31 August 2026
Bishop Claims The Church Must Repent Of Being Afraid Of Sin
Denying the Church is without sin or fault just to normalise sins that cry out to heaven for justice is a strange act of apostasy for a bishop but it is one many are willing to make.
Leo Just Gave a Pachamama Worshiper a Big Promotion
2 weeks after the news broke internationally that Roman Curia officials and local bishops prepared for Leo's imminent visit to Peru by making sacrificial offerings to Pachamama, Leo promotes one of the organising participant bishops. Is the Church firmly in the hands of Pachamama worshipers?
Would You Recognise a Medieval Landscape Today?
From Modern History TV
Jason Kingsley, OBE, the Modern Knight, rides out through a modern landscape ready for the hay harvest and compares it to what the medieval landscape may have been. How were woodlands used? What happened there and why?
Join me on horseback as I ride through the countryside and imagine what this landscape would have looked like hundreds of years ago. What has changed? What would a medieval traveller have seen, heard, or feared? No AI, AI-free, human-made, no gen AI.
Everything in this video is filmed, tested, and experienced in real conditions. No AI-generated content.
Whether you're a history enthusiast, a medieval re-enactor, or just curious about the world beneath our feet, this is a ride into the heart of England’s hidden past.
Traditional Catholic Morning Prayers in English | August
Traditional Catholic morning prayers to help start your day in a godly way! The month of August is dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I hope these prayers increase your devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary this month and draw you closer to her Divine Son, Jesus Christ. Begin each day with morning prayer! This video is a compilation of many traditional evening prayers Catholics say, and should not be considered a replacement for those who have an obligation to pray the Divine Office evening prayers.
3 Mercedarian Saints Who Teach Us Brave Mercy
One of them is St Raymond Nonnatus, whose Feast is today. Born by cesarean after his mother's death, he was given the by-name "not born".
From Aleteia
By Daniel Esparza
The Mercedarian charism lands close to home. Our world still knows prisoners, hostages, and people trapped by poverty, addiction, or human trafficking.
Founded in Barcelona in 1218, the Mercedarians — officially the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy — is an Order born for the gritty work of love: freeing people held in captivity. Members professed a unique “fourth vow” to offer their own freedom, even their lives, if that was the only way to secure someone else’s.
Here are three saints whose stories still speak powerfully today.
St. Peter Nolasco (founder, strategist, servant)
A successful merchant, Peter Nolasco turned his business acumen toward rescuing captives taken in the conflicts of his day. He gathered companions, sought the support of civic leaders, and placed the new Order under Mary’s patronage, trusting that mercy could be organized, funded, and made effective.
Nolasco’s holiness is practical: He prayed, planned, and then acted, traveling to negotiate ransoms and, when necessary, staying behind as a hostage until others were safe. He shows that Christian compassion is not sentiment but strategy in service of human dignity.
St. Raymond Nonnatus (patron of new life and honest speech)
“Non-natus” — “not born” — refers to his birth by emergency surgery after his mother died, which is why many parents and midwives claim him as a patron. As a Mercedarian, Raymond crossed the sea to North Africa to serve and ransom captives.
When his preaching stirred anger, he was reportedly punished with a padlock fixed to his lips. That strange symbol turns him into a very modern intercessor: a friend for the voiceless, and a reminder to use our words online and off with courage and charity. Raymond’s life says that the Gospel does not silence; it sets people free.
St. Maria de Cervelló (the first Mercedarian woman, a tireless organizer)
Often called “Mary of Help,” Maria gathered women in Barcelona to pray for redemptions, collect alms, and welcome home the newly freed. She shows how mercy multiplies when communities rally together: homes open, meals appear, wounds are tended, and trauma is met with patient listening.
Maria’s sanctity is found less in the spotlight and more in the logistics of love — the hidden, necessary work that makes the mission sustainable.
800 years later, and still needed
For Catholics and non-Catholics alike, the Mercedarian charism lands close to home. Our world still knows prisoners, hostages, and people trapped by poverty, addiction, or human trafficking.
The Catechism names the works of mercy as everyday paths to holiness: “The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities” (CCC 2447).
We may never negotiate a ransom, but we can visit the imprisoned, support anti-trafficking efforts, advocate for hostages, write to lawmakers, give generously, and keep hope alive for those who feel forgotten.
If you’re looking for a simple way to honor these saints this week, try this: Choose one person or group who lacks freedom — someone in detention, a neighbor burdened by debt, a friend stuck in despair — and take one concrete step for their good. Pray for them by name. Offer a meal or a ride. Donate to a reputable charity working for liberation.
Mercy, as the Mercedarians teach, is love that moves. And when mercy moves, chains begin to fall.
Against the Tide: The Bishops Who Voted No at Vatican II
From Purely Catholic
The common narrative around Vatican II claims its constitutions and decrees passed almost unanimously because the changes were so universally popular. But that is not the full picture. A dedicated group of bishops actively voted against key reforms like the changes to the liturgy. What drove their resistance? What were they seeing that the majority ignored? Today, we are looking at six bishops who bucked the trend and fought to preserve sacred tradition at Vatican II.
