kevin O’Brien’s Theater of the Word, Incorporated, that puts that statement to the test. Because we are called to spread the Good News in ways that appeal to all people. [Read more...]
Why haven’t I been posting much lately? You can blame Fr. Steve Grunow, who suggested the book you see above to me a few days ago. I’ve never read anything by Evelyn Waugh, and I’m not ashamed to say that for most of my life I figured Evelyn was a lady, and I wasn’t much interested in what she had to say.
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got me a college degree and all, and after I became a Catholic and snooped around a bit I learned that Evelyn was a man, a Catholic, and he wrote some great novels that were turned into classics for Masterpiece Theater. Still, I was about as excited to read anything written by him as I was interested in say…watching paint dry, or grass grow. Yawn.
But then I found that neat book about the True Cross by Louis de Combes, and Fr. Steve suggested Waugh’s book. I checked the catalog at the library, noted a copy was on the shelf, and I strolled over there and picked it up pronto. I haven’t been able to put it down since. Here’s a taste:
“Chlorus, is it true what they are saying in Ratisbon: that you are going to be Caesar?”
“Who say that?”
“The governor’s wife, the widow of the banker, all the ladies.”
“It may be true. Aurelian and I have spoken of it before. After the battle, he spoke of it again. He has to go to Syria now, to tidy up trouble there. After that he will return to Rome for his triumph. Then we shall see.”
“Do you want it?”
“It’s not what I want, ostler; it’s what Aurelian wants that counts, he and the army and the empire. It is nothing to be shy of, just another, larger command—Gaul, the Rhine, Britain, possibly Spain. The empire’s too big for one man; that’s been proved. And we need a secure succession, a second-in-command who’s been trained to the job, knows the ropes, can step in straight away when the command falls vacant; not leave each army to declare for its own general and fight it out as they’ve done lately. Aurelian is going to talk to the senators about it when we go to Rome.”
See? Clear thinking like that is what I was just talking about a few days back. And does everything go according to plan? As if!
I’m not going to tell you anything more about the book but this: Helena has just embarked on her quest to find the True Cross and you can forget about me posting anything remotely intelligible until I finish this book. Color me gone!
Click the picture to learn more about Frank's journey to Catholicism.
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