Today is the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle.

Saint Thomas did not believe that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had risen from the dead on Easter Sunday. Our Lord told the doubting Apostle to press his finger into His nail marks and to press his hand into His wounded side. Saint Thomas believed.

Along with the other Apostles, including the one who replaced Judas Iscariot, Saint Matthias, Saint Thomas became a bold proclaimer of the Catholic Faith, going to India, where he sacrificed his life for the Holy Faith. Saint Thomas the Apostle touched the flesh of the Risen Saviour with his own hands. He then went on to touch the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of that same Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ with his own priestly hands as he uttered the words at Holy Mass that made the Messias incarnate under the appearances of bread and wine.

The very words Saint Thomas uttered after he had touched Our Lord on Low Sunday, Dominus meus et Deus meus, are what we pray every time a true priest utters these words at Holy Mass: "Hoc Est Enim Corpus Meum."

As we prepare the celebration of Christmas Day four days from now, we should ask Saint Thomas to help us reverence Our Lord in His Real Presence with greater fervor as we grow stronger in the Faith with every passing day, consecrated as we are to Our Lord through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Finally, although several people have been very good to respond to private solicitations for non-tax-deductible gifts this month to assist with various  expenses and to assist in making up a shortfall caused by the loss of two regular monthly donations, I do want to make an appeal to the general readership of this site for those who support its work and have the means to make a donation of their own to do so at this time. 

Many other websites put a dollar figure as a target for donors to meet. Most of those wesbites have vastly larger readerships than I do. It is enough for me, therefore, to ask those who can provide a non-tax-deductible gift as we approach Christmas to do so. Thank you for your consideration of this appeal.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Thomas the Apostle, pray for us.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio said in his whatever-it-is thousandth interview since acceding to the presidency of the counterfeit church of conciliarism on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, that he was “worried” about the presence of homosexuals in the conciliar clergy.

Jorge is “worried” about a lot of things, of course, including the “rights of foreign nations to invade other nations without regard to just immigration laws, “global warming,” the Brazilian rain forest and where to go for pizza in Rome.

If the Argentine Apostate is so “worried” about homosexuals in his clergy, why does he appoint so many of them to serve in his conciliar hierarchy and why did he turn his fellow lay Jesuit revolutionary, “Father” James Martin, S.J., loose on the conciliar world?

I wonder if “Pope Francis” is worried about the blasphemous and sacrilegious “Rosary of Modern Sorrows” that his pal James Martin is promoting? I rather tend to doubt that he has any “worries” about this.

On the other hand, believing Catholics should be very concerned about the way in which the adversary uses veritable wolves in shepherds’ clothing to use the very instrument that Our Lady gave to Saint Dominic de Guzman to fight heresy, the Most Holy Rosary, as the means to promote sin and heresy on a global basis.

May God have mercy on us all as we seek to make reparation to Him for the offenses given to His Most Blessed Mother.

Finally, there is so much happening in the world of naturalism at this time that my long commentary about it may not be published until the Feast of Saint Stephen on Wednesday, December 26, 2018. I will, however, have another commentary posted on Red China’s crackdown on all religions, including the true religion, Catholicism, by Saturday, December 22, 2018, the Feast of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

As the subject of this commentary is fresh in the news of recent days, I have decided to address the report of a human heart, which had vivisected from some anonymous human being after he was declared “brain dead,” that had been left onboard a Southwest Airline flight after it had landed in Seattle, Washington, on Sunday, December 9, 2016, first after a week of dealing with some penitential health challenges that had sapped my energy an consumed my time.

Another article will follow by tomorrow, and my commentary on what is now an undisguised effort on the part of Robert Mueller to effect a coup against a president who was ill-prepared to deal with the machinations of the deep state will be published later this coming week.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Eusebius, pray for us.

[Update on Friday, December 14, 2018: An alert reader caught the fact that this reflection had been published in an improper format, something that was caused when I did not press the "Full HTML" selection upon publishing it. I am sorry for the error, which occurred at a time when I had discovered my arms and legs were swollen very significantly. This is probably a reaction to topical solutions applied to relive itching caused by dry skin, but the symptoms are those asscoiated with kidney failure, somthing that a blood test taken yesterday, the Feast of Saint Lucy, seems to have ruled out. 

[In any event, the phenomenon known as sleep has not been experienced much in the past five days. I hope to have a new commentary posted by the Third Sunday of Advent. I simply did not expect the difficulties that have arisen. My sins deserve to be punished, and I am grateful for the chastisement. Deo gratias!]

Two articles on Our Lady of Guadalupe are being republished today. Each has been slightly revised and, of course. In addition to this article, there is also "We Must Be Made As Simple and Trusting" that was published in four parts back in 2010.

