Dr. K’s Weekly Roundup, September 19, 2025

Prelates Speak Out

It’s refreshing to see certain influential bishops and cardinals speaking so forthrightly in our times. They know that Leo XIV has brought a new period of openness; he is not going to be the crushing dictator his predecessor was (with limited success), but rather someone who genuinely cares and listens.

Thus, Cardinal Sarah in an interview in the Italian bishops’ conference newspaper (of all places!) said, among other things:

All the baptized in the Church have citizenship, on their sharing the Creed and the morality that comes from it. Over the centuries, the diversity of celebratory rites of the one Eucharistic Sacrifice has never created problems for the authorities, because the unity of faith was clear. Indeed, I believe that the variety of rites in the Catholic world is a great enrichment. A rite, after all, is not composed in a writing room, but is the outcome of theological and ceremonial stratifications and sedimentations. I wonder if it is possible to “prohibit” a rite that is over a thousand years old. Finally, if the liturgy is also a source of theology, how can we deny access to the “ancient sources”? It would be like prohibiting the study of St. Augustine to anyone who wishes to reflect correctly on grace or the Trinity.

He also stated:

I hope the content of Fiducia Supplicans can be clarified and possibly redeveloped. The declaration is theologically weak and hence unwarranted. It endangers the unity of the Church.

(Isn’t it wonderful to know that “more than 60 percent of African nations currently outlaw these unnatural acts” [of sodomy]”? Burkina Faso was the most recent nation to vote to outlaw homosexual acts.)

Cardinal Müller spoke with Diane Montagna on Charlie Kirk, the “LGBT Jubilee,” and the Rising Threat of Islam. An excerpt:

As a dogmatic theologian I don’t want to be diplomatic. The Catholic Church must proclaim the truth but also contradict lies. That is, we must not only positively explain the faith but also actively refute error.

The Council of Nicaea affirmed the truths of the faith but also denounced Arius as a heretic. Proclaiming the truth alone is not enough. St. Paul speaks of the “enemies of the Cross” within the Church. If a pope or bishop speaks the truth, they will attack him. Conversely, if he remains silent, they will exploit his silence to advance their errors.

Many Catholic bishops opposed Fiducia Supplicans because it represented the wrong pastoral path and was based on a deficient and unclear understanding of natural and revealed anthropology.

Between truth and falsehood there can be no compromise. This is not a matter of a conservative or progressive mentality—it is a question of revealed truth and of the purpose of creation as inscribed in human nature.

Cardinal Bagnasco, interviewed by the Neapolitan newspaper Roma, was asked if Pope Leo’s “initiatives to unite and bring peace” could “include easing the restrictions on the Latin Mass.” He replied:

For several years, I was part of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches and I was able to verify that there are more than thirty liturgical rites in the Catholic Church. I have never considered, nor do I consider now, that the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite—which is unique, as Pope Benedict XVI clarified—could cause difficulties, just as the Ambrosian Rite does not cause them either. I don't perceive any risks if everything is done with serenity and good will on the part of everyone involved.

In the same week, Bishop Emeritus Marian Eleganti chose to share his thoughts about liturgical reform. What bracing candor!

I was born in 1955 and was an enthusiastic altar boy in my childhood. At first I served in the old rite, always a little nervous not to mess up the Latin responses, then I was retrained in the middle of the action for the so-called New Mass.

As a child, I witnessed the iconoclasm in the venerable Church of the Holy Cross in my hometown. The Gothic carved altars were torn down before my child eyes. What remained was a people’s altar, an empty choir room, the cross in the choir arch, Mary and St. John on the left and right on white bare walls....

I grew up with the council, came of age, and was able to observe its effects since it took place. Today I am 70 years old and a bishop. Looking back, I have to say that the springtime of the Church never came; what came instead was an indescribable decline in the practice and knowledge of the faith, widespread liturgical formlessness and arbitrariness (to which I myself contributed in part without realizing it)....

I have relearned the old liturgy of my childhood and see the difference, especially in the prayers and postures, and of course in the orientation.