“Peter” and “Satan”: the Two Names of the Pope
Solovyov explains how Peter's position as Pope can be harmonised with Christ calling him "Satan" in the Gospels, which I posted about here.
From One Peter Five
By Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov
There is only one way to harmonize these passages which the inspired Evangelist has, with good reason, placed side by side.
An Excerpt from Vladimir Solovyov, Russia and the Universal Church, trans. Rees (London: Centenary Press, 1948), 96-98.
It was not Simon’s apostleship that involved his change of name, for the change, though already predicted, was not made at the time of the choice and solemn sending forth of the Twelve. All with the single exception of Simon retained their own names in the apostleship; none of them received from our Lord a new and permanent title of wider or higher significance.[1]
Apart from Simon, all the Apostles are distinguished from one another solely by their natural characteristics, their individual qualities and destinies as well as by the varieties and shades of personal feeling shown towards them by their Master. On the other hand, the new and significant name which Simon alone receives in addition to the apostleship shared by all, indicates no natural trait in his character, no personal affection felt for him by our Lord, but refers solely to the special place which the son of Jona is called to fill in the Church of Christ. Our Lord did not say to him: Thou art Peter because I prefer thee to the others, or because by nature thou hast a firm and stable character (which, incidentally, would hardly have been borne out by the facts), but: Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church.
Peter’s confession, which by a spontaneous and infallible act of allegiance established the bond between mankind and Christ and founded the free Church of the New Covenant, was not just a piece of characteristic behavior on his part. Nor can it have been a casual and momentary spiritual impulse. For is it conceivable that such an impulse or moment of enthusiasm should involve not merely a change of name for Simon as for Abraham and Jacob in times past, but also the prediction of that change long previously as something which would infallibly come about and which held a prominent place in our Lord’s plans? Was there in fact any part of the work of the Messiah more solemn than the foundation of the Universal Church which is expressly connected with Simon under his new name of Peter? Moreover, the notion that the first dogmatic decree of St. Peter came from him merely in his capacity as an individual human being is totally excluded by the direct and explicit witness of Christ: It is not flesh and blood which have revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in Heaven.
This confession of Peter’s is, then, an act sui generis, an act whereby the moral being of the Apostle entered into a special relationship with the Godhead; it was this relationship which enabled human utterance to declare infallibly the absolute truth of the Word of God and to create an impregnable foundation for the Universal Church. And as though to remove all possible doubt on the subject, the inspired record of the Gospel at once goes on to show us this very Simon, whom Jesus has just declared to be the Rock of the Church and the key-bearer of the Kingdom of Heaven, forthwith left to his own resources and speaking — with the best intentions in the world, no doubt, but without the divine assistance — under the influence of his own individual and uninspired personality. “And thereafter Jesus began to show His disciples that He must needs go to Jerusalem and suffer much at the hands of the elders and the scribes and the chief priests and be put to death and rise again the third day. And Peter, taking Him aside, began to rebuke Him, saying: Far be it from Thee, Lord; this shall not happen unto Thee. And turning about He said to Peter: Get thee behind Me, Satan, thou art an offence unto Me, for thou understandest not that which is of God, but that which is of men” (Matt. xvi. 21-23).
Are we to follow our Greco-Russian controversialists in placing this text in opposition to the one before it and so make Christ’s words cancel one another out? Are we to believe that the incarnate Truth changed His mind so quickly and revoked in a moment what He had only just announced? And yet, on the other hand, how are we to reconcile “Blessed” and “Satan” ? How is it conceivable that he who is for our Lord Himself a “rock of offence” should yet be the Rock of His Church which the gates of Hell cannot shake? Or that one who thinks only the thoughts of men can receive the revelation of the heavenly Father and can hold the keys of the Kingdom of God?
There is only one way to harmonize these passages which the inspired Evangelist has, with good reason, placed side by side. Simon Peter as supreme pastor and doctor of the Universal Church, assisted by God and speaking in the name of all, is the faithful witness and infallible exponent of divine-human truth; as such he is the impregnable foundation of the house of God and the key-bearer of the Kingdom of Heaven. The same Simon Peter as a private individual, speaking and acting by his natural powers and merely human intelligence, may say and do things that are unworthy, scandalous and even diabolical. But the failures and sins of the individual are ephemeral, while the social function of the ecclesiastical monarch is permanent. “Satan” and the “offence” have vanished, but Peter has remained.
[1] I am not speaking of surnames or of casual, incidental epithets such as that of Boanerges, given to John and James.
St Raymond Nonnatus, Confessor
From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:
August closes as it began, with a feast of deliverance; as though that were the divine seal set by Eternal Wisdom upon this month—the month when holy Church makes the works and ways of Divine Wisdom the special object of her contemplation.
