Dietrich Richard Alfred von Hildebrand (12 October 1889 – 26 January 1977) was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and theologian. He was called “the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church” by Pope Pius XII. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI also greatly admired the work of Hildebrand. The degree of Pope Benedict’s esteem is expressed in one of his statements about Hildebrand: “When the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time.“ In 1973, Dietrich Von Hildebrand wrote “The[…]

The Russian Orthodox Perception of the Fatima Message In six visions over a period of six months in 1917 three peasant children from a Portuguese village were told by the Mother of God of the destiny of a country called Russia. These shepherd children, who had never been to Lisbon, let alone heard of Russia, came to hear of this at the most important turning-point in the history of that country. Coincidence? Each of these six visions took place on the last day of each month between April and September according to the Orthodox Church calendar (that is, on the[…]

Find out if you are under a shepherd or a hireling. Here is a short excerpt from a homily by St. Gregory the Great from the Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, Volume 2: “Whether a man is indeed a shepherd, or but a hireling, can only be known when a time of trial comes. For in times of peace, just as the true shepherd is wont to stay by his flocks, so likewise does the hireling. But should a wolf appear each will reveal with what mind he had been taking care of the flock. For a wolf descends[…]

THE CATHOLIC PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENT The following letter and response come from the New Covenant, a monthly magazine which caters to those active in the Catholic and Protestant Pentecostal or Charismatic movements. “Q: Someone recently attended our prayer meeting and spoke out as a prophecy a word glorifying Satan. He could not be quieted and most of the people attending the meeting were quite upset. What can we do when this type of situation arises?” “A: It seems that some kind of evil spirit was attempting to disrupt the prayer meeting. Many prayer groups have had similar occurrences. The group’s leaders should[…]

Our Lady, Mother of God, our Mother and Mother of the Church in recent centuries, has given us warnings on the tremendous crisis that the Church would suffer from the mid-Twentieth Century and beyond. She uses words that are precise and unambiguous, though tragic and terrible in its contents. In her appearance at La Salette, Our Lady was displeased with the conduct of the Ministers of God for their “evil life” for their “love of money, honors and pleasures”, but most especially for their “irreverence and impiety in celebrating the Holy Mysteries”. She already knows the reality of the betrayal[…]

In this treacherous and Godless world we live in, we may well wonder how it is possible to maintain a prayer life and to seek to live in unity with Christ, while corruption and immorality run rampant in all corners. We see pictures and hear stories of long ago when priests were recognizable in their cassocks, nuns in full habit were aiding souls in hospitals and schools, confession lines were long and satisfied by the presence of good, holy priests thirsting to bring countless souls to God. It’s going to be the toughest time in the history of the world[…]

The one weapon that strikes more terror into the enemies of the Church is the Bulla of Pope Pius II, Execrabilis, on 18 January 1460 condemning conciliarism. The bull received its name from the opening word of its Latin text, which labeled as “execrable” all efforts to appeal an authoritative ruling of a Pope to a council. This bull denounces those who presume to appeal from the pope to a future council, in spite of the fact that the pope is the vicar of Jesus Christ and condemn[s] all such appeals and prohibit[s] them as erroneous and detestable. Penalties for[…]

In 1984, just before retiring at a venerable age, the diocesan Bishop of Niigata, Bishop John Shojiro Ito, in consultation with the Holy See, wrote a pastoral letter in which he recognized as being authentically of the Mother of God, the extraordinary series of events that had taken place from 1973 to 1981 in a little lay convent within his diocese, at Akita, Japan. Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), in June 1988, approved the Akita events as “reliable and worthy of belief”. In fact the Philippine ambassador to the Vatican, in 1998 spoke to Cardinal Ratzinger about Akita and the[…]