Praise His Goodness in 2025

Another twelve months has come and gone, another year in the valley of tears. Though it is cliche to say, I will never cease to marvel at the swiftness with which the days pass. "Time, like an ever-flowing stream, bears all its sons away." It was, however, an incredibly fruitful year for myself and for this blog, with several new professional relationships forged, new projects embarked upon, and a prolific amount of material written that I am very proud of.

Between the Unam Sanctam Catholicam blog and website, I published 62 essays in 2024. I've also been publishing a monthly history column at Catholic Exchange (which is more normie friendly) and have recently become a fairly regular contributor to Catholic Family News, a relationship I am deeply grateful for. Last year also saw the publication of the first three installaments in series of essays at New Liturgical Movement delving into (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Further installments in the series will be coming in 2025. 

While I am happy with everything I've produced this year, below are some of my favorite articles from the USC treasury. These are from both the blog and website:

• The Four Griefs of Wisdom
• The Lord Weighs the Heart
• Segregated Catholic Schools in New Orleans
• Why I'm Not Orthodox
• Two Deaths and Two Masses: The Healing Power of the Requiem (guest post)
• The Pax Tablet
• Gratitude: It is Good for Us to Be Here 
• My English Tour
• Liturgical Handwarmers
• Supporting the Church in Anglo-Saxon England
• Our Barren Garden of Symbols
• Walking to Church
• "Sunday Christ" Images
• Crises of Faith: Letting Go to Hold On
• Make Your Devotion Attractive
• The Justinian Code and the Emergence of Clerical Marriage in Byzantium
• Sister Blandina vs. the Public School
• The Context of Cajetan's Comments on Praying for a Pope's Death
• The Real Apparitions are the Friends You Made Along the Way

I also want to mention the tremendous success the Unam Sanctam Catholicam YouTube channel had in 2024. The last twelve months saw the channel double in size, with 2,300 new subscribers and over 10,000 hours of viewing with 4,566 subs to date. The USC Facebook page continues to grow steadily as well, with around 13,100 followers. 

Another major enterprise in 2024 was the successful publication of The Latin Mass and the Youth, which was first announced on this blog back in the spring. The Latin Mass and the Youth is a collection of 42 essays by young Catholics ages 12 to 24 explaining what the Traditional Latin Mass means to them.

I should also mention The St. John Ogilvie Prayerbook, which is a compilation of prayers, rituals, rites, seasons and events that reflect a Celtic and Catholic spiritual vision. With an original introduction by His Excellency Athanasius Schneider, this is a great resource for Catholics who want to reconnect with the authentic Gaelic tradition. It's a really beautiful book—344 pages on 39 gsm "Bible”

like thin paper, with soft imitation leather, ribbon, and gold foiling. The best part is, if you use the code UNAM at the link above, you can get it for 15% off : )

Thank you kindly to everyone who has supported this blog or interacted with any of my content. It means a lot to me. Special thanks are due to Greg DiPippo, Peter Kwasniewski, Matt Gaspers, Konstantin Staebler, Murray Rundus, Brian McCall, Reyers Brusoe, Athanasius Schneider, Joe Johnson, Alex Barbas, Chris Lewis, Joseph Lipa, Michael Schrauzer, and all the other friends, supporters, and patrons of this blog and website. 

Let us praise His goodness in 2025!

So Long, Pater Familias

Welp, another Catholic blog from the golden age of blogging bit the dust this spring. On May 13, Rob Marco announced he was wrapping up his blog Pater Familias. Rob had been a fixture in the Catholic blogging world going back to 2006 and had two other blogs prior to Pater Familias. It took me awhile to discover Pater Familias; there were several years when I was far too busy to read any Catholic blogs and it was all I could do to just keep this one afloat. I think I met Rob through his own persistent efforts to get to know me through the combox of own blog, and we eventually started communicating. It has been a fruitful friendship for which I am grateful. I have always found Rob's insights into Catholic life pervaded with a nitty-gritty, on the ground realism that seeks to get behind cliches and platitudes to dig into the core of what the struggle for holiness actually entails. I know many other people found Rob's ruminations an anchor of spiritual stability in a tumultuous time as well.

Septimus Decimus Anniversarius

Seventeen years of Unam Sanctam Catholicam this day. Seems like a lifetime ago when I started this blog. It has been an incredibly long time. This blog has, in fact, been one of the most constant things in my adult life, which is bizarre to think about. It is older than three of my children and outlasted my marriage and every job I've ever had. And it is one of the oldest still-functioning Traditional Catholic blogs, with the exception of Rorate Caeli and New Liturgical Movement. 

A New Year and Epiphany Greeting

This is the seventeenth year I have posted one of these New Years' posts. Typically I sum up the year in blogging and highlight some of my favorite posts and projects I was involved with, then offer some concluding thoughts on the year as a whole.

Anniversarius Sextus Decimus

The Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul has always been a special day for Unam Sanctam Catholicam, being the anniversary of the day I launched the blog in 2007.

Over the years, many of you have reached out to me and expressed gratitude in particular for the articles on subjects like spirituality, maintaining faith, and dealing with disappointment or doubt. I am humbled that the reflections posted here have been a source of edification to many.

It is especially fitting, on this 16th anniversary of Unam Sanctam, therefore, that I take a moment to speak about the first ever compilation of USC essays in book form. Arouca Press (which has been a luminary of traditional Catholic publishing since its launch in 2018) has taken a collection of the spiritual essays published here over the years and compiled them into a book called The Way of Life: Spiritual Essays from Unam Sanctam Catholicam. The Way of Life is a collection of forty short essays on spirituality, faith, and Christian life. Most are taken from articles published here over the years (reworked, expanded, and re-edited), although it does include several never before published essays, as well as a few from my friend and sometimes contributor dom Noah Moerbeek, CPMO.

A Pentecost Miscellany

[May 28, 2023] Happy Pentecost brethren! I have had so many things in my mind recently, but as I am sure I will not have time to flesh most of them out, today I am presenting you with a miscellany of my recent ruminations. I may develop these further in future posts, but who knows. Enjoy my brain dump!

Let Us Rejoice in 2023

[JAN. 15, 2023] This New Year was quite somber in the Boniface household. The death of Pope Benedict XVI on New Years Eve aside, I was completely wiped out with Covid, an ordeal from which my strength has not yet fully recovered. Personal and ecclesiastical events seemed to portent 2023 as a year of sorrow and penitence. Time will see if this prognostication is correct.

