Feb

8

The Church of Salvation, by Brother Leonard Mary

February 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Among all the issues facing the Church in these times of epic confusion, the issue of salvation — where it is to be found, and how achieved — is the most pressing. If you have not yet read Brian Kelly’s review of Brother Leonard Mary’s book, The Church of Salvation, I strongly recommend you do so.

Feb

4

The Rosary and the Republic

February 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment

We would do well to look beyond electioneering to the true hope of the Republic. This is not to dismiss politics — the way society is governed — as something of no account or something too worldly for the faithful to concern ourselves with, for neither is the case. Read more

Jan

28

For Christ the King

January 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Sunday, October 28 is the Feast of Christ the King. That is, it is the feast in the 1962 Calendar followed by those who adhere to the “extraordinary form” of the Roman Liturgy. The feast is celebrated on November 25 this year in the Novus Ordo calendar. Why the difference? Read more

Jan

22

Saint Vincent Pallotti

January 22, 2010 | 1 Comment

Today, January 22, is the feast of Saint Vincent Pallotti. It is also the day in the Chair of Unity Octave during which we pray for the conversion of America. Lastly, it is the anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision of 1973 decriminalizing abortion.

Noteworthy coincidences: Saint Vincent had a great devotion to the Holy Infant. The lovely Bambino Gesù with which he blessed the crowds during the Octave of the Epiphany is still in the Church of San Salvatore in Onda, its silver foot protruding out of the grate behind which His Majesty is locked. The faithful may still reverently kiss this foot as they did in the days of Saint Vincent. Devotion to the Holy Infant Jesus is a powerful way to repair for the crime of abortion, and to petition for the reversal of Roe v. Wade and all the wicked statutory laws which perpetrate this outrage against God and man.

Father Paul of Graymoor, about a generation before Roe, set aside this day of the Chair of Unity Octave to pray for the conversion of America. Our national infanticide is a terrible sign that the U.S.A. badly needs conversion. Only Christ the King can save us!

Jan

21

The Mystical Incarnation

January 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Saint Louis de Montfort says that the true Slaves of Jesus through Mary will have a special devotion to the Incarnation (True Devotion , No. 243). Those who desire to be disciples of this great spiritual writer of the Church — an inspiration to so many other saints1 — would do well to consider what a devotion to the Incarnation entails. Read more

Jan

19

Father Paul Wattson of Graymoor, Apostle of TRUE Church Unity

January 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment

During this Chair of Unity Octave, let’s pray for REAL Christian unity — Catholic unity under the Supreme Pontiff — not amorphous irenicism! To appreciate this exhortation, it would behove us to study the life of the very author of the Church Unity Octave, Father Paul Wattson, founder of the Society of the Atonement.

Dishonestly promoted now as the precursor to modern false ecumenism, Father Paul was an apostolic soul who knew that the only real Christian unity is Catholic unity under the Sovereign Pontiff.

Jan

9

Father Feeney, Mary Daly, and Boston College

January 9, 2010 | 4 Comments

Writing for The New American, Jack Kenny has compared and contrasted the Boston-College career of recently deceased pagan-lesbian-radical-feminist* “theologian,” Mary Daly and the phenomenon of my own dear founders, who were treated harshly by that same institution in the 1940s. Unlike Daly, the four professors (including Dr. Fakhri Maluf) were neither witches, nor sexual deviants, nor dissenters from the Church’s magisterium, nor advocates of the non-extant “right” of a woman to butcher her unborn offspring. No, they simply defended a defined doctrine, one the Church has bound us to, which teaches that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Read more

Jan

9

Pro-Father Feeney Blogs

January 9, 2010 | 1 Comment

More pro-Father Feeney and pro-extra ecclesiam nulla salus blogs are showing up on the Internet. I have recently been made aware of three of them, and noticed that they have some excellent postings and links. Regular readers know that it is our Crusade (the word is a deliberate one) to spread knowledge of this important dogma, and to work for the conversion of America to the Catholic Faith. We neither claim nor desire a monopoly on these goals of our Crusade. So, I’m happy to point out the three blogs I’ve recently come across: Read more

Jan

5

At St. Peter’s Basilica, Mass in the Classical Rite

January 5, 2010 | 2 Comments

Thanks to the largesse of some benefactors who funded our plane fare, Brother Maximilian Maria and I recently spent two weeks in Rome. The trip, like my last year’s solo pilgrimage, was part “business,” and part “pleasure.” For that reason, I referred to it as a “working pilgrimage.”