In retrospect, the post-conciliar intervention in the almost 2,000-year-old, very consistent form of the liturgy seems to me to be a rather violent, provisional reconstruction of the Holy Mass in the years following the conclusion of the council, which was associated with great losses that need to be addressed. This was also done for ecumenical reasons. Many forces, including from the Protestant side, were directly involved in this effort to align the traditional liturgy with the Protestant Eucharist and perhaps also with the Jewish Sabbath liturgy. This was done in an elitist, disruptive, and reckless manner by the Roman Liturgical Commission and was imposed on the entire Church by Paul VI, not without causing major fractures and rifts in the mystical body of Christ, which remain to this day....

To be or not to be in terms of faith and Church life is decided on the basis of liturgy. This is where the church lives or dies. Traditionalists and progressives have correctly assessed this since 1965. So why is tradition on the rise among young people? What makes it so attractive to young people? Think about it! Feet vote, not councils. Maybe we should just change direction!

Leo XIV’s Interview

Kevin Tierney has argued that, with small and gentle signs, Leo is becoming “his own man” at last.

The internet’s abuzz with commentary on the major interview Leo XIV gave to Elise Allen of Crux. A lot of people have said a lot of things about it. Dr. Gavin Ashenden’s believes “Pope Leo unleashes coded Catholic broadside against the heterodox.”

The pope’s comments on the Latin Mass were not particularly illuminating (Fr. Z was rather dispirited), and yet, as Kevin explains, there is reason for hope here too:

This may in fact be too much reading into it, but I think it’s worth pointing out that Leo knew this question was coming about the Latin Mass, and decided not to defend the status quo. No defense of Traditionis custodes by name, or the points behind it.

Instead he says the status of the TLM is very much up for discussion. If he intends to just keep the status quo (where the TLM is tightly restricted to eventual abolition), there’s no need to say that discussion has to be had. Likewise, broadening the discussion to one of synodality, when it’s a known fact most bishops and priests oppose Pope Francis decree, is a roadmap on where this might be heading.

I also think he touches upon a lot of issues: right now, the Church doesn’t have the moral legitimacy or credibility to even talk about these issues, with distrust between the hierarchy and laity being so pronounced. You may not like it, but faithful Catholics don’t trust the Bishop in many dioceses, and that’s a situation that isn’t sustainable…. The Catholic Church cannot dissolve the laity and elect another. It needs to tackle real pastoral problems.

I am not fully optimistic on where things are going, as I think Leo will try a half measure first: restore to bishops the right to regulate this matter (Pope Francis revoked that right when they didn’t do what he wanted). While most bishops would almost certainly respond by allowing the TLM (they have made clear that is their intent), you would still see some bishops (such as Charlotte and Detroit) continue the persecutions of Catholics. That’s an unworkable situation because it denies a good of the Church to faithful depending on their geographic location and transforms what should be a sacrament of unity centered on Christ into an approval game around the Bishop. If the TLM is to continue existence, then it needs to continue its existence in full equality: the heritage of all Roman Catholics, just like the Mass most Catholics in the Rite attend.

Still legitimate cause for optimism here.

I have received confirmation from trustworthy sources that Pope Leo XIV is indeed open-minded on the TLM question, that he is willing to rethink and revise Francis’s policy. This is why I urge people not only to pray for him but to put their best foot forward when discussing the TLM. I’m not saying we can’t or shouldn’t critique the Novus Ordo, but let’s do it with utmost respect, civility, charity, and patience. Now is a time to “win friends and influence people,” not to burn bridges and shout for blood.

Of course, as I have learned working in this area for decades now, there are people who will be instantly and bitterly offended the first moment you open your mouth to say anything good about tradition or anything critical about the reform. So be it; there is no way to please everyone all the time. I’m simply saying, let’s be exemplary, and show that we want to share with our fellow Catholics all the treasures of the Faith that have enriched our own lives. Think testimonial, not trial; advertisement, not avengement.

I think we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of having a native English-speaker as pope for the first time, and not simply that, but an American. He will be able to read and understand what the traditionalists are saying, and as an American he will be predisposed to arrive at a pragmatic solution that allows people freedom to pursue what they find advantageous.

In any case, the tea leaves could be interpreted variously. What seems certain is that Traditionis Custodes is tottering.

One marginal remark, since the topic of doing the new Mass in Latin arises in that interview: the idea that a Latin Novus Ordo would someone “fit the bill” is plagued with difficulties, as I explained in an article on the subject two years ago at OnePeterFive. This “solution” is floated whenever people are trying to find a consolation prize for those who’ve had their beloved TLM canceled, or whenever tradition-loving clergy are striving to persuade themselves that TLM deprivation is not as horrible as it actually is.