Response to Robert

[Sep. 9, 2022] Earlier this month, I was written an open letter by Robert at the lovely blog Pater Familias. This post is my response to his letter. Before you read this post, therefore, you should visit Robert's "Letter to Boniface" post and read it in order to understand my response in context.

My brother, I am touched by your correspondence. I commend you for your candor and openness. You brought up many points, to which I don't know if I will have adequate answer; but I will answer as I can, according to my poor ability. Please understand that my words here represent my own peculiar spiritual approach to the vicissitudes of life. I am no spiritual advisor and do not intend to lecture you on how you ought to be doing things; I am just one beggar telling another beggar where I have found some bread. 

You spoke of the fear that your children may one day apostasize. I understand the anxiety a father experiences over their children's faith; I have suffered with it myself occasionally, although—thanks be to God—it is something I no longer fret over. Certainly not because the world has gotten any better. Rather, it has served me well to remember what Christ has said: "Sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (Matt. 6:34). If I wish to have peace, my focus must be on what is before me. The only moment I have any control over is the present, and this is where our Lord desires us to keep our focus. Now is the day of salvation; now is the moment of grace. What good can come of anxiety over a future that has not happened, and may never happen? The best way I can secure my children's faith in the future is to be Christlike now.

We imagine our theater of action is vastly broader than it is; in actuality, it is quite small, confined to the tiny, fleeting moment we retain control over, a moment so brief it is gone by the time we even conceive of it. But it is to our great benefit that the window is so small, for it puts our salvation into a context we can manage. The grand arc of my life, my eternal destiny, and that of my children and friends, and the will of God overarching it all—it's all too much for me to maintain in head and heart; "such knowledge is too wonderful for me; far too lofty for me to reach" (Ps. 139:6). Thank God He does not ask me to navigate such a tremendous vessel all at once! Rather, he commits to me a single oar and tells me "Row well, and live"; he entrusts me with a single coin and says, "Use this wisely." And that I can manage, especially with the aid of His grace which enlightens my mind. The burden of our salvation is actually quite small; "my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:30). That's not to say salvation is not of tremendous import, obviously, but it is one of the paradoxes of the Kingdom of God that the import of such a grave matter can be a burden of light and an easy yoke. Just because something is important does not mean it must be draining; I am reminded of Chesterton's famous quip, "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly." To achieve great things, we must become small. That includes shrinking the locus of our attention in the way Christ suggests in the Beatitudes.

This relates to our Lord's command to be as children. We usually interpret the childlike faith to relate to trust, and this is certainly true, but I think it also relates to our focus. Children are concerned only with what is before them; they take no care for tomorrow and scarcely remember yesterday. Their attention is entirely fixated upon whatever they are doing at the moment. Imagine if your own spiritual attention was so fixated on the moment! Invest that kind of focus in the here and now and you will do better. "Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life?" (Matt. 6:27)

I realize this is easier said than done, especially given the darkness that is overtaking the world. You mention your disgust with the world increasing with each passing year, and a fear that your faith is being corrupted by a kind of judgmental self-righteousness. I read this part of your letter many times, contemplating it from various angles, and I think you are correct to be concerned about this matter. Our Lord does not want us to be consumed with disgust, even if we are surrounded by things that truly merit it. Jesus promised that His commandments would bring us joy. He said, "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love...These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:10-11). Our Lord intends our joy to be "full." If we are not people of joy, we therefore must stop and ask why?

The world is covered in darkness, the Church is in chaos, society is adrift, the economy is collapsing. How can we be joyful? I return, again, to my previous theme, reduction of scope; in other words, my brother, who told you any of this was your concern? Has God laid it upon you to save the world? Is the goings on of the Vatican your personal responsibility? Or are the economy and western civilization entrusted entirely to your hands? Assuredly not. Of course, there are some men whose responsibilities are much more vast; some men have been given ten talents, and their obligations are weighty. But such is not you, and such is not me. The Church? Not my concern. The country? Not my concern—at least not in the sense of making it all my personal business and wasting my energy fretting about it all. Commending it all to prayer is the best we can do, fulfilling what Paul asks of Timothy, to make prayers and supplications for all all in authority (1 Tim. 2:1-2).

Then what is my concern? The Lord requires my faithfulness in the things He has entrusted to me. What talents has He put into your hand? Your work, your children, your wife, your parish. All relatively modest, when you think about it; at least vastly more so than worrying about the world, the church, and society. My brother, just be attentive to the little circle of this universe that is under your immediate gaze. Hug your wife and children. Be diligent in your daily tasks. Plant and grow your garden and rejoice in the dirt under your fingers, the greenness of grass, blueness of sky, and the wind on your face. Walk down your road and marvel at the movements of bone, sinew, and limb before the ravages of age deprive you of them. Thank God for the breath in your nostrils. 

The small things, the small things, ah, yes, that is where happiness lies, if it lies anywhere. Not in the fire, or earthquake, or roar of wind but in the still, small voice. Find Him there. I understand your restlessness to "do more" and "be more"; believe me! I feel it every day of my life. But if you want to do more, then be less. If you want Him to increase you, then decrease. In the Kingdom of our Lord, the way up is down. Instead of thinking about doing greater things, do average things with greater love. Imbue your routine with meaning, and you may find that a golden tide washes over all of it and the mundane becomes bathed in glory like a sunbeam falling through your window on a summer afternoon.

You noted that you are alarmed at your shortcomings despite doing the "right things." I see how this alarms you, but I think it alarms you more than necessary. The faith is not a matter of box-checking;  certainly these things you mentioned (Rosary, First Fridays, Adoration, etc.) are all of great importance. But we delude ourselves if we think things are going to go our way just because we have checked the boxes. There is a "not knowingness" that is inherent to faith; a kind of "not yet"—a haze that caused St. Paul say "we see in a mirror yet darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12); this mist must simply be accepted. Embrace your status as a viator; we are not yet what we will become (cf. 1 John 3:2). We are pilgrims, whose feet ache, whose brows are beaded with sweat, whose stomachs hunger; and for all our trials we do not see clearly our destination—but it is sufficient to know we are on the road there. We wrestle with God like Jacob wrestled the angel. You must simply accept this; accept the not-knowingness. Of course, continue to do the "right things," but abandon any notion that the "right things" are going to yield some specific, concrete result in the here and now. Paradoxically, if you let go of that expectation, you might find things begin to change for you. Things change for us when we stop forcing them; the Spirit works in those realms beyond our mind and strength.