Upon the fall of our first parents and their expulsion from Paradise, the Word and Wisdom of God, that is, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, began the great work of our deliverance—that magnificent work of human Redemption which, by an all-gracious, eternal degree of the three Divine Persons, was to be wrought out by the Son of God in our flesh. And as that blessed Savior, in his infinite wisdom, made spontaneous choice of sorrows, of sufferings, and of death on a cross as the best means of our redemption, so has he always allotted to his best loved friends the kind of life which he had deliberately chosen for himself, that is, the way of the Cross. And the nearest and dearest to him were those who were predestined, like his Blessed Mother, the Mater Dolorosa, to have the honor of being most like himself—the Man of Sorrows. Hence the toils and trials of the greatest Saints; hence the great deliverances wrought by them, and their heroic victories over the world and over the spirits of wickedness in the high places.
On the feasts of St. Raymund of Pegnafort and St. Peter Nolasco, we saw something of the origin of the illustrious Order, of which Raymund Nonnatus added such glory. Soon the august foundress herself, Our Lady of Mercy, will come in person to receive the expression of the world’s gratitude for so many benefits. The following Legend recounts the peculiar merits of our Saint of today.
Raymund, surnamed Nonnatus, (that is, not born) on account of his having been brought into the world in an unusual manner after the death of his mother, was of a pious and noble family of Portelli in Catalonia. From his very infancy he showed signs of his future holiness; for, despising childish amusements and the attractions of the world, he applied himself to the practice of piety so that all wondered at his virtues, which far surpassed his age. As he grew older, he began his studies; but after a short time, he returned at his father’s command to live in the country. He frequently visited the chapel of St. Nicholas, built near Portelli, in order to venerate in it a holy image of the Mother of God, which is still more honored by the faithful. There he would pour out his prayers, begging God’s holy Mother to adopt him for her son and to deign to teach him the way of salvation and the science of the saints.
The most benign Virgin heard his prayer and gave him to understand that it would greatly please her if he entered the Religious Order lately founded by her inspiration, under the name of the Order of “Ransom, or of Mercy for the redemption of captives.” Upon this Raymund at once set out for Barcelona, there to embrace that institute so full of brotherly charity. Thus, enrolled in the army of holy religion, he persevered in perpetual virginity, which he had already consecrated to the Blessed Virgin. He excelled also in every other virtue most especially in charity towards those Christians who were living in miery, as slaves of the pagans. He was sent to Africa to redeem them and freed many from slavery. But when he had exhausted his money, rather than abandon others who were in danger of losing their faith, he gave himself up to the barbarians as a pledge for their ransom. Burning with a most ardent desire for the salvation of souls, he converted several Mahometans to Christ by his preaching. On this account he was thrown into a close prison and after many tortures his lips were pierced through and fastened together with an iron padlock, which cruel martyrdom he endured for a long time.
This and his other noble deeds spread the fame of his sanctity far and near, so that Gregory IX determined to enroll him in the august college of the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. When raised to that dignity the man of God shrank from all pomp and clung always to religious humility. On his way to Rome, as soon as he reached Cardona, he was attacked by his last illness, and earnestly begged to be strengthened by the Sacraments of the Church. As his illness grew worse and the priest delayed to come, Angels appeared, clothed in the religious habit of his Order, and refreshed him with the saving Viaticum. Having received It he gave thanks to God and passed to our Lord on the last Sunday of August in the year 1240. Contentions arose concerning the place where he should be buried; his coffin was therefore placed upon a blind mule and by the will of God it was taken to the chapel of St. Nicholas, that it might be buried in that place where he had first begun a more perfect life. A convent of his Order was built in the spot, and there famous for many signs and miracles he is honored by the concourse of all the faithful of Catalonia, who come there to fulfill their vows.
To what a length, O illustrious Saint, didst thou follow the counsel of the Wise man! The bands of Wisdom, says he, are a healthful binding. (Ecclesiasticus 6:31) And, not satisfied with putting thy feet into her fetters and thy neck into her chains, (Ecclesiasticus 6:25) in the joy of thy love thou didst offer thy lips to the dreadful padlock, not mentioned by the son of Sirach. But what a reward is thine, now that this Wisdom of the Father, whose twofold precept of charity thou didst so fully carry out, inebriates thee with the torrent of eternal delights, adorning thy brow with the glory and grace which radiate from her own beauty! We would fain be forever with thee near that throne of light; teach us, then, how to walk in this world by the beautiful ways and peaceable paths of Wisdom. Deliver our souls, if they be still captive in sin; break the chains of our self-love and give us instead those blessed bands of Wisdom which are humility, abnegation, self-forgetfulness, love of our brethren for God’s sake, love of God for his own sake.
St Raymond Nonnatus: The Saint with Padlocked Lips
A sermon for today. Please remember to say 3 Hail Marys for the Priest.
