Benedictus Deus

There is one more angle I want to look at with the letter of St. Cyprian that I have been posting about recently. He clearly distinguishes between the traditions of men, and the traditions of the Lord. That makes this another good one to use against Protestants. Many Protestants believe the Christian church was pretty [...]

Another excellent aspect of St. Cyprian’s letter is that he admonished priests to just do what they are supposed to do. Every priest and bishop should read this letter, especially the variety prone to liturgical abuse at the mass. Here are some excerpts.

But if it is both enjoined by the Lord, and the same thing [...]

Thanks to Mike Aquilina’s great blog The Way of the Fathers, I was prompted to read St. Cyprian’s excellent treaties on the Eucharist (written around 250 AD). Unlike many modern bishops, Cyprian was taking pains to correct liturgical abuses in his diocese, particularly an emerging trend of offering only water for the blood of Christ. [...]

It’s no secret that there is a “crisis of family” in today’s world. The disintegration of the family unit is perhaps the greatest problem of our times. There are many factors that contribute to the problem, but where did it start? The sexual revolution of the 60’s? The industrial revolution? I think we have to [...]

It’s Ember week again, so I thought I would rehash an old post. Go here.

I would just like to encourage everyone to pray for the Holy Father, and to support him in any way you can. Pray the rosary for him. Send him an email (benedictxvi-at-vatican.va). When I was a boy I was taught to say an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and two Glory Bes [...]

Of course the Holy Father’s very sensible and scholarly speech at Regensburg University is blowing up into a big brewhaha. The situation is not helped by the poor main stream media reporting on the situation. Nor is helped by the fact many of the protesters are just looking for excuses to be outraged, they don’t [...]

See? You can have strong headline about the Pope without completely missing the point of his address.
Anyway, without jumping into that foray, I want to post about the Popes incredible address to the faculty of the University of Regensburg. The lecture was actually a critique of modern secular rationalism. He makes an outstanding case [...]

The Pope is really pushing for a revitalization of the German church (and the whole church for that matter). In all his addresses he is admonishing the German people to take their faith more seriously, and to live it more fully. You can see from his words that his desperately trying to break through the [...]

I just recently learned about Jacques Bossuet. He was a bishop in France during the seventeenth to eighteenth century, dying in 1704. The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Bossuet calls him one of the greatest Christian orators of all time, perhaps even greater than St John Chrysostom and St. Augustine. Early on he found himself [...]