Of course it is only by grace that any of us can hang on. But what has comforted me greatly is a passage from 1 Corinthians, in which Paul says, "if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he has not" (1 Cor. 8:12). If we yield ourselves to God in sincerity, He accepts our offering based on what we have, not what we lack. If we invest our talents faithfully, His standard of judgement is proportional to what we had to work with. The man who is given one is only expected to yield one; the man with ten is expected to yield ten. I have returned to this passage again and again to help me see my own life in perspective. I hope it may be of benefit to you as well. That we hang on by grace is nothing to be ashamed of; in fact, it is a tremendous consolation, or ought to be. 

I understand loneliness all too well. I, too, am a father, but I have been divorced for several years and have no woman. I'm not sure if my loneliness is of the same as yours; I am fairly content where I am at and don't feel the urgent desire for companionship you express. Such was not always the case, though; I have spent many years learning the art of happiness. St. Paul says he had learned to be content in all situations (cf. Php. 4:11-13). I have realized over time that I, too, can be happy despite my circumstance. I can be happy even in my loneliness. Just like I can have faith even when I don't understand. I can have hope even when I feel broken. I can have love even when darkness is crashing around me. We all can.

Have you ever seen the HBO John Adams series? There is a fantastic scene at the end where John Adams, now elderly and looking back on his life, counsels his son to live in jubilation at the wonders of the mundane. I highly recommend you watch this scene if you haven't seen it before. 

Your expression of the loneliness at Adoration grieved me. I do not know what to tell you, other than such has not been my experience. But then again, when I come before our Lord, all I expect Him to do is just be. I suppose I do not contrast His "affirming" or "speaking" with His "being." When I come before Him, I come unto the ineffable light, that which simply is. And in merely beholding Him, He both affirms and speaks all that must be affirmed and all that needs be said. His gaze is transformative. Heaven is the vision of God. The only thing that ever needs to change in light of that vision is me.

I will say one more thing: when I was a new Christian, I glossed over the Beatitudes because they seemed so simple. Of course I affirmed them and believed them, but they seemed very "basic"; I was eager to get onto bigger things. I did not want milk; I was eager for meat. But now I see that what St. Paul said applied to me: "I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready" (1 Cor. 3:2). I have since gone back to the Beatitudes and found a treasure trove of riches therein, especially of value for maintaining the right balance and proper spiritual focus. I have derived more spiritual benefit from them than I ever though possible. So I encourage you to interiorize the Beatitudes until they are your very breath and the pulse in your wrist.

I apologize in advance that my answer is so poor. I fear I may not be of much help to you. But know that I have prayed for you in hopes that you, too, may find light, refreshment, and peace in His glory. 

Exciting News: New USC Site is Live!

I'm so happy to tell you that the new Unam Sanctam Catholicam website is up and running. After working on it for over a year—with some donations from some of you—this labor of love is finally complete...or at least, complete enough. 

My goal with the Unam Sanctam sister site is to (eventually) grow it into the biggest repository of quality articles on Catholic history on the Internet. I have consistently been uploading scholarly articles to USC since 2012 and plan on continuing for as long as I have my wits about me. To celebrate the inauguration of the new site, I'm also happy to present fifteen brand new essays for your edification. These fifteen essays represent the fifteen years of Unam Sanctam Catholicam I celebrated last month. Here are links to the fifteen new articles—

• Piety for the Dead in Merry England
• Archbishop Aelfsige Dies in the Alps
• The Strange Tale of Moses of Crete
• Ostrich Eggs in the Liturgy
• The Legend of St. Maternus
• Vignettes of Fulda Monastery
• The Brotherhood of St. John the Evangelist of Death
• St. Anthony and the Miser's Heart
• Gregory the Great's Reform of the Sacrament of Penance
• The Manila Synod of 1582
• The Cathach of St. Columba
• Demonic Impregnation: Incubi and Succubi
• Why is St. Therese Called the "Little Flower"?
• St. Hildegard on Gemstones
• The Author of Dei Verbum Speaks

Old Articles

All of the old articles you love are available on the new site as well. To date, about 75% of the articles from the old website have been migrated over. It will still be a month or two until everything is transferred, but almost all of the most popular articles have been moved and can be found on the new site. Please note, the URLs on the new site are not the same as the old site, so the old links will no longer work. You will have to search for the article on the new site. Here are links to some of peoples' favorite essays from the old site, according to the number of hits they receive:

• Balthasar Denies Christ's Beatific Vision
• Watchers and Nephilim
• Council Fathers on Ambiguity in Vatican II
• The Exorcism of Nicola Aubrey
• Roman Rota on the Ends of Marriage
• Christianity and Mithraism
• The Truth About Priestly Celibacy in the Early Church
• Contradictions in the New Testament?
• The Obedience of Athanasius
• Ecclesiastical Property Ownership in the Middle Ages
• Death Penalty and Retributive Justice
• Deconstructing the Documentary Hypothesis
• Humility and Station in Life
• Anti-Catholicism in the Salem Witch Trials
• Crusaders and Conversion
• The Lost Legacy of John XXIII
• "Sign of Discord": Two Bishops in the Seat of Peter
• Glosses Reveal a Gnostic Luther
• Obscure Saints

If you are having trouble finding an old article, I recommend using the search function. If the search function turns up nothing, it's probably I haven't migrated that specific article yet, in which case try back later; I hope to have everything migrated by September. 

Free RCIA Resources

One of the most popular things about the old site was the free RCIA outlines and power points. These are still available on the new site at the following link:

• Free RCIA Notes and Outlines

Finding Content on the New Site

One of the major changes about the updated site is that it is not structured like a blog or news site where priority is given to the most recent content. The reason I have a sister site at all is because the sister site is meant to be a repository of articles that are of a more scholarly nature, have a permanent relevance, and are much longer than what would be suitable for a blog; for example, some of the essays on the Unam Sanctam site are between 20-30 pages printed out, whereas the average blog article is only 1-5 pages printed. Furthermore, unlike this blog, most website articles are not about current events, and thus there is no need to prioritize new content.

Instead, I have chosen to structure the new site more like a Wiki or encyclopedia. You will notice, if you go to the homepage, each time you refresh the homepage, it will display a selection of articles chosen at random. Don't worry, though; there are several ways to find content, including tags, "recent posts," and the search function. I put together a video explaining how to navigate the new site and have embedded it below. If you've been a frequent visitor to the Unam Sanctam Catholicam website in the past, you might want to watch the video below (6+ minutes), since you might find the new layout very different from the previous. 