St Cuthburge, Queen, Virgin, & Abbess
From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints:
THIS saint was sister to king Ina, and was married to Alfred, who was crowned king of the Northumbers in 685. At her suit he allowed her to remain always a virgin, and to devote herself to her heavenly spouse in the monastery of Barking in Essex. She afterward founded that of Winburn, in Dorsetshire, which she governed, giving nerself up totally to fasting, watching, and holy prayer; humble both to God and man, meek and tender to others, but always austere to herself. She never ceased to exhort her sisters to live up to the dignity of spouses of the King of Heaven, to keep their hearts free from all affection to the things of this world, and ever to sigh after their heavenly home. Being purified by a long and painful illness, and strengthened with the viaticum of the precious body of Christ, she passed to everlasting bliss on the 31st of August, in the beginning of the eighth century. She is commemorated in the Sarum Breviary. See William of Malmesbury in king Ina, Leland, Harpsfield, Alford, and Cressy.
St Raymund Nonnatus, Confessor
From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints:
From the Chronicles of his Order, and other Memoirs collected by Pinlus the Bollandist, Augusti, t. 6, p. 729. See also Helyot, who chiefly copies Balliet.
A. D. 1240.
ACCORDING to the rule laid down by our divine Redeemer,1 that Christian approves himself his most faithful disciple, and gives the surest and greatest proof of his love of God, who most perfectly loves his neighbor for God’s sake. By this test of true sanctity we are to form our judgment of the glorious saint whom the Church honors on this day. Saint Raymund Nonnatus* was born at Portel in the diocess of Urgel, in Catalonia, in the year 1204, and was descended of a gentleman’s family of a small fortune. In his childhood he seemed to find no other pleasure than in his devotions and serious duties. Such was his application to his grammar studies, and so happy his genius, as to spare his preceptor much pains in his education. His father, resolving to cross his inclination to a religious or ecclesiastical state, which he began to perceive in him, took him from school, and sent him to take care of a farm which he had in the country. Raymund readily obeyed, and in order to enjoy the opportunity of holy solitude, by voluntary choice, kept the sheep himself, and in the mountains and forests spent his time in holy meditation and prayer, imitating the austerities of the ancient anchorets. Some time after he was pressed by his friends to go to the court of Arragon, where, by his prudence and abilities, he could not fail to make a fortune, being related to the illustrious houses of Foix and Cardona. These importunities obliged him to hasten the execution of his resolution of taking the religious habit in the new Order of our Lady of Mercy for the redemption of captives. Our saint could say with holy Job, that compassion for the poor or distressed had grown up with him from his childhood. The sufferings of the Christians, who, in neighboring provinces, almost under his eyes, groaned in the most inhuman slavery, under the Moors, particularly afflicted his tender heart; by compassion he bore all their burdens, and felt the weight of all their chains. But if he was moved at their corporal sufferings, and earnestly desired to devote himself, and all that he possessed, to procure them comfort and relief under their temporal afflictions, he was much more afflicted by their spiritual dangers of sinking under their calamities, and losing their immortal souls by impatience or apostasy from Christ. For this he never ceased to weep and pray, entreating the God of mercy to be himself the comfort and support of the weak and of the strong; and he wished with St. Pau1,2 to spend and be spent himself for their souls. In these dispositions he obtained of his unwilling father, through the mediation of the count of Cardona, leave to embrace the above-mentioned Order: and was accordingly admitted to his profession at Barcelona by the holy founder St. Peter Nolasco.
The extraordinary fervor of the saint in this new state, his perfect disengagement from the world, his profound humility, sincere obedience, wonderful spirit of mortification and penance, seraphic devotion, and constant recollection, rendered him the model and the admiration of his brethren. So surprising was the progress that he made in the perfection of his holy institute, that, within two or three years after his profession, he was judged the best qualified to discharge the office of Ransomer, in which he succeeded St. Peter. Being sent into Barbary with a considerable sum of money he purchased, at Algiers, the liberty of a great number of slaves. When all this treasure was laid out in that charitable way, he voluntarily gave himself up as a hostage for the ransom of certain others, whose situation was hardest, and whose faith seemed exposed to imminent danger. The magnanimous sacrifice which the saint had made of his own liberty served only to exasperate the Mahometans, who treated him with uncommon barbarity, till the infidels, fearing lest if he died in their hands they should lose the ransom which was stipulated to be paid for the slaves for whom he remained a hostage, upon a remonstrance made on that account by the cadi or magistrate of the city, gave orders that he should be treated with more humanity. Hereupon he was permitted to go abroad about the streets; which liberty in made use of to comfort and encourage the Christians in their chains, and he converted and baptized some Mahometans. Upon information hereof, the governor condemned him to be impaled, that is, to be put to death by thrusting a stake into the body through the hinder parts; this being a barbarous manner of executing criminals much in use among those infidels. However, the persons who were interested in the ransom of the captives, lest they should be losers, prevailed that his life should be spared; and, by a commutation of his punishment, he underwent a cruel bastinado. This torment did not daunt his courage. So long as he saw souls in danger of perishing eternally, he thought he had yet done nothing; nor could he let slip any opportunity of endeavoring to prevent their so frightful misfortune. He considered that, as St. Chrysostom says,3 “Though a person shall have bestowed an immense treasure in alms, he has done nothing equal to him who has contributed to the salvation of a soul. This is a greater alms than ten thousand talents; than this whole world, how great soever it appears to the eye, for a man is more precious than the whole world.”