Meanwhile, an excellent filial appeal has been submitted to His Holiness Leo XIV, concerning some of the moral and doctrinal aberrations of the last pontificate and recent sacrilegious events, and asking for a proportionate response.

Liturgical Lessons

Natalie A. Lindemann, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Psychology at William Paterson University, has just published a second peer-reviewed paper on the topic of predictors of Catholics’ Eucharistic beliefs. Her research demonstrates that American Catholics who engage in traditional liturgical practices tend to have stronger Real Presence beliefs. Predictors include receiving on the tongue and attending a parish that rings consecration bells and offers the TLM. The full paper may be found here.

The final (third) article in the NLM series on how to implement the pre-55 Holy Week in your parish focuses on Tenebrae and other aspects of the Divine Office, as well as the ever-controversial question of the right times for the ceremonies. Highly recommended for clergy, MCs, and music directors, and all who love the Roman patrimony.

Dom Alcuin Reid gave a wonderful interview about the Divine Office, the newly republished monastic breviary, and signs of hope.

For a stirring meditation on the grace of baptism, read “My Father Was a Heathen” by Philip Primeau.

Marvelous commentary at NLM by Dr. Foley on the “Simili modo” of the Roman Canon. Here’s a taste:

The Simili modo has a subtle epicletic dimension, in so far as it involves insufflation or ritual breathing. In order to pronounce “H” in the first word (Hic), the priest must produce a strong burst of breath. And since his mouth is inches away from the chalice, his breath moves over the water and wine like the Spirit moved over the face of the waters at Creation. (Gen. 1, 2). As an MC, I have been privileged to hear the priest’s breathy voice echo off the sides of the chalice as he pronounces the Words of Institution. And again like the Qui pridie, this Spirit moment is further reinforced by the priest’s hovering over the chalice, much like the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit during the Annunciation. (Luke 1, 35)

A man in an influential position wrote the following heartening message to me:

I’ve been introducing your work to many of my priest friends, and it’s making waves. Most of them—especially the more traditional and conservative ones—had never heard of you before. They’ve been deeply disillusioned with the direction the Church has taken under Francis, whom many feel has strayed far from authentic Catholic teaching.

When I first discovered your writings, I thought I’d have to share them discreetly, only with priests who still held fast to orthodox theology. But to my surprise, they’re eager—hungry, even—to read more. Many young priests I’ve come to know have confided that the theology they were taught in seminary was deeply flawed. They recognize the errors, but feel pressured to conform or risk being expelled.

That’s the reality of the Church today. It’s heartbreaking. I support Christ the King Institute and the FSSP, and I believe your work is a beacon in this confusion. It reminds these priests of their true calling and the faith they were ordained to defend. Rome may have lost its way, but your voice is helping others find theirs.

Deo gratias et Laus Mariae!

Charlie Kirk

Of the countless items relating to this modern-day Socrates (and Bishop Robert Barron, in his outstanding piece on Kirk, wasn’t the only one to make this comparison), I select only those that seemed especially good.

Hands down, the best piece I’ve read so far about the significance of Kirk’s murder is “The End of Illusion: On the Assassination of Charlie Kirk and the Way Forward,” by Richard Y. Rodgers and David F.X. Army of the Harvard Salient. A taste:

[Kirk] could also be unexpectedly, almost annoyingly, moderate: a man who prized argument over obliteration, outreach over insularity, whose modus operandi was to cross campus thresholds and address anyone curious enough to ask a question. He exhorted a generation, plainly and insistently, to love God, love their family, and love their country. That was enough to get him killed.

Let us be unsentimental about the nature of the enemy. Leftism is not merely a rival policy set or an alternate party program. Leftism is a mental illness. There is no risk in naming the condition plainly when the symptoms are so evident: systematic hatred for inherited institutions, a taste for moral monstrosity, and a bloodlust that sanctifies obliteration—of traditions, of customs, of human life—as signs of progress. If you are on the Right and have been told this language is excessive, look instead at the evidence of behavior: celebration when opponents are deplatformed, undone—or worse—killed. They hate you. They want you dead. To say it this way is necessary, for it is in the flowery meadows of euphemism that rot truly spreads.