One final word—

As you probably know, Unam Sanctam Catholicam is 100% independent. We don't have advertisers; we have no sponsors. Except for free will donations (which we solicit very rarely), we take in no revenue. We have no advertising budget. The extent of the advertising I do is restricted to whatever I post on the USC Facebook page.

Despite this, for many years Unam Sanctam Catholicam has consistently been ranked among the top 50 most popular Catholic blogs/websites in the English speaking world; we were even in the top ten one year back before the coming of 1 Peter 5. This was certainly not due to the support of any institution or big marketing budget; it was due to the patronage of regular readers who found what I had to say worth reading, who commented, who shared the articles, and became true peers. I am tremendously grateful for all of you.

And now I ask again for one simple favor to help the new site get on its feet: because the URLs are all different, Google has not quite picked up on the new site yet. I've got the crawlers going over it, but still, the traffic to the new site is only a fraction of old site because it is so new. And the old site is still showing up all the time on Google searches despite being offline for a month. In your charity, please send some time clicking around on the new site. Explore it, read some articles, share something on social media. This will help get the word out and build those new pathways to give the site a boost in the algorithm.

Also, I'm still working on a few glitches, so please forgive if you see something a little off. I assure you I am working on it.

Thanks for sticking with me on this long journey. In your mercy, pray for my poor soul. As always, if you want to contact me, I can be reached at uscatholicam@gmail.com.

~Boniface

Fifteen Years of Unam Sanctam Catholicam

This year, the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, June 29, was the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of this blog. My plans for this anniversary went a little awry; I was going to announce a big launch of the new website, but of course, at the last minute there were some bugs and problems to smooth out. I held out till today but probably it's going to be a few more days until I can unveil it.

I was thinking about where the world and the Church was when I launched this blog—George W. Bush was president, we were in the middle of the Iraq War. Benedict XVI was only in the second year of his papacy; the big news was the Regensburg Lecture, which had taken place only a few months earlier. There was lots of gossip swirling on Catholic blogs about an imminent Motu Proprio coming down the pike that would change the status of the Traditional Latin Mass. Marcial Maciel had been forced to step down the year before I took up blogging; the same year I began, all the revelations about his filth began to become public, at least in the sense that people stopped defending him and for the first time there was a universal acknowledgment of what had happened.

It is strange to think that the entire Summorum pontificum era has come and gone within the span of time I have been blogging. When I began blogging there was a imminent sense that the freedom of the Traditional Latin Mass was coming soon; now there is the imminent sense that every month will bring a further blow against its adherents. The same problems still plague the Church: people are uncatechized, liturgical abuse is rife, the Vatican does nothing, bishops are by-and-large useless, and there is nothing new under the sun. But the mood is completely different; it feels completely adrift, alone in uncertain waters far off the chart, on the part of the map that says "Here be monsters." Maybe we'll get back home someday, but we will probably have to do a complete circumnavigation before we arrive, like the man G.K. Chesteron spoke of who walked around the entire earth only to arrive back at his own yard from behind, seeing it what is old and familiar from a strikingly new perspective.

Thanks for hanging in there with me, especially those readers who have been here since those early days of Benedict XVI's pontificate. I used to use this venue to complain. I still use it to complain, but I used to too. And I'm better at it now : )

Blessings and grace to you all
Uncle Boniface

Important Changes to Unam Sanctam Catholicam

Pax et bonum friends. For the past year, I have been hinting about some changes to the Unam Sanctam Catholicam website (see here and here). As most of you know, the USC web presence is two fold, consisting of a blog (which you are now reading), and a website, which currently can be found here. The blog hosts rants, reflections on current events, and spiritual musings; the website is for scholarly articles, featuring content that is of more perennial interest and often too long to be posted on a blog.

The Unam Sanctam blog you have all come to love is staying same as it ever was—complete with its outdated 2007 blogger theme and iconic hard-to-read white font on black background that Boomers consistently complain about, so no worries there! The major changes are coming to the website. The format is a super clunky, unsightly Joomla template from 2012. It's ugly and it sucks. And, I've barely touched it; I think I've only posted ten essays to it since 2017? It's in desperate need of an overhaul! So, over the past year, I have been migrating this content to a new, slicker looking WordPress site that is going to be infinitely easier to read. Lord willing, this new site will be ready to launch by June 29, our fifteenth year anniversary.

That being said, you can expect some changes on the new site:

(1) More Exclusive Focus on History. When I first created the Unam Sanctam sister site ten years ago, I envisioned it as a kind of clearinghouse for articles on all manner of subjects Catholics might take interest in: history, economics, moral problems, theology, liturgy, and even pop-culture. However, the way my own interests and professional life have developed since then, it's become clear that history is my strongest field by far. And honestly, whereas ten or fifteen years ago I happily prattled on about theology or canon law, time has honed the edges of my self-assurance to the point that I have recognized I am not competent to speak on many of those matters. So, on the new site, I will mostly stick to history and leave the theology to the theologians, canon law to the canonists, etc. The old classic articles on these subjects—like "Balthasar and the Faith of Christ" or "Collegiality: The Church's Pandora's Box"—will remain, but I will likely not post new content of that sort. If I do create such articles, they will probably be guest-posted on other websites more suited to these sorts of essays.

(2) The Movie Reviews are going away. One consequence of this new focus is that the movie reviews will be eliminated. I don't think anybody reads these anyway, and to be honest I have not really updated them regularly since 2017, so they are woefully out of date. And I simply no longer have time to write about them anymore (although, if you've ever met me in person, you know I still love to blather on about cinema whenever I can). But, since I will not be updating them anymore, is there anyone out there who wants the current batch of reviews? I think there are about 165 individual write ups. Is there any Catholic out there who has a film review site or is hoping to get one started and would like to adopt these 165 reviews for their project? If so, please email me at uscatholicam@gmail.com.

(3) Higher Quality of Content. The essays on the sister site were always of a more scholarly nature than on this blog, but the new site is going to up this even further in terms of scholarship. It is my intention that the new site become an encyclopedic repository of highly researched, academic articles that are suitable to be cited as sources or used for research purposes. I'm really excited about some of the new stuff I've been writing and I can't wait to share with you all. I've got some fascinating stuff on St. Hildegard, the Annals of Fulda, Pope Gregory VII's reform of the sacrament of penance, the first regional synod in the Philippines, and much more.

