De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

The Madonna of Loreto or Pilgrim's Madonna (1604–1606) by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, located in the Cavalletti Chapel of the church of Sant'Agostino, near the Piazza Navona in Rome. The scene is a moment where everyday common man (or woman) encounters the divine, whose appearance is also not unlike that of a common man (or woman). One of the hardest things about writing a blog is knowing when to speak and when to shut up. Believe it or not, there is quite a lot of information that comes my way that I do not post. I do try and post uplifting and encouraging stuff here, but it is necessarily interspersed with my worries and concerns about departures from the faith I have lived and studied. My desire is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. My family are brought up in this conviction and this makes it central to my life. I post concerns not to raise scandal, but to reject error and to educate the laity to the problems which, I feel strongly, will persist until we st...

I love it! According to Rorate Caeli , Pope Francis said Mass ad orientem yesterday. Lots of people are reporting this because it is the way Mass was always said before the changes in the seventies. The Mass was at the tomb of Pope John Paul II, so some are saying that because the tomb is pushed against a wall and it's impossible to stand behind it, Francis had no choice. However, if it had mattered that much to him a makeshift versus populum table could have been easily arranged. So what does this mean? Tim Stanley in the Telegraph seems to have it right I think: "The likeliest interpretation of this isn't that Francis is a liturgical conservative but rather that he  just doesn't care  about the protocol sensitivities of either trads or liberals. We have a Pope who, for better and worse, isn't that bothered about liturgy and is far more focused on evangelism and charity. That's bad in the sense that it means traditionalists have lost a champion in t...

America is waking up to the incredible news that three young women who vanished in separate incidents about a decade ago in the US state of Ohio have been found alive in a house in Cleveland. Amanda Berry disappeared aged 16 in 2003, Gina DeJesus went missing aged 14 a year later, and Michelle Knight disappeared in 2002 aged around 19. A six-year-old was also found at the home, who speculation suggests could be Amanda Berry's daughter. This is completely shocking story, for the length of time these young women were incarcerated, the seeming simplicity of the ultimate discovery or escape, and for the fact that the man who lived at the property was no recluse  but often seen playing with his dog or bbq'ing on the front lawn. I find it incredible that something like this can go on for such a length of time and no one knew anything about it. One cannot help but speculate if this might be a result of the 'none of your business', individualist attitude which pervades...

Some of the best stuff on the Pope. Ttony at the Muniment Room has an excellent post here  where he remarks: His decision was taken some time ago: he told his brother six months ago, but he started dropping in on Celestine V rather longer ago. It's not unreasonable to suppose that everything he has done in the last two or three years has been done with his leaving in mind, and with his leaving everything in as good a condition as possible for his successor. Ttony explains that his... ...initial reaction - that he should have stayed on to death - is being replaced by an appreciation that Pope Benedict probably has a rather better idea of what he should do than me. We have had eight years - eight game-changing years - from a Pope who couldn't have been expected to last anything like this long. We are seeing the supernatural eddying into the natural world through his decision. The historian Timothy Stanley suggests that Benedict XVI will be known as... ...a l...