I regret to say that I was unable to make regular reports to our web site from Rome. This was partly do to our activity-rich schedule, and partly due to logistical problems that precluded it; it’s simply too hard to get an Internet connection in Rome, at least we found it so. Read more

Jan

5

Saint André of Mount Royal, a Timely Canonization

January 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Around here, the news of December 19 was received with great joy. I refer to the publication of the decree, approved by His Holiness, Benedict XVI, clearing the way for the canonization of Blessed Brother André. Because this news is so recent, and because his feast day is coming up this week (January 6, which is also the Epiphany), I would like to invite our readers to share our happiness and consider with us the virtues of this little man. Read more

Dec

30

Blessed Gandolph the Gray?

December 30, 2009 | 4 Comments

The complaint has come to me from friends that I am overly preoccupied with J.R.R. Tolkien. True, I’ve made a few references to the English Catholic fiction writer, but not all that many. As proof that these friends are all wrong about my alleged obsession, I confess that I am presently reading Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose nineteenth-century Imperial Russia is pretty far from Middle Earth in the Third Age.

That apologia aside, I do admit taking satisfaction in discovering that the gray (then white) wizard-hero of Tolkien’s, Galdalf by name, bears a name strikingly similar to that of a Franciscan Beatus, blessed Gandolph of Binasco. Read more

Dec

17

The Latin Mass and the Orthodox

December 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Under the headline “Russian Orthodox prelate welcomes return of Latin Mass,” Catholic World News ran a report on Patriarch Alexei II’s positive reception on Pope Benedict’s motu proprio giving more freedom to the ceremonies of the Classical Roman Rite. Summorum Pontificum goes into effect as law on September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Read more

Dec

3

What’s the Filioque?

December 3, 2009 | 4 Comments

One of the doctrinal controversies between the schismatic, so-called Orthodox churches of the East and the Catholic Church is a dogma expressed in one word: Filioque (Fee-lee-OH-kway). But what does this word mean? Read more

Nov

13

Heaven’s Icon: Sister Lucy’s Vision at Tuy, Spain

November 13, 2009 | 1 Comment

The devotion to the Heart of Mary had a long history before the revelations of Our Lady of Fatima. But — as with the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which took on a whole new dimension with the revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque — the devotion to Our Lady’s Heart was given greater clarity and emphasis with the Fatima revelations. The cultus of the Immaculate Heart is, in fact, the central message of Fatima. Read more

Oct

28

Scientific Conference Refuting Evolution Theory to be held in Rome

October 28, 2009 | 2 Comments

Press release from the sponsors:

Scientific Conference Refuting Evolution Theory to be held in Rome, Italy

The Scientific Impossibility of Evolution

November 9, 2009 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. St. Pius V University (Rome)

In Response to Pope Benedict XVI’s Call for Both Sides to be Heard


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – OCTOBER 16, 2009


CONTACT: H. M. OWEN (U.S.), noevolutioninfo@gmail.com or PETER WILDERS (Europe), wilderspeter@gmail.com

The 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” in November 2009 will be the occasion for a unique conference at Pope Pius V University in Rome presenting a scientific refutation of evolution theory. According to Russian sedimentologist Alexander Lalamov, “Everything contained in Darwin’s Origin of Species depends upon rocks forming slowly over enormous periods of time. The November conference demonstrates with empirical data that such geological time is not available for evolution.” Recently returned from a ground-breaking geological conference in Kazan, sedimentologist Guy Berthault will present the findings of several sedimentological studies conducted and published in Russia. In one of these, the age of the rock formation surveyed was found to be 0.01% of the age attributed to it by the geological time-scale—instead of an age of 10 million years, the actual age was no more than 10 thousand years. “Contrary to the conventional wisdom,” Lalamov observed, “these rocks formed quickly, and the fossils they contain must be relatively young. This finding contradicts the evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record.” www.sedimentology.fr Read more

Oct

24

Anglicans? Say Rather They Are Catholics!

October 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Here come the Anglicans! And it’s a good thing.

When England was evangelized, it was explicitly and directly a papal project, the inspiration of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who sent his fellow Italian, Saint Augustine, to do the job. This was after a providential misadventure trying to go there himself. For the rest of time, that Augustine would be distinguished from his African namesake as “of Canterbury,” and that city would be, for a millennium, the primatial see of happy Catholic England. Then came the brutal English Reformation that tore “Mary’s Dowry” away from the true Church, producing such martyrs as Saint Edmund Campion and Saint Thomas More in its sanguinary effort to efface “popery” from the realm.