A fuller description of today’s feast is found in the introduction to “We Must Be Made as Simple and Trusting” below, which also includes an appeal necessitated by a piece of mail we received yesterday on the Feast of Pope Saint Damasus I. A Spanish language translation of this commentary that was prepared by Mr. Juan Carlos Areneta six years ago can be read at: Las Américas Pertenecen a Nuestra Señora.

Finally, please pray for my younger brother (and only sibling), who turns sixty-five years of age today. Our late mother died on March 18, 1982, and our father died on September 5 1992. The years have certainly passed quickly.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Viva La Virgen de Guadalupe!

A blessed Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to you all!

Our Blessed Mother gave us two great miracles on this day four hundred eighty-seven years ago.

Acceding to the demand of Apostolic Administrator [later Archbishop] Fray Juan de Zumarraga, O.F.M., the Mother of God saw to it that Castilian roses grew atop Tepeyac Hill so that her little "Juanito," Juan Diego, a fifty-five year-old widower to whom she had first appeared on December 9, 1531, could provide proof that it was she who had made the request of Fray de Zumarraga to build a shrine in her honor on the hill where she appeared. 

The administrator's guards, who had treated Juan Diego with such cruelty and even racism, spied those roses and tried to grab them out of Juan's tilma as he waited to see Fray de Zumarraga. The roses, quite miraculously, disappeared every time the guards sought to snatch them away from Juan Diego. Those Castilian roses were presented by Juan Diego to Fray Juan de Zumarraga, who knelt before the Indian convert to the Faith as he gazed upon the miraculous image that Juanito did not know was there: the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who was clearly expecting the Baby Jesus. Remember, this was Advent in the year 1531, just forty-nine years after Christopher Columbus first set foot on the Island of San Salvador to implant the Cross of the Divine Redeemer in this hemisphere for the first time since Saint Brendan the Navigator had done so in the First Millennium.

Our Lady's miraculous image showing her expecting the Baby Jesus is quite symbolic of the expectant desire she had then—and has now—for the conversion of the peoples of the Americas to the true Faith, that each person and each nation be born anew as they submit themselves to Christ the King through His Catholic Church. Over nine million indigenous people converted to the true Faith within a short time following her apparition to Juan Diego on this day 486 years ago, almost person for person the number of people lost to the Faith as a result of the Protestant Revolt in Europe. It was almost as though God was saying to those who left, “Fine. I will have My Mother get new souls to populate Holy Mother Church and hence Heaven itself.”

The Americas were indeed converted to Catholicism, which is why the devil had to attack the Faith in Latin America with such ferocity by means of the Masonic revolutionaries who were supported in both philosophical and monetary terms by the lodges in the nascent Untied States of America. Great crimes were committed against Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Most Blessed Mother as a result. These crimes continue to this day, which is, of course, one of the reasons that Saint Michael the Archangel appeared with Our Lady as she spoke to Juan Diego. Our Lady has crushed the head of the serpent with her heel and Saint Michael the Archangel is our helper to crush him in our own lives and in the Americas where he reigns, albeit temporarily, in civil government and in popular culture.

May we rely upon the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Empress and Patroness of the Americas, to help us to be courageous enough to plant seeds for the conversion of the Americas, including the United States of America, to the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church.

Perhaps an extra Rosary today on this glorious feast day will help us to be more faithful and more courageous in our promotion of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. 

Viva Cristo Rey!

Viva Cristo Rey!

Viva La Virgen de Guadalupe!

A blessed Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to you all.

Although I am working on a commentary about the events in Washington, District of Columbia, and on “Father” James Martin’s endorsement of a sacrilegious “Rosary” in honor of the sin of Sodomy, a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States of America not to grant certiorari to the states of Kansas and Louisiana in cases involving the supposed “right” of individual Medicaid recipients to file legal challenges to their decisions to defund Planned Barrenhood required a bit of attention.

Oh, yes, there is a good deal of “I told you so” in this new commentary. Although this site is little read, it does not take a doctorate in political science, not that mine does me much good any more (!), to know a creature of the Washington, District of Columbia establishment, which is why I am completely unsurprised that Associate Justice Brett Michael Kavanaugh followed the lead of Opus Dei’s own John Glover Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States of America, to join with Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to hand Planned Barrenhood quite a victory by permitting individual Medicaid recipients to sue the governments of any state whose legislature has defunded its bloody practices.

Good night—or good morning!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Pope Saint Damasus, pray for us.

I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION." Those words, uttered by the Mother of God herself to Saint Bernadette Soubirous in the Grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes, France, on March 25, 1858, was a Heavenly ratification of the solemn, infallible proclamation of the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854, in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus.

"I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION."

Our Lady was conceived in the womb of her holy mother, Good Saint Anne, without any stain of Original or Actual Sin in anticipation of the merits that would be won by her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, on the wood of the Holy Cross. She, the Singular Vessel of Devotion, had the perfect integrity of Adam and Eve before their Fall from Grace in the Garden of Eden.

