Bravest Thing (He Ever Did)

I do not write to stir up the SSPX/FSSP debate. Nor do I write to raise allegations and threats concerning being  in communion ,  schismatic , or  a   loyal son of the Church . I find doing so tiresome. If a person cannot recognize the Church is in a crisis; if a person thinks it spiritually superior to attend a polka Mass (they still exist, I assure you) over an SSPX Mass; if the mention of Archbishop Lefebvre angers a person more than the deeds of  James Martin  or the writings of  Cardinal Fernandez ; heaven help this person. Lord knows I can’t. If one “gets” what I’m saying, read on. If not, I suggest  this book  instead. It happened this past summer. My wife and I were planning our usual family pilgrimage to the Canadian Rockies. Climbing mountains while carrying a kid or two, eating rehydrated chili and peanut butter wraps, all while living like dirtbags in a tent, is the closest experience to heaven I know. Moments to live for. All e...

 A friend snapped this picture of me receiving Holy Communion at the Mass for Christ the King. There's a lot going on here. In particular, there are two aspects that really struck me. The first is the priest's face. There is an intense care on his face. He has this look as though he's giving me everything he can, everything he has, to help me become a holy husband/father. Of course, what he is giving is everything I could ever want or need. Thank you Father W. The second aspect concerns my three-year-old son beside me. He's staring at me as I receive, gazing with interest and awe. I never knew this. I'm thankful for the picture. Such moments must play a crucial role in his spiritual development. So we have the action of the priest passing through me and down to my son. As God intended it to be.

  Last year we went on an epic family vacation . At least it was epic to us, seeing as we don't get out much. We hit up the Rocky Mountains and spent a glorious week and a half camping.  I love the mountains. I frequently dream about the mountains. When I'm not at the mountains I want to be at the mountains. But I also could never live at the mountains. It sounds like some tragic Shakespearean love story. However, you may as well bury me in an abandoned mine a mile below ground if I were to live by the mountains, cause that's how my head would feel without an open prairie sky to look at. Nevertheless, the mountains are the best place to visit. They called us over last year, and we gladly obliged.  It was hard. Very hard. Borderline too hard. At the time our four children were ages 1-9. The daily temperature hit well above 30 degrees C (which is a nightmare for Saskatchewanians). There were long drives, troubles with food (never expect me to remember to pack frozen meat at...

I once went to a look-out spot which presented a stunning view of the Saskatchewan River. However, before I could get to the actual look-out spot, I had to stroll pass a fenced-in storage area. At that moment, there happened to be a deer within the fenced in area. Amused, I stood and watched. The deer looked up and saw me, and then utterly freaked out. In desperation to escape, he started ramming himself against the chain-link fence. With great violence he smashed his body towards the metal, harder and harder, all to no avail. Not wanting the animal to kill itself (which it surely would have), I quickly went out of sight. What happened afterwards? I imagine the deer calmed down, remembered where it was, and sheepishly walked out of the fenced in area by using the massive opening just a few feet away. * * * The deer story provides an example of what, according to St. Francis de Sales, is the greatest evil to befall a soul (besides sin). He is speaking of disquietude . Disquietude is as ...

  Every Friday at OnePeterFive there is an article by Fr. Z. The article goes through the Mass prayers/readings for the upcoming traditional Mass. I'm finding these articles to be very important for me personally. They have become an anchor for my prayer week. Just a snippet. This past week Fr. Z. brought up a quote by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. I loved it. Here it is: "St. Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153) remarks that God draws us to Heaven, as if against our will, by means of trials ( Sermones de diversis  99). He describes four different sorts of people who get into Heaven: “ alii violenter rapiunt, alii mercantur, alii furuntur, alii ad illud compelluntur …  some seize it by violence, some buy it, some steal it, and others are forced to it.” What does the  Doctor Mellifluus  mean by these negative analogies? Some, Bernard says, are like violent soldiers who sacrifice everything, live austerely with many mortifications to lay siege to Heaven and thereby win entra...

  A re Canonizations Infallible? Revisiting a Disputed Question Edited by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski Arouca Press 274 Pages Are canonizations infallible? This is a loaded question. Your immediate answer will speak volumes about your life and experience as a Catholic. Being raised in the 1990s, it was evident that the Church was a mess. Vocations were dropping faster than the pull of gravity, orthodoxy was scorned, catechism classes were a disaster - unless you liked crafts, and the Mass was traumatic - think girls dancing in the sanctuary to Days of Elijah while old people wiggled their butts in movement to the a spirit. Hip-replacements were a frequent reality at our parish (oh those hippies). But through it all, there was a sentiment amongst the few faithful Catholics that the pope was against all of this, and that these liberals were simply being disobedient. We were the real Catholics, and this mess wouldn't last forever.  And so, we believed certain things. We believed that...

Blessed Charles of Austria: A Holy Emperor and His Legacy Charles A. Coulombe TAN Books (also available on Amazon ) 388 Pages In a dromocratic world where everything we do must be up-to-the-millisecond, why write a review of a book that came out *gasp* last year? Still more, why write a review for a book on the last Holy Emperor, as though a Catholic monarchy were, begrudgingly, anything more than a pipe dream in our current democratic - rule of the mob - days of Trudeau and Biden? A few thoughts on this: 1) I initially ignored this book. However, people just wouldn't stop talking about it, and so I finally read it. 2) I can see now why people have continued to talk about this book. It clearly is of immense quality, and it deserves to be enjoyed by many others. 3) Though signaling the end of an era, the life of Blessed Charles, as you will see, is most applicable to our own lives, and in our own times. Blessed Charles of Austria begins with a mini-history lesson on the Holy Roman...

