So let no one boast about human beings, for everything belongs to you, Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future: all things belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God. I Cor. 3.21-23 St. Bonaventure (1217-1274), the “Seraphic Doctor,” has much … Read more
Heavy-hearted, Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, set out to meet the Caliph, the successor to the Muslim prophet Muhammad, at the gates of the Holy City. The surrender had already been negotiated, after a siege that had lasted four months. Sophronius, patriarch of the city since 634, had decided that the city must be surrendered. … Read more
Tilman Riemenschneider may not have had the full complement of five talents, but however many he was given, none did he bury. Father, master sculptor, entrepreneur, civic leader: his was the busy life of the successful late-medieval artisan. Yet for all of his immersion in the affairs of this world, his sculpture remains as a … Read more
It may seem odd, on the feast day of the Roman Fact, to discuss the less-than-stellar occupants of the Chair of Peter. I would propose that it is precisely these weak and sometimes sordid men who offer one of the most startling historical and apologetical claims for the indefectibility of the church. Catholics ought … Read more
A brutal battle, at which nothing less than the future of Christendom was at stake, raged this week in June some four-and-a-half centuries ago. Indeed, the sacrificial lamb, Fort Saint Elmo, fell on June 23. But because it did, the Island of Malta held out. At great cost was purchased the time for the princes … Read more
For most historically aware folks living in the Western nations, the date of June 6 recalls the undertaking of the invasion of France, the initiation of the Anglo-American campaign to liberate France from German Nazi occupation, an effort General Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “Great Crusade.” Another Great Crusade took place on another June 6, … Read more
St. Boniface had it all: natural brilliance, formidable powers of persuasion, and unstoppable energy and resolve. He could have had a great career and high status in society, but this saintly man wanted something very different: nothing for himself and everything for Christ and His Church. Although St. Boniface’s era (the seventh and eighth centuries … Read more
On June 1st, 1961, the feast of Corpus Christi, the Cardinal Primate of Poland, Stefan Wyszyński stood at St. Anne’s Church in Warsaw, his archiepiscopal see. The baroque and neoclassical-style church was still not fully rebuilt from Hitler’s systematic destruction visited on Warsaw for having dared to rise against his rule. Outside the church, well … Read more
St. Philip Neri was beatified in 1615, five years after St. Charles Borromeo was raised to the altars, and canonized in 1622 in company with St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Teresa of Avila. This group could be said to represent in a unique way the extraordinary vitality of the Catholic Reformation of … Read more
“For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake . . . . To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted … Read more
It has long been fashionable to disparage the notion that one can derive historical insight from medieval poems; an exception to this tendency can be found in the Castilian martial epic Poema del mio Cid, which displays a surprising fidelity to the documented facts of its hero’s life. Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, known to history … Read more
Who among us does not long to go back and witness first-hand certain moments in Catholic history? Certain decisive moments. Here are a few of mine: On the eve of the battle of Lepanto, Don John of Austria silenced his quarrelling admirals without raising his voice. “Gentlemen,” he said. “The time for counsel has passed. … Read more
“When we come to the service of Christ, we come to a rough profession.” The Jesuit poet and Elizabethan martyr, St. Robert Southwell, reminded his fellow prisoners of this sober truth in his “Epistle of Comfort.” He composed the letter lest they, jailed for the Catholic Faith, be tempted to forget that the Cross is … Read more
The Catholic community in America is at present politically adrift. In this presidential election year, candidates continue to strategize over how to win the Catholic vote despite any number of studies that continue to reveal that there is no Catholic vote. Catholics run the rather narrow American gamut from liberalism to conservatism, in percentages that … Read more
“Prussian idealism took the heart of flesh and blood from the German and in its place gave him one of iron and paper.” Theodor Haecker, 1940 For his open, published opposition to the German, National-Socialist “New Order,” the anti-Nazi humanist and writer Theodor Haecker (1889-1945) was prohibited from writing or speaking in public in his … Read more
How the time does pass . . . it was on April 8, 1999—already thirteen years ago—that Professor John Senior returned to our Father’s House. Since then, we have been all the more orphaned and greater has been our yearning for Paradise. By what right should I, a Frenchman, be writing today about this eminent … Read more
“Blessed be the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Mt. 5:9) Karl I (1887-1922), Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, said goodbye to his wife, Empress Zita. “I’ll love you forever”, he declared, just as he had eleven years earlier when they were married. Then he called his first born son … Read more
Why, there is Echon come back again . . . my nephew, my brother, my cousin, you have finally come back to us!” Thus with the warmth typical of their people did the Huron Indians greet their beloved father, Jean de Brébeuf. In the Huron tongue Echon meant “the strong one” or “the one who … Read more
If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and motherand wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple (Luke 15: 26) In the early Church, to be a saint was in most cases to be a martyr. Persecution of Christians … Read more
To begin well was a grace not given to Louis XIV. King before his fifth birthday, rudely shocked by the Fronde uprising as a mere child, and first seduced—the story goes—by a lady-in-waiting at the French court while still a green youth, the miracle is not that he was head-strong, unreflective, and given to the … Read more