St. Raymund had on one side no more money to employ in releasing poor captives; and, on the other, to speak to a Mahometan upon the subject of religion was capital by the standing laws of the Mussulmans. He could, however, still exert his endeavors, with hopes of some success, or of dying a martyr of charity. He therefore resumed his former method of instructing and exhorting both the Christians and the Infidels. The governor, who was immediately apprised of his behavior, was strangely enraged, and commanded the zealous servant of Christ to be whipped at the corners of all the streets in the city, his lips to be bored with a red-hot iron in the market-place, and his mouth shut up with a padlock, the key of which he kept himself and only gave to the keepers when the prisoner was to eat. In this condition he was loaded with iron bolts and chains, and cast into a dark dungeon, where he lay full eight months, till his ransom was brought by some religious men of his Order, who were sent with it by Saint Peter. Raymund was unwilling to leave his dungeon, or at least the country of the infidels, where he desired to remain to assist the slaves; but he acquiesced in obedience to the orders of his general, begging God would accept his tears, seeing he was not worthy to shed his blood for the souls of his neighbors.
Upon his return to Spain he was nominated cardinal by pope Gregory IX. But so little was he affected with the involuntary honor, that he neither changed his dress, nor his poor cell in the convent, nor his manner of living. Much less could he be prevailed upon by the nobility of the country to accept of a palace, to admit an equipage or train, or to suffer any rich furniture to be added to his little necessaries in his cell. The pope, being desirous to have so holy a man about his person, and to employ him in the public affairs of the Church, called him to Rome. The saint obeyed, but could not be persuaded to travel otherwise than as a poor religious man. He went no further than Cardona, which is only six miles from Barcelona, when he was seized with a violent fever, which, by the symptoms which attended it, soon appeared to be mortal. St. Raymund prepared himself for his last passage. Some historians relate that he was favored with a vision of angels, in which he received the holy viaticum. His death happened on the 31st of August, in the year 1240, the thirty-seventh year of his age. He was buried in a chapel of St. Nicholas, near the farm in which he had formerly lived. St. Peter Nolasco founded a great convent in that place, in 1255, and St. Raymund’s relics are still kept in that church. The history of many miracles wrought by his means is to be seen in the Bollandists. Pope Alexander VII. inserted his name in the Martyrology in 1657.
This saint gave not only his substance but also his liberty, and even exposed himself to the most cruel torments and death, for the redemption of captives, and the salvation of souls. But alas I how cold now-a-days is charity in our breasts, though it be the essential characteristic of true Christians! Far from the heroic sentiments of the saints, do not we, merely to gratify our prodigality, vanity, or avarice, refuse to give the superfluous part of our possessions to the poor, who, for want of it, are perishing with cold and hunger? Are not we slothful and backward in affording a visit or comfort to poor prisoners, or sick persons, or in using our interest to procure some relief for the distressed? Are we not so insensible to their spiritual miseries as to be without all feeling for them, and to neglect even to commend them to God with sufficient earnestness, to admonish sinners according to our circumstances and the rules of prudence, or to instruct, by ourselves and others, those under our care? By this mark is it not manifest that self-love, and not the love of God and our neighbor, reigns in our hearts, whilst we seek and pursue so inordinately our own worldly interest, and are sensible to it alone? Let us sound our own hearts, and take an impartial view of our lives, and we shall feel whether this test of Christ, or that of Satan, which is self-love, be more sensible in our affections, and whether is the governing principle of our actions.
Collect of St Cuthburga of Wimborne, Virgin, Abbess, & Queen ~ Indulgenced on the Saint's Feast (See Note)
According to the Apostolic Penitentiary, a partial indulgence is granted to those who, on the feast of any Saint, recite in his honour the oration of the Missal or any other approved by legitimate Authority.
V. O Lord, hear my prayer.
R. And let my cry come unto thee.
Let us pray.
Graciously hear us, O God, our Saviour, that as we rejoice in the festival of blessed Cuthburga, Thy Virgin & Abbess, so may we be nourished by the food of her heavenly teaching that we may be enlightened by the fervour of her dedicated holiness.
Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
Let us pray.
Graciously hear us, O God, our Saviour, that as we rejoice in the festival of blessed Cuthburga, Thy Virgin & Abbess, so may we be nourished by the food of her heavenly teaching that we may be enlightened by the fervour of her dedicated holiness.
Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
R. Amen
Nota bene ~ St Cuthburga is not celebrated on the Universal Calendar, but according to the Martyrology, today is her Feast Day. The Collect is taken from the Common of Virgins.