  Ready for a little soul searching? Picking up on Cardinal Newman, the late John Senior asks these questions in The Restoration of Christian Culture   (pp. 58-59): "What would you have lost if the Catholic Faith were false - which it isn't, but supposing it were? How much of your life would have been spent in vain?" I thought about these questions as I read. What came to mind is how virtue is its own reward, and that living a Catholic life has been good either way. I don't see the people I know who chase after high-end vehicles, cabins at the lake, fancy vacations, prestige in their occupation, etc... I don't see them as glowing with joy and peace. One can argue that Catholicism is good, regardless of whether or not it is true (which it is). Am I really missing out that I have more children than what is socially acceptable? Quite the opposite! Am I really at a disadvantage for adhering to the disciplines of the Church? Again, quite the opposite - imagine having a...

Every month of the liturgical year is dedicated to a different Catholic devotion. Many of these devotions make far more sense when following the traditional calendar. For instance, with the traditional Latin Mass Corpus Christi is not The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ . There is a separate first class feast for the Precious Blood... in July. Hence July is the month of the Precious Blood. Further, the feast of the Immaculate Heart is in August, the culmination of the octave of the Assumption. The Queenship of Mary is in May, hence May crownings (an "aha" moment if you're wondering why the feast and the crownings are separated in the Novus Ordo). Lost yet? Sigh. Blame Annibale Bugnini et al. Long story short, the liturgical year is not something that should've been re-created by a committee. September is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. Fr. Ripperger, the famous exorcist priest, often says that we must pray to Our Lady of Sorrows to reveal our own hearts. What ...

I am reading Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock . Though not a Catholic, Cather certainly captures the heart of Catholicism in 17th century Quebec. Her passages concerning St. Francois de Laval, the first bishop of Quebec, are especially moving. Behold, how the saintly man called his flock to Mass every morning: "The Bishop got up at four o'clock every morning, dressed without fire, went with his lantern into the church, and rang the bell for early mass for the working people. Many good people who did not want to go to mass at all, when they heard that hoarse, frosty bell clanging out under the black sky where there was not yet even a hint of daybreak, groaned and went to the church. Because they thought of the old Bishop at the end of the bell-rope, and because his will was stronger than theirs. He was a stubborn, high-handed, tyrannical, quarrelsome old man, but no one could deny that he shepherded his sheep." May God grant us many stubborn, high-handed, tyrannical,...

Mark Twain popularized the aphorism that truth is stranger than fiction, a verifiable fact when considering the lives of the saints. The stories of the saints are as eccentric as they are venerable. Take, for example, St. Symeon the Stylite. Unable to gain enough prayer time due to a following of devotees (he sounds like me with my children), he spent 47 years living atop a pillar - the last pillar being over 50 feet high. St. Denis, after being decapitated, picked up his head in his hands and walked six miles, all the while preaching a sermon on repentance. To the chagrin of the altar boy present, St. Lawrence of Brindisi would take upwards of sixteen hours to say a Mass. St. Philip Neri, in the pursuit of humility, once shaved only half of his beard. And perhaps my favorite story of all, St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows walked unarmed in the midst of twenty Garibaldi Red Shirt soldiers who had kidnapped a young woman. Gabriel swiped a couple of pistols from the nearby soldie...

I write this for the guilty mom. You know who you are. Guilt surrounds you like a spider spinning thread around its prey, or like a jumble of toys growing rapidly on your living room floor, threatening suffocation and feelings of uselessness. You bear a sense of guilt for many things. Indeed, the guilty verdict is always before you, and it shows on your face. Of this guilt St. Anselm says: "To lie hidden, will be impossible; to appear will be intolerable." You cannot hide it, nor hide from it. You are the guilty mom. And just what are you guilty of? You are guilty of wasting time. What on earth did you accomplish this week, much less today? You are guilty of failing another supper, complete with overcooked veggies and undercooked meat for one child, and undercooked veggies and overcooked meat for another. Perhaps you should not have left the cooking to the last minute? You are guilty of spending too much time on Facebook, and the pain of regret devours ...

Haken Loob: The Man. The Myth. The Legend In 2017 the National Hockey League welcomed Paul Kariya into the Hall of Fame. The pint-sized forward played 15 years in the NHL, amassing 989 points in 989 games. Literally a point a game player. Now he sits enshrined next to Gretzky, Orr, Richard and Howe. It feels wrong to mention Kariya in the same breath as those other players. There are greats, and then there are pretty goods. Kariya was pretty good. Am I being too fussy? I ask: Why raise the "pretty good" to the highest honours we have? While we're at it, why not allow the pretty good Hakan Loob into the Hall of Fame? He was almost a point a game player in the 1980s, not to mention he scored 50 goals and 106 points for the Calgary Flames in the 1986-87 season. Nevermind it was the 1980s. A time when Gary Leeman scored 50 goals. Yes, it's been said that even a fire hydrant could score 40 goals back then. Though that was if the fire hydrant pl...