St. Bridget: Popes and Priestly Marriage

St. Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373) was a medieval mystic and founder of the Bridgettines. Besides being the most celebrated Swedish saint, St. Bridget's writings had a profound effect on late medieval piety, so much so that she is considered one of the patron saints of Europe. St. Bridget's most famous work is her Revelations, a series of visions of Christ, Mary and the angels received by St. Bridget and transcribed into Latin by one Mathias, canon of Linköping, and her confessor, Peter Olafsson. In this article, we provide the entirety of Chapters 10 of Book VII, in which the Blessed Virgin Mary narrates to St. Bridget God's opinion of a married, sexually active priesthood. Mary's words are especially poignant in light of current discussions about...

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Argument for the Infallibility of Canonizations

The canonization of Pope Paul VI on October 14, 2018 has thrown traditional Catholics into a maelstrom of anxiety. Indeed, the very notion that the pontiff ultimately responsible for the destruction of the traditional Catholic liturgy and the chaos of the post-conciliar period could be raised to the altars of sainthood is a very hard pill for traditionalists to swallow. The exaltation of Pope Paul VI to sainthood for the veneration of the universal Church runs counter to the deeply held beliefs of traditional Catholics that the pontificate of this man was one of the most destructive in history. 

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St. Bridget: The Punishment of Lustful, Immoral Priests

St. Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373) was a medieval mystic and founder of the Bridgettines. Besides being the most celebrated saint to come out of Sweden, St. Bridget's writings had a profound effect on late medieval piety, so much so that she is considered one of the patron saints of Europe. St. Bridget's most famous work is her Celestial Revelations, a series of visions of Christ, Mary and the angels received by St. Bridget and transcribed into Latin by one Mathias, canon of Linköping, and her confessor, Peter Olafsson. In this article, we provide the entirety of Chapters 47-49 of Book I, in which Christ narrates to St. Bridget the offense caused by lustful, prideful priests and details their punishments. Christ's words are especially poignant in...

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Scientists Executed by the Catholic Church

The relationship between scientific inquiry and Catholic orthodoxy is hotly disputed in the contemporary world. The Catholic position affirms that there can be no true disharmony between scientific and religious truth, since all truth comes from the one God. There is no true hostility between religion and science, properly understood. On the other hand, others say that Catholic orthodoxy is intrinsically hostile to scientific inquiry, and that fidelity to the Catholicism actually necessitates the repression of scientific truth. This brings us to the myth of the Catholic Church's repression of scientific activities, specifically with regard to the Church's alleged persecution of scientists merely for their scientific theories. In this essay, we will study the lives of ten scientists who somehow came into conflict with the...

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Tarik to His Muslim Hordes

In the year 711, the Muslim hordes swarmed over the Straits of Gibraltar and in to the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain. The leader of the Visigoths, Roderic, marshaled his armies and rode out to confront the Muslim invaders. Unfortunately for Roderic and Visigothic Spain, the Christian armies were disunited and suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Muslims. Roderic was killed, and his defeat ushered in six and a half centuries of Muslim presence in Spain. One of the Muslim commanders during the conquest was called Tarik. Prior to crossing the Straits of Gibraltar and going into Spain, Tarik gave a rousing speech to his men. The speech is a classical example of the sorts of ideals that motivated the Islamic conquest -...

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Rethinking the Appendix

Since the dawn of the science of human biology in the modern age, it has been taken for granted that the internal organ known as the "appendix" was vestigial. A structure that is "vestigial" is so-called because it is believed to be a "vestige" of the organism at an earlier stage in its evolutionary biology. Vestigial organs or vestigial body parts no longer have any practical function, but they have not yet disappeared from the organism's biology. Another common example is the human tail bone, which is said to be a vestigial remnant of the days when homo sapiens had tails. Thus, vestigiality goes hand in hand with evolutionary biology. The "useless" appendix has always been explained as an organ left over from the days...

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The Experience of Prophetic Revelation

Saints are humble people. They know that whatever gifts and graces they have come by the goodness of God, not by any merit of their own. They are extraordinarily fearful of their own pride, and consequently do not like to talk about their own mystical or miraculous experiences. Those who do - like St. Therese of Lisieux - often do so only under obedience. It is thus very mysterious, from a layman's perspective, what it is really like experientially to receive these special charisms from God - what it is like "behind the veil" for those who truly receive prophetic revelations and visions. In this article, we examine two saints - Columba of Iona (d. 597) and Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) who, in confidence...

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Why is Masturbation a Sin?

Alright, let's talk about masturbation. This is an extremely sensitive topic because so many people struggle with it. There is something uncomfortable about it; many Catholics, even in the past, were very reluctant to talk about "the solitary sin." For example, there is no entry for masturbation in the otherwise very voluminous 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia. This traditional reluctance is somewhat understandable. To discuss the matter is to admit one into a very intimate aspect of one's life, an aspect that is sometimes not proper to discuss at all. And to admit of masturbation is a serious embarrassment; it is like admitting that one lacks the most basic self-control. However, given the prevalence of masturbation, the awkwardness surrounding it, the confusion many young people have about...

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The Public Apostasy of Pope Marcellinus

The Sedevacantist would have us believe that a pontiff can lose his office by professing "manifest" heresy or committing public acts of apostasy. Yet in such statements there is usually lacking a distinction on what constitutes a "manifest" heresy or a "public act" of apostasy. As we shall see, there is not a direct correlation between holding or teaching a heretical proposition and being a "heretic", nor between committing an act of apostasy and being an apostate in the formal sense. We shall explore this distinction with a lengthy examination of one of history's less memorable pontiffs, Marcellinus, who was pope during the Great Persecution of Diocletian. Marcellinus is of great interest to this discussion because he very well may have committed a public act...

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Quinisext Council in Trullo and Priestly Celibacy

The discipline of clerical celibacy is a sticking point between the Catholic Church and the Eastern churches, both those in and out of union with Rome. Eastern Christians allow a married, sexually active priesthood while the Latin Church has always insisted on sexual continence from its clerics. This discussion is often framed in such a way that the East is said to be preserving a very ancient tradition in the while the West is maintaining a tradition that "only" dates from the 10th century. Implicitly, the Eastern discipline is given a more credible historical pedigree. In fact this is not the case. The Latin custom of perfect continence for clerics is actually much more ancient than the current Eastern tradition, which only goes back to...

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