Father Nussbaum was under no illusion. Like all great missionaries he was thinking of martyrdom. He accepted it in advance, and even, deep in his great Christian heart, he hoped for it. He remembered all those who before him had wet this hostile soil with their blood. He thought of Father Mussot who, on April [...]
After the triumph of Marxist Communism in 1917, the style of the persecution of Catholicism in Mexico gradually altered as the country's rulers adopted the methods employed by Moscow. On the other side of the world, in Mexico, the Church suffered an ordeal similar to that of Christianity in Russia. The Land of the Plumed [...]
Eager for legitimacy and filled with the lessons of history, Napoleon Bonaparte knew that the title of Emperor that he had just assumed would not be irrevocable in the eyes of his subjects until he had become “the Lord’s Anointed,” like the kings of France. Events since the Concordat had unrolled an endless carpet of [...]
The affair of Galileo was not played out in the atmosphere of inquisitorial terror that some writers have imagined; one cannot even say that the high ecclesiastical authorities posed systematically as enemies of scientific progress. How did the Church react in face of perils she could not ignore? The secular arm, whose aid she had [...]
Friedrich Nietzsche's is a Messianic view, but devoid of God, regarding Superman both as saviour and saved. His concept led to the justification of violence, cruelty, the worst inequality of human conditions, and even slavery. There has been in our age no more complete embodiment of the satanic rebellion. The Church of the Revolutionary Age: [...]
Don Bosco’s character was in keeping with his physique: balance and firmness, but also courage and enthusiasm. He was a legendary figure, a living exemplar of sanctity in action. During one of his visions the ineffable Presence asked him what he desired, and he replied: “Lord, give me souls and keep the rest.” The Church [...]
As medieval Christendom plunged into the abyss, a cry went up, stronger, perhaps, and more moving than any that had yet been heard. This voice gave utterance in immortal language to the sublimity of the Christian ideal and to the age-long Christian message. He whose cry was to echo down the centuries and bear witness, [...]