One thing about the migration: Though all of the existing articles will be migrated over, they will have different URLs. If you have certain articles from the site bookmarked, I suggest you make sure you copy the titles of those articles down somewhere so you can find them on the new site, as your bookmarks will no longer work in a few months. 

I want to thank all of you for your support over the years, especially those who contributed financially to help with this project. I do not make any money of this site, save for the few times a year when I hock some books or when a few people offer me a donation. Consequently, this project has moved very slowly, depending in large part on charity. Everyone who has helped, you are remembered in my prayers! And, if you'd still like to make a contribution, please email me at uscatholicam@gmail.com. 

In a recent article ("The End of Pop-Apologetics", Apr. 10, 2022), a commentor stated that "Blogging is nearly obsolete as a content delivery system. People want to have a video or audio file running in the background while they're at the gym or working from home. Few have the patience to read even something as short as this post." I don't know whether that observation is correct or not. But I do believe there will always be a need for and interest in thoughtful, well-written articles. However the Internet continues to unfold (and I can only assume it will just get stupider) I pray that Unam Sanctam Catholicam will continue to be a beacon of knowledge.

One final word: If anyone would like to be a contributor on the new site, I am always willing to collaborate. If you are like to write scholarly essays on historical subjects, I'd like to hear from you. You can help me make USC the biggest and best repository of original Catholic historical essays in the English language! Email me at uscatholicam@gmail.com if you want to help.

Blessings and grace friends!

~Boniface
Founder and Webmaster of all things USC

Best Posts of 2021

I think in all my years of blogging this has been the first where I have been delinquent publishing my happy New Year post. Mea culpa! It's not just that I've been busy; I've been in kind of a funk. Lethargic. Anyway, 2021 was a pretty momentous year for traditional Catholics. Obviously Traditiones Custodes and its aftermath dominated the news cycle in the second half of the year. 

I posted around 30 articles this year, but today I have chosen to highlight my favorite eight. In reviewing these, I've noticed that most are very practical—articles about maintaining faith, happiness, and sanity in the midst of troubling times. I guess that speaks to where my heart has been this year. What about you? Where has your heart been?

Leniency and Severity: Our perceptions of what is lenient and what is severe are colored by our own spiritual struggles.

With the Joy of Christ's First Breath: You can choose joy, despite what's going on in the Church and world.

When Trads Choose Barabbas: When traditionalism becomes more about "owning the libs" than actual Catholic Tradition.

Nine Reflections on Traditionis Custodes: My immediate reaction to the promulgation of Traditionis Custodes.

Crises of Faith: Escaping our Subjectivity: The problem of religious doubt exists at the crossroads where the Church and the doubter intersect in an experience that precipitates the crisis of faith.

Crises of Faith: The Operation of Grace: Why our own assessments of whether grace is "working" are woefully deficient.

Discouragement from Habitual Sin: Some thoughts I have found helpful when I feel discouraged by habitual sin.

Pope Denethor: Reflections on the CDW Responsa: Comments on the CDW response to dubia submitted about Traditionis Custodes.

Happy New Year everybody

Some Updates

A few months ago I posted an appeal for donations in conjunction with the fourteenth year anniversary of this blog. The purpose of the appeal was to help defray the expenses of updating the woefully dated USC sister site, fund the professional design for some new book projects, and translate my RCIA notes and outlines into Spanish. Unfortunately I did not raise enough to cover all these projects, but enough of you stepped forward that I was able to make some progress. The new Unam Sanctam Catholicam sister site has been constructed, and I am currently migrating all the content over. There is still some design stuff I need to work out, but it feels good to be getting this underway. I especially want to thank one reader who gave an extremely generous donation that covered a big chunk of cost. Deo gratias. 

Anyhow, not much else I wanted to say except that work is going on. I hope to have the new site launched by the time we celebrate this blog's fifteenth anniversary in June of 2022. If you'd still like to contribute, you can use this Paypal link to make a one time donation or set up a recurring donation, which some of you were generous enough to do. Thank you sincerely. It is my hope that once the new site is complete I can turn my attention to working to get the RCIA outlines translated into Spanish, and then Arabic, Lord willing. But for now, one step at a time.

Blessings and grace to you and pray for me, a poor sinner

~Boniface

Fourteen Years and an Appeal

Every year on the Feast of St. Peter and Paul it has become custom for me to write an anniversary post commemorating the founding of this blog, which (in its current form) was launched on June 29, 2007. Today I am celebrating fourteen years of Unam Sanctam Catholicam.

But beyond celebrating this enduring blog, I also wanted to give you some news and make an appeal.

First, I want to let you all know I am going to be taking an extended break for awhile. Nothing is wrong in my life or anything, I am just fairly busy and I want to disconnect for a time. I have a lot of books and projects I am involved with, and I also just want to step away from online Traddie-dom for a bit. 

One project I am going to be working on this year is switching over the sister site to a new format. I have been operating www.unamsanctamcatholicam.com since 2012 on a Joomla template that has become woefully clunky and outdated.  I am migrating that site and all its content over to a much sleeker Wordpress-based template that will make it a lot more aesthetically pleasing and easier to navigate. I don't expect this will be done before the end of 2021, but I am going to be spending a lot of time on it.

As I break and revamp the sister site, I'd like to ask you to consider making a financial donation to support the work of Unam Sanctam Catholicam. 

What is this "work" you ask?

Unam Sanctam Catholicam is consistently one of the top-ranked Catholic blogs in the English speaking world. It has been in the top 100 for the past decade and has occasionally been in the top 10. It's content has been 4.3 million times; an average of 38,500 people read our articles every single month. That's 38,500 readers every month being exposed to our articles about the goodness, truth, and beauty of the Catholic faith—articles devoid of clickbait, not beholden to any organization or authority, written in a spirit of patient reflection without pretension. Granted, that means you sometimes have to deal with my own stupidity, but at least there's no commercial angle or institutional gags on my content. I am a fool, but you get to enjoy my foolery without any hook.

My free RCIA notes and outlines have been downloaded 80,000 times and show up first for the Google search "RCIA notes." That's 80,000 people who chose to go with my outlines—full of quotes from the Catechism, Aquinas, the Councils, and the Fathers—instead of any number of the garbage RCIA resources floating around out there.

Countless people have messaged me over the years saying the Bayside article I did back in 2013 had helped them come out of the Bayside hoax. Ditto for my articles over the years on Medjugorje.

