If the Immaculate Conception is all about the liberation from death and decay, no one told that to the Capuchin friars of the parish in Rome named for this feast, Santa Maria della Concezione. This chapel attracts only discerning visitors because"hold onto your lunch"it is furnished ...
One legend of St. Nicholas tells that three young boys had been killed by a local maniac in Myra, and their bodies preserved in a pickle barrel. The bishop opened the barrel, discovered the corpses, and promptly raised them from the dead"winning acclaim ever after as the patron saint of ...
This Web site is non-sectarian, and I’m glad. However, as some of the discussion threads have exploded into a veritable 30 Years War, I have asked the editors for this opportunity to pose a few questions from my own point of view, as a faithful if thoroughly imperfect Roman Catholic who ...
Make your front door the gateway to the spooky realm of purgative suffering by hanging the entrance, inside and out, with thick black velvet curtains. Keep the lighting dim, and improvise a fog machine with dry ice and a fan-or clouds from your favorite hookah pipe. Cover all the windows with black ...
As the Bush administration, with the full-throat support of an unhinged media, whips up the public for a looming war with Iran, a sober citizen's thoughts run naturally to the Apocalypse. One's next thought, inevitably, is of ...
Francis subjected himself and his followers to a poverty that appalled their fellow beggars, fasting frequently and sleeping on dirt (when perfectly good piles of filthy straw were available), taking all too literally Christ's eerie injunction, "Sell all you have, give it to the poor, and come ...
The Assumption is not something invented by Pope Pius XII in 1950, the year when he infallibly declared it a dogma of the Catholic Church. Nor was he introducing some pious innovation to the core of the Catholic faith, indulging the excessive piety of Marian Catholics, or even"as C.G. Jung ...
One of the most delightfully anachronistic institutions in the world is an order of military monks called the Knights of Malta. The Knights got named for Malta because that small, Mediterranean island was ruled for centuries by this distinctive religious order, the last group to carry on the spirit ...
The French Revolution was really a digestive eruption of all the basest instincts in the lowest elements of society, led by power-drunk ideologues of the radical Left. It was utterly unlike the American rebellion against the English colonial officials " which amounted to a regional secession, ...