Tuesday’s news brought us the generally unexpected announcement that His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, has cleared a canonical path for Anglicans seeking union with the Holy See to do so in a corporate way, retaining part of their Anglican liturgical patrimony and customs, just as others had earlier been welcomed in and allowed to worship according to the so-called “Anglican Use” Missal, an expurgated version of the Book of Common Prayer. Read more

Oct

23

Hope in God, not the World; Spe Salvi

October 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment

(Originally published December 06th, 2007)

The Holy Father’s latest encyclical, Spe Salvi, was published on Friday, the Feast of Saint Andrew. Releasing it as he did just before Advent, the Pope Benedict seems to be consciously presenting us with an Advent theme. This is appropriate enough, for Advent is the season of hope par excellence. Some comments on this latest offering of the Holy Father will follow. First, I would like to draw the readers’ attention to the opening part of the Encyclical, wherein the Holy Father discusses Christian hope against the backdrop of the pagan world into which the Church was launched: Read more

Oct

15

Concerning Palantíri and Blogses: Technology without Grace

October 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment

A recent news story from the Los Angeles Times tells of a multi-level tragedy that reveals once again the the depravity of fallen human nature in its technologically-enhanced destructive ugliness. In brief, a teenage girl who was subject to depression was befriended by a sixteen-year-old boy online. After the six-week Internet friendship had developed to a point of apparent emotional attachment, the boy turned on the girl, terminating the friendship in a particularly cruel and vicious way. The girl killed herself. Read more

Oct

1

Saint Josaphat, Apostle of Eastern Catholic Unity

October 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Some years ago, Brother Francis wrote an article combining the history of today’s saint with that of Saint Andrew Bobola: Two Patrons for True Ecumenism. Towards the end of that article is an excerpt from Abbot Guéranger’s Liturgical Year. These brief prophetical utterances are worth pondering in our days, when the Moslem menace is such a threat to former Christendom, and when we await the consecration and subsequent conversion of Russia. The excerpt is reproduced below. I would also like to refer readers to my much longer comments on St. Josaphat from a year ago. Read more

Oct

1

A Great Man Has Died: Brother Francis, M.I.C.M. (Fakhri B. Maluf, Ph.D.)

October 1, 2009 | 2 Comments

This is a small tribute to my recently-deceased superior, mentor, father, and friend, Brother Francis. As our Byzantine brethren say, “May his memory live in eternity!“

Brother Francis was born, in the town of Mashrah, Lebanon, about thirty miles from Beirut, in 1913. His given name was Fakhri Boutros Maluf. The Maluf family is descended from the ancient Ghassanids, Christian and Catholic Arabs who courageously kept the Faith in the face of Moslem aggression.

Though poor, Fakhri’s family saw to his education, which was provided at home, in a small school that his father operated. In 1934, Fakhri graduated from the American University of Beirut with a Bachelor’s Degree in mathematics. From 1934 to 1939, he taught physics at that same University.

In 1939, he moved to the United States to attend the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he received first an M.A. and, in 1942, a Ph.D. in philosophy. After receiving his Ph.D., he continued post-graduate studies at Harvard University and Saint Bonaventure University. Read more

Sep

30

Longfellow and Tolkien: the Finnish Connection

September 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment

What do the “shores of Gitche Gumee by the shining Big-Sea-Water” have in common with the “Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie”?

The Protestant American author of Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha is not generally associated with the Catholic British author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. But there is one literary connection at least — curiously, a Finnish one. Both writers were influenced by the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.

Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha was written in  the meter known as trochaic tetrameter, sometimes called “archaic trochaic tetrameter,” sometimes called “Kalevala meter.” This is rarely used in English. It is known that Longfellow had read the Finish epic — at least in a German translation and possibly in its Finnish original. Two journal entries, only a couple of weeks apart, reveal that Longfellow had recently read the epic, and soon after landed upon a meter for his own “Indian Edda” (as he called the Song). Longfellow was known to spend much time studying and meditating his subject before choosing an appropriate meter for his poem, so this is of great importance. Read more

Sep

28

Follow me on NetworkedBlogs

September 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment

For those of you who use NetworkedBlogs, you can now follow this blog there. Please go to: http://networkedblogs.com/blog/brother_andré_maries_weblog/?ahash=8fb3ae8d400b5941cdc013f058e4c7f2

Sep

17

Grace and the “Problem” of Man’s Desire for God

September 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment

This problem is important in establishing the relationship of nature to grace because it offers something of a “test case” by which we can illustrate certain fundamental truths of the Catholic Faith. These truths regard man’s natural powers and the elevation of those powers by grace that he may achieve his final end, the Beatific Vision. Read more

Sep

10

Russian Ecumenical Walkout, Aborted Babies not Martyrs

September 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Rosary Rally a Success. We had about 120 people at our Rally in Keene on Saturday. For two hours, we prayed the Rosary, sang hymns, and gave witness to Our Lady’s Fatima Message. Two fourteen-foot banners, our Third Order’s Pilgrim Virgin, and lots of hand-held signs made for a highly visible display of faith and love of the Mother of God. We hope to have some pictures of the event published soon. We thank Our Lady for the beautiful fall weather. Read more