I am not a social media influencer. I have never tried to monetize this site by turning into a subscription service, nor have I ever hocked "premium content." I don't make a living from this blog; if I feel like posting I do, and if I don't I don't. 

That being said, a little bit goes a long way. If you've ever been entertained, edified, or educated by Unam Sanctam Catholicam, please consider helping. There’s many ways your contributions can benefit Unam Sanctam Catholicam: 

• I would like to get my RCIA notes and outlines translated into Spanish and then Arabic. I'd like to be able to pay people for this translating work.
  
  
• As I mentioned above, I am revamping the USC sister site. I would like funds to help pay for the redevelopment and obtain improved design elements of the new site.
  
  
• While I work as a professional writer, I also self-publish works on matters of interest to traditional Catholics. For example, the USC Ebook, Laudato Si: The 40 Concerns of an Exhausted Layman, The Book of Non-Contradiction on harmonizing apparently divergent biblical accounts, and most recently, Power from On High on the history of theocratic monarchy in the Christian west. Your donations allow me to (a) spend more time working on these passion projects instead of grinding away at the corporate stuff, and  (b) help me pay professional copywriters and artists to improve the quality of these self-published works. 

In the meantime, I have a lot on the docket for the rest of 2021. Here are just a few of the articles I have in the works for the next sixth months (hopefully):

• The legend of St. Maternus
• Use of ostrich eggs in the traditional liturgy 
• Various book reviews
• The Church and autopsies
• St. Gregory of Narek
• Cuss words in the Middle Ages
• Medieval clerical opinions on beards
• English bishops and the pallium journey to Rome
• Gemstones in the writings of St. Hildegard
• Part 3 in my series on the Nephilim (hopefully)

If there is something else you would like to see me write about, please do not hesitate to shoot me an email at uscatholicam[at]gmail.com. Thank you for your patronage over the years. Please use the Paypal button below to make a donation; if you'd like to send a check in the snail mail, message me at uscatholicam[at]gmail.com and I'll let you know how. And as always, follow us on Facebook. May the Lord richly bless you.

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION TO UNAM SANCTAM VIA PAYPAL

Best Posts of 2020

We have finally made it to the end of 2020. So much has happened this year, it seems difficult to process that only twelve months have gone by. Do you remember the big news around December 31, 2019? I will remind you—we were arguing about whether Pope Francis slapped a Chinese woman or not. Crazy how much the ground has shifted since then in so many ways. Twelve months later we are at a place where the faithful are fighting just to attend Mass in many places and basic liberties are under attack throughout the world in a way few of us imagined.

The year was formative for me in many ways as well. Though it was challenging socially, it was not bad for me professionally; in fact 2020 was probably my most professionally successful year ever. I also seem to have had several breakthroughs in my spiritual life that have shifted me into a richer and more rewarding Christian life. I hope you all also had some unexpected blessings in 2020. For me, I will always remember it as a challenging year, but a formative year that was good for me personally.

I was unable to blog as much as I would have liked this year, and honestly sometimes there was so much going on that by the time I had something to say I questioned whether it was still relevant. Even so, there were a few articles this year that were among my personal favorites:

Some Hard Talk about the Knights of Columbus: One of my most popular posts of the year, addressing the elephant in the room about the Knights of Columbus declining membership—young men are bored by an organization whose obligations are tedious and unfulfilling.

Our New Civic Religion: The ideology of Black Lives Matter has assumed the form of a new civic religion. 

It's not "Crucifying Your Neighbor" to Attend Mass: Responding to an essay by one of our favorite interlocutors who was arguing that it is "crucifying your neighbor" to attend Mass during the pandemic.

"Utilitarianism": The Latest Word Being Used Incorrectly: Responding to objections that anti-lockdown Catholics are taking a "utilitarian" approach to human life in the pandemic.

Some Coronavirus Catch-Up: Though probably dated now, this article from the first weeks of the lockdowns was my first attempt to respond to some of the stupidity that only became more endemic as 2020 wore on.

Balancing Truth and Humility: My most recent article, encouraging us all to balance our zeal for the truth with authentic Christian humility.

On the Ridiculous Extension of the Term "Pro-Life": Liberal Catholics have a tendency to continuously expand the definition of "Pro-Life" until it becomes equated entirely with political progressivism.

On Wokeness and Reasons People Leave the Church: This was by far my most popular article of the year, in terms of views. Examining the reasons a well-known Catholic family gave for leaving the Church and how they were related to the phenomenon of "Wokeness."

The Problem of the "Reverent Novus Ordo": The fact that the Novus Ordo can be celebrated reverently is not an argument in its favor; in fact, it exemplifies its greatest weakness.

I look forward to another year of blogging. A special blessing to those of my friends who have stuck with me this long. What news of your own lives?

Thirteen Years of USC

The official anniversary of the establishment of this blog is June 29th, the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. What a different place I was when I founded this blog back in the summer of 2007! I was working for the Church and had to be super careful what I said for fear of offending the powers that be. I was also brand new to traditional Catholicism and using the blogger platform to voice my increasing anger about things like sloppy liturgies, bad music, and the scarcity of Latin in the masses of my diocese. I had no idea at that time how far down this rabbit hole went, nor to what degree the Catholic tradition would form my thinking and alter my view on so many things.

Sorry I have been a bit vacant as of late. I have been working on a series of posts, however, that are all fairly dense and have required a lot of thought and research. Hopefully I will have some more available soon.

Anyhow, a special thanks to all of you who have patronized this little endeavor over the years, and who have put up with my crankiness and occasional bouts of stupidity. I truly value you all. Please pray for me, a sinner.

Best Posts of 2019

The year of our Lord 2019 was a monumental one in the history of the Catholic Church. Most of the Church news of the year was dominated by the Amazon Synod and the Pachamama scandal, but on top of that we had ongoing revelations of sexual abuse and investigations by Attorneys General in several states, the publication of the Open Letter to Catholic bishops, the revelations of the Vatican's $200 London investment boondoggle, the extremely problematic “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together", the canonization of John Henry Newman, the fall of Fr. Rosica under accusations of plagiarism, and much more. What a time to be alive and be Catholic!

It was also a busy year for me personally and professionally. Despite all that, USC published 35 essays in 2019. Here are 13 of my personal favorites:

On the Concept of Celebration: Celebration is a very fluid thing that can be anything from solemn and dignified to boisterous and inebriated. People who say the Church's traditional liturgies aren't sufficiently celebratory are using the word in a very reductive sense.

