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St. John Eudes, pray for us!…
SAINTS & ART: St. John Eudes was a devout priest who actively tried to make people better people. This French priest was born in 1601 and died in 1680. So why do we remember him today? The most obvious reason is: he is a saint (canonized in 1925). Is that special? Well, yes. It is, after all, the reason we are alive. It is the sign of a life that was a success – because if you are not a saint, i.e., not in heaven, your life was a failure. Of course, that could be said of every saint. So what’s so special about St. John Eudes, especially for somebody living almost 350 years after him? Let me suggest three things: His priestly zeal, especially in a time of plague; His concern for the quality of priests; and His devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of...
Bishop arrested, L’Affaire Ouellet, and ‘better than I found it’…
Happy Friday friends, I’ve been on vacation this week and made a real effort not to check the daily bolletini, obsess over my inbox, or get drawn into the usual online madness of social media. I think I have mostly succeeded. I made less successful efforts to stay off my phone, but I still think I resisted more temptations than not. Of course, things have kept on happening. So here’s a look at what I missed. Share The Nicaraguan Diocese of Matagalpa announced early Friday morning that the National Police have raided the diocesan chancery, taking Bishop Rolando Álvarez into custody. According to witnesses, police and paramilitary officers entered the chancery building at around 3:00 am, taking the bishop and others in the house to an undisclosed location, in a caravan of eight police ...
Nicaraguan Police Storm Matagalpa Chancery, Arrest Bishop Rolando Álvarez, as Ortega Regime’s Crackdown on Church Intensifies…
Editors’ note: This report was updated Aug. 19 at 1:11pm ET to include statements and details from Nicaragua’s National Police. The Diocese of Matagalpa announced early Friday morning that the National Police of Nicaragua had raided the diocesan chancery, taking Bishop Rolando Álvarez and his companions into custody. According to a police statement released Friday afternoon, the bishop was kept in custody in a Managua residence belonging to his family, while others are being processed at a detention center known as El Chipote. El Chipote is notorious among human rights advocates for inhumane treatment of suspected criminals. According to witnesses, police and paramilitary officers entered the Matagalpa chancery building at around 3:00 am, taking the bishop and others in the house to ...
Project Poltergeist: When unexplained events terrify a young boy in 1960s New Jersey, the first purported haunting in a public housing project begins…..
The media spread the word beyond Newark, until it eventually reached Dr. Charles D. Wrege, a Newark native and respected assistant professor in the Department of Management at Rutgers University with a longstanding interest in parapsychology. After hearing about the curious case, he jumped at the chance to potentially interact with an actual poltergeist, German for “noisy spirits.” Researchers and professionals in the field had begun to refer formally to such phenomena as Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or RSPK. Reports of objects moving, seemingly at random, had been claimed for centuries, and linked to larger supernatural occurrences. In one case from 1846, witnesses and scientists observed a girl who, as she entered a room, would cause objects to scatter “as though physically shove...
Admit it: the Rosary IS a threat…
By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 16, 2022 “Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a Rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.” Thus spoke Hillaire Belloc, answering an anti-Catholic heckler, while campaigning for a seat in Parliament in 1906. After the publication of a rabble-rousing article in The Atlantic entitled “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol,” some timid Catholics may be inclined to hide away their Rosary beads (assuming they can find them), to avoid being associated with extremism. Others are ready to scold The At...
Is St. Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy for everyone? Yes — for without a friend like Aquinas, even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious…
COMMENTARY: ‘How is it that the billions of stars live in such harmony,’ Aquinas asked, ‘when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds?’ The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is highly systematic, profound, mystical and elaborate, and was recorded in the 13th century. In a word, it is “formidable.” And yet, Aquinas is the master par excellence of common sense. His philosophy has a remarkable affinity with the human mind and the organs of sensation. His philosophy is to the human mind what Bach’s music is to the ear or what the sculptures of Michelangelo are to the eye. He is the Angelic Doctor, but he is down-to-earth. Jacques Maritain was the foremost proponent of Thomism in the 20th century. For him, Aquinas was not just another interesting thinker, but “the th...