Collect of St Raymond Nonnatus, Confessor ~ Indulgenced on the Saint's Feast (See Note)
According to the Apostolic Penitentiary, a partial indulgence is granted to those who, on the feast of any Saint, recite in his honour the oration of the Missal or any other approved by legitimate Authority.
V. O Lord, hear my prayer.
R. And let my cry come unto thee.
Let us pray.
Let us pray.
O God, Who didst make thy blessed Confessor Raymond to do a wonderful work in delivering thy faithful ones from bondage to the unbelievers, grant unto us at his prayers to be delivered from the chains of sin, and with all willingness of mind to do those things that are pleasing in thy sight.
Through Jesus Christ, Thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
R. Amen.
30 August 2026
Altar Servers and Servants of the Devil
Mr Pearce calls on us to support small Catholic publishers and local businesses, rather than companies dedicated to the Culture of Death.
From Crisis
By Joseph Pearce
After a long dry spell of serious Catholic literature, we may be seeing hints of a revival.
Freedom is in our pockets and so is the flourishing of a new Catholic revival. Every dollar we spend makes the world a better or a worse place. Every dollar we spend on products produced by corporations with an anti-Catholic, globalist, or woke agenda is making the world a worse place. Every dollar we spend on products produced by faithful Catholics or by small and local businesses makes the world a better place. It’s not rocket science. It’s common sense.
This is as true of the books we buy as it is true of anything else. If we buy and read books that are on The New York Times Bestseller List, we are making the world a worse place and probably poisoning our own minds and souls at the same time. If, however, we buy Catholic books published by Catholic publishers (preferably directly from the publisher, not from Amazon), we are making the world a better place and nourishing our minds and souls into the bargain.
It is with this in mind that I make a point of reading the new generation of Catholic novelists who are being published by the new generation of Catholic publishers. One such novelist is Brian Kennelly, whose latest novel, The Savios, is published by one such publisher: Chrism Press. Let’s say a little about Chrism Press before discussing the merits of Mr. Kennelly’s novel.
The editorial team at Chrism Press have the courage to publish gritty novels which would probably not be accepted for publication by mainstream Catholic publishers, which are understandably fearful of offending the sensibilities of some of their more pietistic customers. Since Chrism Press does not aim to censor good fiction by placing it in a censorious straitjacket, it is able to publish darker works that highlight the real ugliness of evil—as well as showing the silver lining to the darkest of situations, which grace and sanctity provide.
Chrism Press has published novels by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson and Kaye Park Hinckley, two fine writers whose works I have long admired, and by Roseanna M. White, whose novel, Shadowed Loyalty, I have yet to read but should. Judging by the single paragraph description of the book provided by the publisher, Shadowed Loyalty is similar in theme to Brian Kennelly’s new novel that I have just had the pleasure of reading. Both novels deal with gangsters and the seedy and violent criminal underworld. The protagonist of Shadowed Loyalty is the daughter of Chicago’s leading mob boss; the protagonists of The Savios are a tight-knit group of altar servers from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Boston.
If we buy Catholic books published by Catholic publishers, we are making the world a better place and nourishing our minds and souls into the bargain.In The Savios, each of the boys is given a medal of St. Dominic Savio, the patron saint of altar servers, by their saintly but down-to-earth Irish pastor, Fr. Patrick Bradley. It is significant, however, that St. Dominic Savio is also the patron saint of juvenile delinquents because the friends who serve Fr. Patrick’s Masses are far from being saints. Known collectively as the Savios, in honor of the saint, the boys rule the roost at their high school. Nobody dares to mess with the inseparable group of friends who wear the saint’s medal around their necks as a mark of pride more than as an act of piety.
Problems arise when the boys grow old enough to be noticed by Michael “Clover” Connell and his psychopathic and sadistic son, Mikey, leaders of the Green Kern Gang, Boston’s Irish “mafia.” Very quickly, the Savios get sucked into the cycle of violence and viciousness, in which the claims and counterclaims of virtue and vice vie for power within each of their hearts. Can belief in the Fatherhood of God or the Brotherhood of Man survive in a world of terror and terrorism?
Brian Kennelly has written a real page-turner, which grips the reader at every turn as the plot twists and action accelerate. It is, however, flawed in a key respect that spoils and blemishes its integrity as a work of art. The Savios is a historical novel, set in 1968 in Boston and Belfast, Northern Ireland, with flashbacks to Ireland and Boston in the early 20th century, when Fr. Patrick and “Clover” Connell had become childhood friends before their radically different life choices took them in diametrically opposed directions.
The problem is that historical fiction must also pass the test of historical nonfiction. The fictional narrative must conform to the known historical facts. This is where Mr. Kennelly’s oversight spoils the reading experience for those who know anything about the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Mr. Kennelly has his protagonists and antagonists facing off in a gun battle in Belfast in September 1968, a year before the Troubles truly ignited with the anti-Catholic riots in August of the following year and the subsequent and consequent deployment of British troops to restore order. The Northern Ireland depicted in The Savios resembles the situation in the early 1970s and was not the situation on the ground in 1968.