Pius VI and the Synod of Pistoia: Review of the 1786 Synod of Pistoia, an extraordinary event whereby some ecclesiastics of the day tried to shove through a series of reforms very similar to what we later got in the post-Conciliar period.

The Church Doesn't Need More Women's Involvement: In what sense can anybody claim that women are underrepresented in the Catholic Church? Women already dominate the Church at almost every level.

Praying Through the Mass: The Extraordinary Form of the Mass enables a kind of contemplative prayer that is built right into the structure of the liturgy.

Christ Will Give You Victory: Some excellent reflections a priest gave me on the spiritual life. The distance between yourself and God is only as great as you believe it to be. Christ can give you total victory over your sins.

Inculturation and the Missions: Video about how the idea of inculturation is undermining Catholic missions...and yes, I know I mispronounce the name of Pachamama.

"But Eastern Churches Have Married Priests": How come nobody care's about the traditions of the West but the customs of the East are sacrosanct?

Excommunication is a No-No: The biblical purpose of excommunication is not merely the repentance of the sinner but the protection of the community. In the modern Church, excommunication of lay persons is something our prelates have no stomach for.

Comments on the 'Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church': Some observations on the letter a group of theologians and academics published in 2019 asserting that Pope Francis is promulgating heresy.

The New Double Truth Theory: How theologians and prelates advance heresy while talking out of both sides of their mouth.

Theology of the Body is Not Catholic Teaching: Because of the very low level of authority at which John Paul II's Theology of the Body was delivered (papal homilies) it cannot be considered an authoritative teaching.

There's Always a Priest Shortage in Missionary Areas: Defaulting to a married priesthood in the Amazon because of an alleged priest-shortage is nonsensical; there are always priest shortages in such areas.

What People Don't Understand About Syncretism: A lot of Catholics don't understand what sycretism really is. This article will help explain.

Thank you very much for spending another year in the company of me, your ornery online Catholic friend. It's crazy thinking that after doing this for going on thirteen years, USC is one of the most consistent constants in my life. I don't know whether I should be proud of that or cry.

Some basic information on Unam Sanctam Catholicam:

This blog was launched formally on June 29, 2007. Since then we have published around 2,000 articles that have been viewed 3 million times; we average 20,000 to 30,000 page views per month. Throughout the Benedictine and Franciscan pontificates, Unam Santcam Catholicam has been one of the Internet's most reliable sources of randomly posted, annoyingly pedantic, and contrarian Catholic content. Also our RCIA notes and outlines (offered on our sister site) have been downloaded 80,000 times.

Hope everyone has a blessed 2020!

Converting a Novus Ordo Parish to Tradition

There are really a lot of excellent Catholic commentators right now. I love all of the other Catholic writers out there who are promoting Catholic Tradition, especially those who don't take themselves too seriously. These are serious times and the stakes are high, but if we can't laugh at ourselves and maintain some levity, how will we enjoy even the victories we do manage to win?

Yes, I love the crop of weird, eccentric Catholic writers, even if we disagree on a few things, sometimes vehemently. One thing I am constantly lambasted for by other traditionalist writers is my assertion that if traditional Catholics are serious about actually restoring the Church, then they ought to maintain some involvement in the Novus Ordo world. I would never say a Catholic must attend the Novus Ordo Mass, of course. But what I can't support is the model of traditionalism whereby we all just hunker down in our own little traditional chapels and oratories and have no meaningful, real life interactions with Novus Ordo Catholics. I mean, if you want the Church to change, how do you think it is going to change? Do you think our blogging is going to do it? Actual Novus Ordo Catholics need to see the beauty of tradition, be educated about the faith, and fight for it in their own parishes. That's the most likely way anything will ever change. This isn't about just making sure I have "my Mass", but rather restoring tradition in the Church at large.

Now, maybe you don't think such a thing can happen. If that's your position I can respect that, and I can understand your desire to just hunker down where you are at. But if, like me, you believe the reform should come to the Church universal, then my goodness, how can you ignore the Novus Ordo world? That's where 95% of our brethren are. That's where our people are at. How can we just ignore that?

For this reason, I will never support the idea that the Novus Ordo is "not really" the Church, and I refuse to call it the Novus Ordo "sect" or infer that Novus Ordo Catholics are not actually Catholic. To be sure, even in its best moments the Novus Ordo liturgy is only an imitation of the Traditional Latin Mass, and in its abuses and worst moments it is a monstrous caricature of actual Catholic practice. But even so, despite its corruptions and deformities, the Novus Ordo Church is the Church. The Novus Ordo Church is our Mother. It is our Mother in the thralls of the a crippling mid-life crisis—our drunk mother who has ran off with a lover she met online, gotten some tattoos, went to Vegas, developed a meth addiction, and started whoring around so she can temporarily feel pretty and wanted again. But she is still our Mother. Our Mother who has temporarily gone insane due to a bad acid trip, who is beating her head against the wall and tearing her own hair out by the roots—but still our Mother. And our duty is not to write her off or try to deny that she is our Mother, but to rather seek her out wherever she is and bring her home, whatever labor that might require. Wean her off of the meth. Send her lovers away. Buy her some clean garments. Pay for the tattoo removal procedures.

I have always been in favor of the idea of working from within Novus Ordo parishes to change things. For those of you who may have only recently started reading this blog, I would recommend a series of four articles to you that I wrote back in 2011. If you think the idea of converting or transforming a Novus Ordo parish into a traditional one is ridiculous, please read the story I chronicled below. These articles talk about how we got the Traditional Latin Mass at my Novus Ordo parish and indeed reoriented the entire parish back towards Catholic tradition. In 2005 there were rainbow vestments, liturgical dancing, and puppet masses—in 2010 we were celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass and even the Novus Ordo Masses were ad orientem, Latin Mass parts, and communion at the altar rail with Gregorian chant. In five years we went from puppet masses to the Traditional Latin Mass. These articles are not short, but they chronicle in great detail how we did this. They are very worth your time if you are interested in these sorts of parish dynamics. 

