Brother Stylien, F.S.C. (1808-1880) Born in France, in 1808, Brother Stylien (L.A. Lissignol, 1808-1880) entered the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools while still in his fifteenth year. He was received into the novitiate at Avignon in September, 1823. Two years later he began his teaching career in Marseilles, and five years afterward he was sent to the piedmont region of Italy to open a school. He spent a year in Turin and some months in Rome, perfecting... Read more
According to this anti-Catholic pamphlet issued in the 1920’s, they did. In the years following the Civil War, every time a wave of anti-Catholicism engulfed the United States (which it frequently did into the 1920’s), some person or group published a leafelt, booklet, even a book, claiming that the Vatican was to blame for the President’s death. Charles Chiniquy, an ex-priest turned rabidly anti-Catholic Protestant minister, claimed that Lincoln told him the Church of Rome was a threat to American... Read more
MR. ADAMS’ CONVERSION– The ex-Epsicopalian Clergyman Tells How He was Led to Embrace Catholicism (The Brooklyn Eagle, February 22, 1897, 2.) Henry Austin Adams, M.A., told the story of his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church before a large audience in the Amphion theater last evening. The lecture was accompanied with a vocal and musical entertainment under the auspices of the United Societies of Sts. Peter and Paul Church, and was for the benefit of the parochial school attached to... Read more
SERVANTS OF RELIEF FOR INCURABLE CANCER (1899) “I am trying to serve the poor as a servant. I wish to serve the cancerous poor because they are avoided more than any other class of sufferers; and I wish to go them as a poor creature myself, though powerful to help through the open-handed gifts of public kindness, because it is by humility and sacrifice that we become worthy to feel the holy spirit of pity and to carry into the... Read more
OBSERVING ASH WEDNESDAY (The New York Times, February 28, 1884) Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and the attendance at all the Catholic Churches in the morning was very large. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral the ashes were blessed by the Rev. Dr. C.E. McDonnell at 6:30 o’clock and distributed at all the Masses, the last one being said at 10:30 by the Rev. C.T. Donovan. The rpescribed ceremonial was very fully observed at St. Stephen’s Church, in East Twenty-eighth Street. The ususal number... Read more
When I got up this morning, my wife told me the news about the Pope resigning. It was on New York 1. “That’s ridiculous,” I said, “what do they know about the Pope?’ Well, it turns out they were right. I went to the computer and read Cardinal Dolan’s statement, and then it started to sink in. Wow. It really happened. At the seminary where I teach, it was. as you might expect, the main subject of discussion. I asked... Read more
Bishop John Carroll’s Eulogy on the Death of President Washington, February 22nd, 1800 When the death of men distinguished by superior talents, high endowments, and eminent virtues to their country, demands the expression of public mourning and grief their loss is accompanied generally with this mitigation, that, however grievous and painful, it is not irreparable; and that the void, caused by their mortality, will perhaps be filled up by others, uniting equal abilities with the same zeal and watchfulness for... Read more
RIGHT REV. JOSEPH ROSATI, First Bishop of St. Louis Joseph Rosati was born at Sora, in Italy, January 30, 1789, of a respectable and pious family. After his studies he entered the novitiate of the Priests of the Mission at Rome, and made his theological course at Monte Citorio under the apostolic Father De Andreis, and after his ordination was frequently his companion. When Bishop Du Bourg visited Rome in 1815 to obtain priests for the Diocese of Louisiana, Father... Read more
January 20 To become an ethical fact, to have moral worth, knowledge must pass into action. When scholars become doers, the new order will begin. Minnie R. Cowan, ed., The Spalding Year-Book: Quotations from the Writings of Bishop John Lancaster Spalding for Each Day of the Year (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1905), 13. Read more
A GREAT SINGER DEAD. SISTER AGNES GUBERT, THE FAMOUS NUN, DIES IN BALTIMORE. (The New York Times, August 9, 1882). PITTSBURG, Penn., Aug. 8– Sister Agnes Gubert, probably the most noted teacher of vocal music connected with the Roman Catholic sisterhood in this country, and the possessor of a phenomenal voice, which would have made her one of the brightest lyric stars of modern times, died at St. Agnes Hospital, Baltimore, yesterday after a long illness. She had numerous family... Read more
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