Those who know little to nothing about the history of the Troubles would be blissfully ignorant of this major historical faux pas, enabling them to enjoy the story unhampered by the historical blunder. This will be the vast majority of readers. Nonetheless, as a cautionary corrective to all prospective writers of historical fiction and to all prospective publishers of it, it cannot be stressed enough that authors and editors need to get their facts right in their fiction.
This necessary admonishment aside, Mr. Kennelly is to be congratulated and praised for writing such a well-paced page-turner of a novel; and Chrism Press is to be congratulated and praised for publishing it. All that is needed now is for Catholics to put their hands in their pockets, spending the few dollars necessary, so that they can both enjoy this gripping and suspenseful thriller and support the talent of Catholic authors and the courage of Catholic publishers.
On Nightmares, Crowds, and Getting It Wrong
"Human togetherness in La Foule, I realized as I stood listening, meant being “pushed,” “stunned,” “confused,” and “frozen” by a chaotic mass of shoving people."
From The Imaginative Conservative
By Siobhan Nash-Marshall, PhD (R+I+P)
If the universe were a swarm, there would be no universe. That swarm, that self-caused changing unit, that Godless movable infinite thing would destroy the necessary condition of its own existence and persistence: the individuals that constitute it. Why, then, does modern man insist on not seeing this? Why does he choose rage over reality?
I was walking through Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport the other day, and heard the familiar strains of Edith Piaf’s La Foule—”The Crowd”—echoing in the nearly empty halls:
Je revois la ville en fête et en délire
Suffoquant sous le soleil et sous la joie
Et j’entends dans la musique les cris, les rires
Qui éclatent et rebondissent autour de moi—“I remember the town celebrating and delirious.
Suffocating under the sun and with joy.
I hear though the music the shouts and laughter
that burst and bounce around me.”
There was something deeply moving about the song. It conjured images of joyful times, of people coming together and rejoicing in their unity, of street musicians, of a living culture that produced popular music that anyone could appreciate. That was undoubtedly the intention of the shopkeeper who blasted the song almost invoking the return of the crowds that had once visited the airport.
Piaf stopped me in my tracks, roller-bag in hand, and brought a smile to my face. And for a moment, I too remembered the joy of unmasked togetherness, the grins, badminton games, and squirt guns of the 4th of July: my mother turning the garden hose on my horrified father sitting on a lawn chair with his book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and our uncontrollable laughter on that long summer evening as we waited for the fireworks.
But as the song continued, the shadow of that unum mobile infinitum—single boundless changing unit—that Aquinas sketched in Chapter 13 of the Summa Contra Gentiles was cast over my own happy memories of a 4th of July from years ago. It was Piaf herself who summoned it: the haunting images of La Foule. Unlike my own, her memories of town celebrations were not memories of togetherness. The “shouts and laughter”—le cris, les rires—that she remembered hearing through the music while the town was “suffocating with joy” did not include her own. They “burst and bounced around her”—“éclatent et rebondissent autour de moi.”
Human togetherness in La Foule, I realized as I stood listening, meant being “pushed,” “stunned,” “confused,” and “frozen” by a chaotic mass of shoving people: “Et perdue parmi ces gens qui me bousculent / Étourdie, désemparée, je reste là.” Piaf’s “town in celebration” was a swarm. It was nightmarish, something to escape.
It was also inescapable. When Piaf turned, presumably to flee, and a man stepped back (to make way for her, one assumes)—“Quand soudain, je me retourne, il se recule”—the terrifying mass, the crowd “threw her into his arms”—“Et la foule vient me jeter entre ses bras.” And the two of them were:
Emportés par la foule qui nous traîne
Nous entraîne
Écrasés l’un contre l’autres,
Nous ne formons qu’un seul corps.“Carried away by the crowd that pulls us,
that drags us
Crushed one against the other,
we formed one single body.”
For a moment, Piaf was “inebriated”—enivrés—by the crowd’s having “crushed her against” the man, made “one body” of them, “chained them to each other”—enchaînés l’un et l’autre. But her joy was short-lived. The amorphous moving mass of human beings that “shouted and laughed,” “pulled and dragged,” that had made their “two bodies entwine”—nos deux corps enlacés—continued to pull and drag until:
soudain je pousse un cri parmi les rires
Quand la foule vient l’arracher d’entre mes bras“suddenly amidst the laughter, I let out a cry
When the crowd ripped him out of my arms.”
Enslaved as she was by that moving swarm, Piaf too kept on moving, “cursing” the crowd for “having stolen the man that it had given” her “and whom” she “never found again”—maudissant la foule qui me vole / L’homme qu’elle m’avait donné / Et que je n’ai jamais retrouvé.
