We interrupt our regular slackadaisical blogging to bring you this message… MONDAY UPDATE: Baronius Press doesn’t talk to people on the phone. I’ve sent the inquiry email and now we wait. Ugh. To those who have contacted me in the last 18 hours, thank you for the offers. We’re on hold until we can sort out that there actually are any Roman Breviaries to buy. To those who have said they want to go in together with others for group-purchases, I’m going to be sorting through all the emails and organising y’all into clusters.

Look at this photo for a moment. In fact, enlarge it on your screen and just look, if possible without thinking. Do it for a moment or two. Now, how do you feel? What are the words that come to mind to describe the feeling? Some people on Facebook described it: “Our Lady of Minas Morgul”. “It’s the church Sauron went to as a child.” “You gotta evangelize the orcs”.

13 Years after Maciel Crimes Revealed, Legionaries of Christ Still Celebrating His Legacy Steve has a long history with the Legion. I experienced their predatory habits way back in Halifax, but fortunately they gave me enough of the creeps at the time to stay away. A friend of mine was not so fortunately paranoid. The entire order is predatory. They descended on Halifax and started hunting among the Catholic young adults group I was a part of, even showing up to my ladies’ Rosary circle at my flat.

No, not all “religious paths lead to God”. Not even close. In November I wrote a bit about why we should fight tooth and nail against the increasingly popular idea that the Christian dispensation should be allowed to die in favour of some kind of “enlightened paganism”… “…about human evil and it’s apparent lack of any real internal limits…” “We learned a great deal in [the 20th] century about what the world looks like without Christian moral restraint.

Since I can’t seem to shake the journalist instinct, I’m going to have to start a new Thing on the blog: periodic news roundups, so I can get it out of my system in one go. What better day to start than the day we all more or less start thinking about getting back to work? So, suit up: stick on a CD of medieval carols, light a pine-scented candle, strap on your Santa hat and …

“Vatican shakeup shows why journalists shouldn’t be corporate mouthpieces” I’d be all set to agree if Greg Burke hadn’t spent the last few years demonstrating that he was more than willing to shill and provide cover for a grossly corrupt regime, and antagonising or ignoring anyone asking awkwardly honest (and obvious) questions. I’ll say one thing for him though, he certainly gave the world a sterling representation of the value of “conservative” organisations like Opus Dei.

The more things change… This year would see the rise of a new threat against the Catholic church in Western Europe, at least in the eyes of the chronicler Adhemar of Chabannes. He reported about the beginning of a heretical movement that emerged in southern France: Manichaeans appeared throughout Aquitaine seducing the people. They denied baptism and the Cross and every sound doctrine. They abstained from food and seemed like monks; they pretend to be chaste, but among themselves practice every sort of vice.

Don’t forget, Christmas STARTS on December 25th. Not the best photo I’ve ever taken in my life, but I’m happy to show off my first Christmas tree since 2014. The year following the kitties were still small and rambunctious so I didn’t chance it. The year after that was the Earthquake Christmas in Santa Marinella and I wasn’t in the mood. Last Christmas I missed them in the shops, since I don’t normally put up the tree till the last of Advent, and the shops of course, following the secular custom, get them in about November 20th.

Just as the thought that Christmas carols were given to us by God to preserve the glorious reality of the Incarnation and Christology in general – through whatever horrors and distortions the modern world has to throw at the Faith – and that I ought to write something about this, Dr. Peter got in there ahead of me: … Why Singing Carols Is So Important While we know that the Mass itself is not the optimal place for hymns, which belong more correctly in the Divine Office (with the exception of the Gloria and, if one considers it a hymn, the Sanctus), nevertheless there is an important truth to which Dupanloup bears witness: the value of singing together beautiful vernacular religious songs that have the power to shape the senses, imagination, and memory, and through them, to shape the heart and mind.

Gaudete Sunday Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand; have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. Lord, you have blessed your land; you have turned away the captivity of Jacob.