under the patronage of St Joseph and St Dominic

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, remembering Zion;
on the poplars that grew there we hung up our harps. . . Ps 136

Catholicism

I. The Schismatic Tendency in ‘Creation Science’

'Creation Science', the naive assertion that the universe was created only 6,000 years ago, is a Protestant thing.  Its adoption by Catholics presents real dangers to their faith. more

II. Catholic Faith

The Catholic faith is not to be compared with the faith of Protestant, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist.  It is something essentially different.  more

III. Greatest Pope of the Twentieth Century

There were nine popes in the twentieth century.  Which of them was the greatest?  more

VI. The Windhover

The little falcon that reminds us of Christ Our Lord.  more

VII. The Pope the Church Needs

A comment on the needs of the faithful that a new pope will need to address.  more

VIII. Pope Francis & the Secularisation of the Church

American commentator, Mary Eberstadt, has raised what is perhaps the most important issue for the good of the Church the new pope must consider.  Here is our comment.  more

IX. The Church, the Pope & Cardinal Martini

Our commentary on recent developments in the Vatican.  more

X. ‘The Church's Problem with Child Abuse’

The United Nations is pressing the Vatican for action on child abuse.  This is exactly the reverse of what should be happening.  How has the Church reached this nadir in her fortunes ? (This paper was amended slightly on 8.2. 2014 and on 28.2.2014.)  more

XI. Abolition of the Devil's Advocate

The office which defended the Church against the canonisation of those who did not deserve it was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983.  How does this action bear on the impending canonisations of the late popes, John XXIII and John Paul II ?   more

XII. The Next Step to Schism?

This is our comment on recent developments in Rome.  more

XIII. Saints Under the New Dispensation

On 27th April Pope Francis canonised two popes the span of whose reigns covered just 46 years.  The two previous popes the Church had canonised spanned some 350 years.  more

XIV. One Hundredth Anniversary of Death of St Pius X

Our short tribute to the great and saintly Pope.  more

XV. Americanism, the US Supreme Court & the Catholic Episcopacy

There is more to the current debate over ‘gay marriage’ than first appears.  The chief issue is not homosexuals and their inclinations, but whether the institution of marriage is of man or of nature.  more

XVI. Review of Phoenix from the Ashes

Phoenix from the Ashes - The Making, Unmaking, and Restoration of Catholic Tradition by H J A Sire [Kettering, Ohio, Angelico Press http://angelicopress.com/sire-phoenix-from-the-ashes , 2015] is as admirable as it is timely. Here is a review of this important book.  more

XVII. To an Intending Convert

This is a sort of slovenly review of Joseph Pearce’s Literary Converts (London, 1999) which is readily available in hard copy or via Kindle. There is much in it to inspire an aspiring convert. more

XVIII. To an Intending Convert Part 2

A few more notes on the previous article.  more

XIX. Failure of the Executive Power

This is a revision of a paper that appeared on this website in August 2005. It deals with the problems that arose for Catholics on the interplay of two influences, one from outside the Church and the other, the more important, from within.  more

XX. The One Necessary Encyclical

This is a recasting with slight amendments of a paper published in August 2009 inviting His Holiness to address the one intellectual issue that presses mankind in the modern world.  more

XXI. The One Necessary Encyclical—Part II, A Draft

The statement of members of The Roman Forum meeting at Lake Garda, Italy, on 9th July 2015  [http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-lake-garda-statement.html ] demonstrates that there are many within the Catholic Church who recognise the crisis through which the Church is passing—has passed, these last fifty years—and are able to enunciate a course for the return to the Church's proper station as the means of salvation for all the world.

We have been insistent on superflumina about the need, if the Church's authority and salutary influence in the world is to be restored, for the Vicar of Christ to confront and confound the immense evil of atheism in an encyclical letter.    It is an undertaking that requires an immense effort of investment, with the hope of a proportionately immense return.  We have essayed a draft of such an encyclical to this end that it might attract the attention of the Church’s future bishops, one of whom will one day come to assume the pallium of the Vicar of Christ on earth. more

XXII. The Loss of Metaphysics

John of Salisbury, 12th Century philosopher, says in his Metalogicon: 'Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more... because they raise us up...' In the century that followed John of Salisbury, the greatest of the intellectual giants appeared, Thomas Aquinas. His philosophy, metaphysics, is the only ultimately satisfying explanation of reality, the only philosophy which leads us inevitably to the Author of all reality, Almighty God. Thomas's philosophy was adopted by the Catholic Church as her own to assist in formulating doctrine and in solving the great problems of morals. Yet, in the last 40 years that philosophy has been abandoned and the Church and the world have suffered. If the Church is to be returned to her rightful position of influence in the world, her bishops and teachers must return to St Thomas's metaphysics. more

XXIII. ‘In No Strange Land’

Francis Thompson’s poem enthralls with its imagery; but what is its focus, what is ‘the many-splendoured thing’?  more

XXIV. The Kolbe Center Strikes Again

XXV. The Veil

Here we commend a paper written by Dr Peter Kwasniewski last year which explains why the wearing by women of a veil at Mass is appropriate.  more

XXVI. Why Should We Stay in the Catholic Church?

XXVII. The Thing

G K Chesterton wrote a book of essays back in 1929 whose title he coined from an expression in a celebrated letter of Hilaire Belloc to The Evening Standard.  more