"I am the priest whom he intends to prepare him for death." Featured image: Louis XVI avec son confesseur Edgeworth, un instant avant sa mort. Wiki Commons One the most heartbreaking sections of Louis XVI’s will and testament is this: I pray God to forgive me all my sins. I have sought to know them …
Continue reading L’Abbé Henry Essex Edgeworth, Louis XVI’s heroic Anglo-Irish confessor
Theology is a science, with its own proper end and methodology. This three-part series is about how laymen can go about learning this science. I have freely gathered together notes, ideas and reading lists from various sources, particularly the Bellarmine Forums.[1] I hope that this part will be especially helpful to those confused by the …
Continue reading Learning Sacred Theology II: Ecclesiology, Dogmatic Theology and Apologetics
In Sapientiae Christianae, Pope Leo XIII taught that it is a duty for laymen to study and spread the Catholic faith. He wrote: "In order to safeguard this virtue of faith in its integrity, we declare it to be very profitable and consistent with the requirements of the time, that each one, according to the measure …
Thesis: The Church at least sometimes expects us to apprehend reality and make cognitive judgments without waiting for the intervention of an authority; canon law may include processes for authoritative judgments on such matters, but this does not always absolve a man from the duty of making a cognitive judgment - nor does it prohibit …
Continue reading The human mind’s ability to apprehend reality without the intervention of authority
"I have married a wife; and therefore I cannot come." Luke 14.20 In Preparation for Tyranny Part I, we considered Solzhenitsyn's advice for those who fall into the Gulag apparatus, including his hard words on how they should consider their loved ones: "For me, those I love have died; and for them, I have died." …
Continue reading Preparation for Tyranny II: What about our Families?
From the organisers of the First and Second 54-Day Rosary Novena Crusade against our current world crisis. We are approaching the end of the second Rosary Novena Crusade. While, as Englishmen, we give thanks to God that our country has so far been preserved from passports and mandates, we cannot ignore that many other countries …
"The proximate matter of Baptism is the use of the water [...] in such a way that in the common estimation of men an ablution has been performed." Prümmer, Handbook of Moral Theology 1956, 552.3 (NB: we earn commissions through these Amazon Links) Defects of matter (and related issues) and necessary actions This article is about …
Continue reading Is it valid? The proximate matter of Baptism
This essay consists of two parts: Part I - Review of Baronius Press's edition of the Roman Catechism Part II - The Roman Catechism itself Historical background The authority of the Roman Catechism Clergy and theologians on the Catechism Comparison with the modern catechism The Roman Catechism and the crisis in the Church The nature …
Editors' introduction: Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, the respected thomist theologian of the twentieth century, needs little introduction. He addresses an extraordinary range of topics in his writings. He was a teacher at the Angelicum university in Rome, where his students included two very different figures: Mgr Joseph Clifford Fenton and Karol Józef Wojtyła, later John …
“Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in the way and opened to us the scriptures?” Picture: Chora Church Anastasis, Wikimedia Commons Brief Preface “Search the scriptures," said the Lord. "For you think in them to have life everlasting: And the same are they that give testimony of me, and you will …