Program for Parish Renewal (Part 1)

Program for Parish Renewal (Part 2)

Program for Parish Renewal (Part 3)

Program for Parish Renewal (Part 4)

I remember when all this was going on and we had just gotten the Traditional Latin Mass, a certain gentleman showed up at our parish. He was middle aged, very pleasant and intelligent. I soon saw him at the TLMs; every now and then I would see him at the Novus Ordo as well, but praying with a Latin Missal. He began showing up all over the parish. He volunteered to work at the parish fish fries. He was regularly seen helping at events when the pastor said he needed a few men to do this or that. He was always at coffee and donuts chatting with people. I had a few conversations with him. Super nice, down to earth guy. And he was very pleasant and straight forward in explaining to people why he loved the TLM. He was a model traditionalist, in my opinion. He was integrated into the parish and used his involvement in parish activities to get to know people, build meaningful relationships, and through those, evangelize for the Latin Mass in a way that was effective. If every traditional Catholic was willing to do this, we'd have a lot more tradition in our parishes.

Perhaps you may balk an disagree; I understand, and that's okay. This way I have sketched out is long and hard and depends on many factors beyond one's immediate control. And the outcome is very uncertain. It's slow, painstaking, and laborious. It's easier to just pray for change from the security of our traditional chapels and oratories while blogging about how awful the Novus Ordo world is. And it is awful out there. No doubt about it. But I think back to the example of St. Jean de Brebeuf. St.Jean's mission to the Huron did not begin with homilies to them about the true faith or baptisms; rather, it began with him sitting on a log straining to listen to the strange, guttural language of the Huron while he struggled to make out single consonant and vowel sounds, from which he could painstakingly transliterate the language so as to produce texts of the Scriptures and liturgical texts—a process which took him years. Years just to establish the framework to communicate the fundamentals of our faith. Is it too much to volunteer at a Novus Ordo parish fish fry or making some friends over coffee and donuts?

I'm not going to pontificate on how these relationships have to happen or in what context, but I will say that if we are serious about restoring tradition, we have to do the nitty-gritty, and we have to think in terms of years. And doing that sort of work is not ultimately about what's going on in the Vatican, although that is valuable information as well. It's more about working at the parish level. It's about building relationships with Catholics and spending months or years in discussion with them. It's volunteering to clean up the parish cemetery and sitting down for a break with the guy next to you and discussing traditional Catholics ideas about the dead and purgatory. It's about making friends with a Novus Ordo family and inviting them to attend a Traditional Latin Mass. It's about volunteering on parish committees and charitably working to build support for the introduction of more traditional devotions at your parish. Forget the Vatican. Forget the pope. Go be a good example for Catholic tradition in the places where you can make the most difference. And think in the long term. It took a long time for the Roman Empire to turn Christian. Think how many years it took St.Jean to sort out the Huron language. It takes a long time for trees to grow and blossom and to bear fruit. But whatsoever a man sows, that, too, shall he reap.

Duodecimus Anniversarius

Good heavens...has it been twelve years!? Indeed it has; twelve years of blogging here at Unam Sanctam Catholicam, my friends. It was June 29, 2007 when this blog was launched. I was a young man working as a Director of Religious Education at a parish in the Diocese of Lansing. I remember for some time I had been frustrated with what I was experiencing in the churches around where I lived. I was baptized Catholic as a child but had no faith formation; I returned to the Church in 2002, receiving my First Communion at the tender age of 22. 

But over the next few years I started to realize that the Church I had studied and prayed my way back into did not look the same as the Church I was experiencing on the ground in parish life. I had read about all the "riches" supposedly unlocked by the Second Vatican Council, but was extremely disappointed that the most vibrant aspects of the Church's tradition were notably lacking from parish life. Why was there such a paucity of Latin? Why was I hearing contemporary guitar music or Protestant hymns instead of Gregorian chant? Why were so many homilies so wimpy on Catholic dogma? Why did those in charge of the Church seem to lax when it came to promoting the Gospel? And most alarmingly of all, why did so many Catholics seem uninterested in their spiritual heritage?

When I returned to full communion with the Church in 2002, I had just kind of assumed that the Church I'd read about in my studies still existed. But by 2005ish there was a kind of disquiet and spiritual rut I was in. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But it almost felt like a conspiracy...a conspiracy of silence about the Church's history and customs. As if traditional Catholicism was that one relative that we don't talk about because he's in prison. I remember 2005 was my senior year of my undergrad and that year I had completed a historical research project on the Second Vatican Council. I had studied the actual daybooks of the Council and read the interventions and came across the story of Cardinal Ottaviani's microphone being disconnected. This led me to Ralph Wiltgen's The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber, which was really the point where I started to realize what happened in  Rome in 1962-1965 was more revolutionary than I had hitherto understood.

But the transformative moment came in June of 2007 when I was hired as a DRE and had the privilege of reconnecting with Dr. John Joy, who at the time was not Dr. Joy but just a young dude working for the Church and preparing to go study abroad with his family. John and I had been friends back from our days at Ave Maria College and managed to catch up. John helped me understand that what I was really missing was the vital connection that any serious Catholic needs to the Church's tradition. He gave me a copy of Msgr. Klaus Gamber's book Reform of the Roman Liturgy, as well as Michael Davies' Liturgical Timebombs. He also introduced me to other valuable works like Msgr. George Agius' Tradition and the Church and the works the the Dominican theologian Servais Pinckaers on Christian ethics and the morality of happiness. Understand, before I was introduced to these authors I had primarily been reading Jimmy Akin and Scott Hahn sort of books, which, while having some value, left me profoundly undernourished. These works John introduced me to had a very profound effect on my thinking and helped me to crystallize some things in my head that hitherto had been vague, unformed sentiment. They helped me really reconnect with the foundations of the Catholic faith and understand more about what my spirit was lacking and where to find it.

But John also did something equally formative—he introduced me to blogging. It being 2007, I still did not have the Internet in my house so I was oblivious to he existence of a traditional Catholic blogosphere, which in those days was still in an inchoate, latent phase of development. But John introduced me to three blogs: the New Liturgical Movement, Rorate Caeli, and a particularly entertaining blog run by some eccentric crank out on the west coast called Athanasius Contra Mundum. 

Learning of the existence of traditional Catholic blogs was revolutionary. See, before I started reading them, I was under the impression that my own frustrations with contemporary Catholicism were more of a matter of personal taste. I did not realize that there was a rather substantial sub-group within Catholicism who felt the same, and not as a matter of mere sentiment, but as a coherent, alternate vision for what the Church could and ought to be, grounded in its history and traditions and faithful to its own charism.

In other words, I realized I was not alone.

And then I was like, "Imma blog also."

And so, here I am, 12 years later, with 1,808 essays and 3.5 million pageviews across two different sites under my belt, still rolling with this weird hobby of mine—and pleasantly surprised that so many of you are still along for the journey.

God bless you all, blessed Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and prayers for another year of blogging!