Driving Home “Save a half hour,” my host said, “and leave towndriving North ‘cross country on Highway One.”So on a balmy day in May I set offto travel home across the rural South. The road ran past broken farms, peach orchards,Bar BQ joints, quaint old towns and junkyards;trailer parks and dilapidated shacks–the homes of poor white folks and poorer blacks. With stenciled signs the country churches woretheir ignorance with pride and proclaimed their waron the world, the flesh and the... Read more

Mark Shea links to this report about the thriving Amish communities. They’ve doubled their population over the last decade or so. They have large families and most of their young people stay with the faith. The Amish and Mennonites are Anabaptists. They’re from the same Reformation branch as Southern Baptists and all other sorts of Baptists, except they retain certain other traditions. They’re pacifists, and they reject all modern technologies. Thus they live without electricity, phones, computers, cars, etc. One of... Read more

Christopher Howse writes here on Newman’s relics. The comments reveal much. Read more

Over the summer when I was blogging pretty consistently on the horrors of present day Anglianism I was chided for ignoring Catholic awful-ness. This blog has had its fair share of Catholic horror stories, but here’s one for the books from Creative Minority Report: a customer in the LA Catholic cathedral bookshop engages in a conversation with a sales person who thinks devil worshippers are welcome at the cathedral too. Read more

…Lavender Green If I were the King dilly dilly, You’d be my Queen.’ “Where is ‘Mary Queen of Heaven’ in the Bible?” the Protestant asks. There’s no neat little proof text I’m afraid, but Mary as Queen of Heaven is woven through the whole Bible. From the Old Testament psalms which we sing on the feast of the Assumption to the passage in Revelation 12 where the Mother of the Redeemer is seen crowned with twelve stars and the moon... Read more

 Yesterday, on the Memorial of Pope St Pius X, a friend and fellow convert clergyman showed me a relic of St Pius X and said, when he declared his interest in relics and the desire to venerate relics and honor the saints his priest said, “Ahh, we don’t do that stuff anymore after Vatican 2” Well, that leaves more relics for us converts to collect and venerate. I love the saints and relics and today, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin.... Read more

The Piano Recital Your skill unlocked a secret on a summer afternoon.As you stepped onto the stage we stepped with youinto a sacred world–we saw the moonshining on a cathedral beneath the turbulent blue.We heard the harmonious ballads of the nightrising like love songs from the depths of light. Something transcendent trembled in your executionof each piece. The studious passion of youryoung face revealed a deeper dedication–something more eternal, elemental, and pure.The guardian Spirit was released, and throughyour majestic music... Read more

Creative Minority Report argues in a style that I attempted in my book Adventures in Orthodoxy from Bigfoot, Chupacabra and other monsters to belief in God. Read it here. Read more

There is much talk about the possibility of reunion between the Traditional Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. Corporate reunion seems very difficult to imagine. There are so many technicalities and difficulties. What seems more possible is for an increasing number of Anglican laypeople, priests and bishops to come into full communion with the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the recent events in Kansas City with a continuing Anglican Church shows us one of the ways that whole groups... Read more

…it’s off to school we go. St Joseph’s starts up on Thursday. This week we finished faculty orientation, lots of meetings, last minute this and that, and tomorrow new student orientation. I count myself very lucky to be part of St Joseph’s Catholic School. It’s a terrific school, started fifteen years ago by a group of visionary laypeople with lots of faith and $800.00 in the bank. We now have a 38 acre campus and about 540 students in grades... Read more