It is important, therefore, to get the doctrine of Original Sin right in order to understand the great miracle worked by God in the soul of the fairest flower of our race, Our Lady, from the very first moment of her Immaculate Conception. To get anything about the doctrine of Original Sin wrong leads to the efforts on the part of Modernists to deconstruct the doctrinal definitions of Original Sin and of the Immaculate Conception.

Alas, the Catholic Church, our Holy Mother on earth, our Mater and Magister, is as spotless as the Immaculate Blessed Virgin Mary. Holy Mother Church does not deconstruct infallible dogmatic definitions. Holy Mother Church cannot do so, which is why we need to pray to Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces and our Immaculate Queen, to help us to make no concessions to the counterfeit church of conciliarism that has promulgated an abominable "liturgy" and whose officials feel feel to "reinterpret" dogmatic truths according to Modernist propositions that have been condemned by the authority of our spotless Mother on earth, Holy Mother Church.

Mindful of the effects of our own sins on our immortal souls and of our need to make reparation for them to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, may we make the Secret prayer for today's Holy Mass our own:

"Receive the saving Victim we offer to Thee, O Lord, on the solemn feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: and grant that, as we confess that by Thy prevenient grace she was kept free from every stain of sin; so, by her intercession, we may be delivered from all our offenses. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God."

A blessed Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary to you all! 

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

A blessed Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary to you all.

[The long delay in completing my commentary about naturalism might get just a bit more delayed given all of the "breaking news" and the fact that my right hand is very swollen and features a truly pentitential, itchy rash. Although I thought that I knew the cause of it. I am not so sure now. In any event, I am grateful for the penance. However, the edema on the right hand does slow down the typing process a bit. This having been noted, however, the next article will be a thorough review of recent events, which longtime readers know that I endeavor to place in a supernatural perspective.]

Although work on the long, long article on the madness of naturalism should be completed by Monday or, at the latest, Tuesday, I offer the readers of this site a revised reflection on two saints who opposed heresy, Saint Nicholas of Myra and Saint Ambrose of Milan. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Nicholas of Myra, pray for us.

Saint Ambrose, pray for us.

Well, nearly eight hours after I thought that I could have this article posted, I present to the vast readership of this website a commentary on the supposed “breakthrough” of gene-editing that has, a Red Chinese scientist claims, resulted in the birth of gene-edited twin baby girls.

This is a very long article. Those who read it, however, will understand why it took so long to produce. A few corrections (indenting Oliver Wendell Holmes's opinion in the case of Buck v. Bell and providing the source citation of Father Joseph Patrick Lavin's report on the pagan practices of killing baby girls in China before the Communist takeover on May 1, 1949) have been made.

It may take an equally long time, if not longer, to complete my next commentary, which will be on the madness taking place in the world of naturalism at this time. However, I do what I can as I am able to do so, and I thank the readers of this website for their patience.

Finally, Novus Ordo Watch has a critique of Antipope Emeritus Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s latest foray into heresy, although his belief that there the Catholic Church has “no mission to the Jews” is not at all new as Walter “Cardinal” Kasper said the same thing in 2008. Indeed, a Catholic writer, without naming me, denounced those who believed that Kasper spoke for his boss, “Pope Benedict XVI,” as guilty of a disgusting display of rash judgment. No, it was true then. It is true now. Ratzinger has removed all doubt, although I, for one, had no doubt at all in February of 2008 or at any time thereafter. See Many Acts of Evil Demand Many Acts of Reparation, Defending the Truth is Never Any Kind of Game and Here We Go Again: Fifty Years of Bowing Down to the Talmudists.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Peter Chrysologus, pray for us.

Saint Barbara, pray for us.

This article, which was  substantially revised and enlarged reflection two years ago, on the life and the tireless apostolic work of the great Jesuit missionary and one the original members of Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s Company of Jesus, Saint Francis Xavier.

The title of the revised article reflects the disparaging term that Jorge Mario Bergoglio used to compare believing Catholics with modern-day faithful, believing Mohammedans who take the words of the blasphemous Koran seriously by committing acts of wanton murder against “infidels.” Saint Francis Xavier worked tirelessly for the conversion of those who belonged to false religions. Then again, he was a true Jesuit priest. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a lay Jesuit revolutionary masquerading as a “pope," a man who expelled himself from the bosom of the Catholic Church in his youth as he mocked the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and taught to disparage Catholic doctrine as being in opposition to the Gospel of Christ the King.

The long article on which I have been working for the past four days is nearing completion. The only thing left to do is to transcribe three prayers from The Raccolta and to format the text for publication on the Drupal platform on which this site exists. It is most likely the case that the work can be finished by 5:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time today. God willing and Our Lady interceding, that is.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, S.J., pray for us.