Synodality: A Church ‘too harsh and out of step?’…
By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 16, 2022 Northjersey.com’s report on the results of synodal discussions in New Jersey reveals the fault lines among those who self-identify as Catholics and have been willing to take part in the synodal process. The headline is revealing: ‘Too harsh’ and ‘out of step’: Survey finds NJ Catholics want a more inclusive church’. The story is somewhat more complex than that, but the emphasis in the discussions and in the headline are predictable. I have a theory about all this, though it may be colored by my personal dislike of “meetings”, which seem to me to be about the most inefficient use of time imaginable. But especially in the case of the synodal discussions, it has been obvious from the first that they would become a soundin...
Learn to recognize the 5 stages of persecution (and it looks like we’re headed for stage 5)…
With the recent article in The Atlantic linking the Rosary to extremist gun culture we see a gross misunderstanding in the nature of spiritual warfare and its true target, Satan. The rosary is a weapon, but a spiritual one. While it is possible that the author simply misunderstands our allegorical references to warfare, I rather doubt he is that dumb. Rather, I suspect that this is an attempt to stereotype, and vilify Catholics, especially traditional ones. These are tactics used to lay a groundwork for the marginalization and persecution of the faithful and the criminalization of their views. With this incident, we do well to review the stages of persecution. The term “stages” is particularly important in the U.S. because it is rare for a previously respected segment of the po...
Priest Urges: ‘Eucharistic Revival Depends on Learning From Disastrous Mistakes We Made During COVID-19’…
On Aug. 11, the Centers for Disease Control loosened most of its COVID-19 guidelines, and many other national, state and local governments, institutions and industries have recently done the same. It’s an important marker that collectively almost everyone wants to move on from the pandemic. While there are still variants and people whose conditions make them vulnerable, while some continue to suffer with long COVID cases, while we continue to mourn those who have died because of it, we give thanks to God that, for the most part, the pandemic and the revolution it caused to daily life are over. There are many analyses being done as to the long-term impact of the pandemic on health care, the economy, culture, remote work, travel, schools, interpersonal interaction, child psychol...
In Synod Report, Swiss Bishops Accuse Church of ‘Denying Equality to Women’ and Excluding ‘People with LGBTQ Identity’…
The document says nothing about the number of participants in the surveys that were to be part of the worldwide synodal process. In Germany, the “number of faithful who participated in the survey on the World Synod of Bishops in the dioceses” had been only “in the lowest single-digit percentage,” reported CNA Deutsch. “In Switzerland, the debates and the synodal questionnaires raised awareness of the importance of baptism for the life of the Church,” the bishops said. “It was emphasized that a synodal church increasingly recognizes ‘the royal, priestly and prophetic dignity and vocation’ of the baptized.” Two points, in particular, were emphasized, namely “overcoming the experience that many people are excluded f...
The synodal 1%, the real St. Roch, and the ‘militant’ Rosary…
Hey everybody, Today is the feast of St. Roch, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post. The fourteenth century St. Roch, by most popular biographies, was born marked with a red cross on his chest — taken as a sign of the Lord’s love in his life even from infancy. Again, from the hagiographies, Roch was a deeply pious child, given to regular fasting and long periods of prayer. He was also the son of the noble governor of Montpelier, France – in fact, Roch himself inherited that title when was 20 years old. But rather than take up his noble office, Roch handed it over to his uncle, gave away his stuff, and decided to go on a begging pilgrimage to Rome, by foot. It took him a long time to get to Rome, because Italy was filled with plague victims, and Roch made his way through the cou...
Bianca Jagger says Nicaraguan regime has ‘declared war’ on Catholic Church…
Listen to this story: ROME – During the past four years, security forces in Nicaragua have arrested scores of political, business, and media figures opposed to long-time president Daniel Ortega. In recent months, the crack-down finally caught up with the only remaining opposition: the Catholic Church. According to Nicaraguan Bianca Jagger, who has been a vocal defender of human rights in the Central American country, Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have declared a war on the church. Bishop Rolando Alvarez of Matagalpa has been under house arrest for 13 days; processions have been banned for “internal safety” reasons; priests have been imprisoned, kidnapped or had their documents seized; and Catholic radios and televisions have been forcibly closed by the go...
