Unsung Heroes of Christendom

As we celebrate All Saints and All Souls, it is a good time to remember that these Feast days specifically call to mind all the forgotten Saints and holy souls.

In the deadliest century of human history, these women heroically stood for life.

A martyr of Communist Russia, Mother Catherine of Siena, founded a convent of Third Order Dominicans before being sentenced to more than a decade of solitary confinement.

What do we know of Catherine of Aragon, the first to suffer the pains of the so-called Reformation?

Starting just 30 years after the Crucifixion, Catholic England produced remarkable figures, including lesser-known luminaries like Bishop Robert Grosseteste, who pioneered the scientific method.

Poetry, often called the thinking man’s meme, has faded from popular culture. Still, Catholics could greatly benefit from exploring the works of poets who lived heroic, faith-filled lives.

Let us focus on some of the great composers from the history of Christendom who are not as well-known or widely lauded.

Uruguay’s secular culture shuns Catholicism, yet heroes like Saint Anna Maria Rubatto and convert Alberto Methol Ferré defy the “libertine atheist” tide.

A look at four more unsung heroes from the Australian continent, including the great Frank Sheed!

Weighting the blessings and consequences of immigration on a host nation and those who seek to enter it.

Amidst the battered “Veritas” of Harvard, there are a few still heroically walking in the footsteps of their Catholic predecessors.

To the ears of the Western mind saturated with modernism, anything that might seem to oppose the absolute “rights of man” is utterly foreign, even to good Catholics.

The 20th Century is marked by the loss of voices cut short in mid-song by war.

Many Catholics believe, in theory, that sacrificing one’s life for another is a noble and Christian act; yet, when confronted with the reality, we often count the cost.

Blessed Otto Neururer would be the first priest to be martyred by the Nazis but by no means the last.

Few remember Athelstan, Alfred’s grandson, who is neither lionized by the poets nor canonized by the Church. As we shall see, he is a warrior king who is perhaps equal in greatness to Alfred and possibly rivals Edmund and Edward in piety.

There is a little-known English saint who shares March 17 with St. Patrick as her feast day, even though she is never invited to the party. This is St. Withburga.

Hugh Ross Williamson was an indefatigable defender of the Catholic Church against what Belloc had called the “enormous mountain of ignorant wickedness” that constituted “tom-fool Protestant history.”

Malcolm Muggeridge and Marshall McLuhan are two now-mostly-forgotten TV stars who converted to Catholicism.