There, I recognized, was the image of what had been haunting me in the Contra Gentiles’s description of a self-caused material universe: that single boundless changing thing, shapeless moving mass, self-contained web of “motions” that each mover effects in each mover with which it is in direct contact, that network of networks constituted by starkly individual things that push each other:
Cum ergo omnia praedicta moventia et mota sint corpora… oportet quod sint quasi unum mobile per continuationem vel contiguationem… unum infinitum. —“And therefore since all the aforementioned movers and things put into motion are bodies… they would have to be like a single movable thing through continuity or contact… one infinite thing.”
Piaf’s crowd was that nightmarish unum mobile infinitum—single changeable unit.
As I stood transfixed by the horrendous image of that amorphous slithering throng, I realized that Piaf’s foule had also just clarified for me why the universe cannot be that self-caused unum mobile infinitum. That swarm, that self-contained web of “motions” that each mover effects in each mover with which it is in direct contact, that network of networks constituted by things that have no real commonalities and that simply push each other would destroy itself if it actually existed.
Let us suppose that the universe is nothing but an amorphous moving swarm constituted solely by the relations between those bare perceptible things that are in direct contact with one another: people, animals, nature, the earth, planets, the stars, what have you. Let us, in other words, suppose that the universe is really like what Aquinas posits it would have to be, were it self-caused: nothing but a single movable infinite thing, but Piaf’s foule—crowd—that “pulled” and “dragged,” pushed her into another man’s arms, and ripped her out of them.
That crowd could not exist or subsist without the individual people who constitute it. There could be no crowd that “pulls” and “drags,” were there no individual persons to do the pulling and dragging, and to be pulled and dragged by the others. Individual-less crowds cannot exist. So too for that unum mobile infinitum constituted by the pushing of bare perceptibles upon each other. Webs of motions cannot exist without individual movers and individual things moved. Relations cannot exist without relata. Individual things are a necessary condition of the existence and subsistence of the universe: individual people of crowds.
But individual things, by definition, have individual needs, individual aims. Their natural actions are to pursue these individual aims, seek to fulfill their individual needs. Their subsistence is contingent upon their pursuit of these individual aims, fulfillment of these individual needs. A tree must grow toward the light and bathe in it, or it dies. An animal must dig, hunt, and feed itself, or it dies. A human being needs to be nourished by communication, by real relations with persons and things, or he wastes away.
Were the universe that throng that Piaf describes, the unum mobile infinitum that Aquinas claims it would have to be, were it self-caused, no individual thing could act in such a way so as to fulfill its individual needs. The motions of the individual things would necessarily be both violent and aimless. This was what La Foule showed.
Piaf was enlivened by the joy transmitted by the man in whose arms she had been thrown. Their proximity, their communication responded to a real need of hers:
Et la joie éclaboussée par son sourire
Me transperce et rejaillit au fond de moi“and the joy sparked by his smile
pierces me and rises up deep inside me.”
The crowd’s pushing, its “ripping him” out of her arms, like light deprivation for a plant, separated her from her own sustenance: from the fulfillment of her own real needs. The crowd’s motion was, in other words, what Aquinas would call violent: fit contra interiorem inclinationem passivi—done against the interior inclination of the passive subject.
So too was the aimless motion of the crowd that ensued its “arracher”—ripping—the man from her arms:
Entraînée par la foule qui s’élance
Et qui danse
Une folle farandole
Je suis emportée au loin“Carried away by the crowd that steams ahead
And that dances
A crazy farandole
I’m dragged far away.”
Nor could it be otherwise. For as Aquinas indicates, the things that constitute that infinite changing thing, that foule, that crowd, would each have to be put into motion whenever anyone of them is put into motion: ergo omnia ista infinita simul moventur dum unum eorum movetur. This means not just that each thing would have to move with each other thing in the crowd, but also that it would have to move as the crowd moves. Each member of the crowd would, after all, be as one with the crowd—oportet quod sint quasi unum mobile per continuationem vel contiguationem—and nothing that is as one with something else cannot move as that other thing does.
Thus, every motion of each thing in that infinite changing thing, that crowd, that swarm, that network, would be violent. What must move as the crowd moves cannot move as it itself would need to move. Every motion of each thing in that swarm would have to be aimless. An amorphous moving throng can have no aim. Piaf wanders aimlessly and constantly and never gets what she needs and wants.
Violent motions are destructive of individuals. The tree that cannot grow toward and bathe in the light dies. The animal that cannot nourish itself dies. The human being who is starved of real communication, of real aims, of real relations wastes away. But if this is so, then that swarm, that crowd, that unum mobile infinitum would destroy the necessary condition of its own existence and persistence: the individuals that constitute it. If the universe were a swarm, there would be no universe.
If the universe exists and persists, as such, it cannot be a swarm. It cannot be that self-caused changing unit, that Godless unum mobile infinitum. Why, then, does modern man insist on not seeing this? Why does he choose rage over reality?
__________
The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay and has been brightened for clarity.
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