This is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a warning. To those who treat conservative life on campus or in civic society as an agreeable pastime—“a club,” “a journal,” “a debating society”—recognize that there is no safe neutral. The adjective “just” in front of any conservative endeavor is an attempt to be dismissed as harmless, but it is precisely the seemingly harmless that activists of the other persuasion seek to erase first. If you wear your conviction visibly, if you sign your name to a cause, if you instruct others in the habits that sustain a free and ordered society, you place yourself on the line, and, if the Left wins, they will place you on the gallows. That is not martyr rhetoric; that is realism.

For those of conservative disposition who wish only to lead a private life, cloistered away from the political fray, I am sorry. That is not possible. They won’t allow it. The logic of our hour is simple: if our institutions and formative practices fall, the private life you cherish will be the first to go. To wish for quiet while our enemies reconfigure the moral architecture of the nation is to wish for exile in place.

And yet, despair is not an option. Charlie’s death must not be allowed to calcify into a paralyzing fatalism. It must harden into a militant diligence. Reverence must be translated into work.

Carolyn McKinney writes in “Liberalism Died with Charlie Kirk”:

As long ago as 2012, Catholic political philosopher Patrick Deneen foresaw this moment in his essay “Unsustainable Liberalism.” He warned that liberalism would eventually consume the moral capital it had inherited from Christianity, family, and community. Once those reserves were gone, it could not sustain itself and would collapse into either chaos or tyranny. Charlie’s assassination, and the vile glee with which some received it, shows us that we have reached that point.

For decades, the Left has abandoned liberalism, replacing tolerance with viewpoint discrimination. Through cancel culture, the capture of schools and universities, corporate coercion, and media dominance, dissenting voices have been silenced. Conservatives, by contrast, have clung to the ideal of free speech as the highest good, believing that the answer to bad ideas is always more debate. But tolerance of destructive ideologies has come at a cost. Lies that confuse children, encourage self-destruction, and teach Americans to hate their own country have been allowed to flourish—tearing apart the very fabric of our society.

The truth is that liberalism was never built to last without virtue. Tolerance became the cardinal virtue of modern liberalism, but tolerance cannot sustain a civilization. In fact, we must now recognize that tolerance itself has become destructive. A people that tolerates lies, vice, and disorder will be undone by them. We need to recover the older wisdom: that intolerance of evil and shame of dishonor are not vices, but rather, essential safeguards of a healthy community.

It is faith, not free speech, that makes martyrs, writes Spencer Kashmanian:

In stark contrast with leftist cancel culture, Charlie’s commitment to open debate about the most consequential issues in our society was courageous and admirable. But to remember him as primarily a champion of civil discourse is to honor the tool while ignoring the temple it was building. Charlie wasn’t assassinated because he stood for the free exchange of ideas. He was gunned down for being a courageous Christian conservative, one who was uniquely gifted at articulating views rooted in thousands of years of tradition.

(See also Joshua Treviño’s tribute “Charlie Kirk, Martyr.”)

For its part, the USCCB, which published not one but two statements in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020, has said nothing yet about Charlie Kirk’s murder. This, in spite of the fact that millions of people have been galvanized by it to return to the practice of religion or at least to embrace common-sense morality. Are we surprised? Being relevant when it counts and fostering renewal when it’s easy are the lowest of priorities for the USCCB.

Rod Dreher discusses how “it cannot be an accident that the first generation raised with the Internet is also the one most accepting of gender ideology.”

Glad to see some frank talk from John Daniel Davidson of The Federalist, cutting through so much namby-pamby hand-wringing: “There Can Be No Peace or Unity with a Violent, Unrepentant Left.”

In the days since Charlie Kirk’s assassination by a radical Antifa terrorist, a refrain has arisen in the corporate press and the political establishment that we must come together, lower the temperature, tone down the rhetoric, and condemn political violence on both sides. In order to have peace, they say, we have to have unity. But there can be no peace or unity without first telling the truth, and the truth is that both-sidesism, the polite fiction that the American left and right have a problem with political violence, is a damnable lie — and everyone peddling it is a moral coward.

Happily, we are seeing many heads roll (metaphorically) as employees of all kinds, teachers, and TV personalities continue to be fired for their cackling support of Kirk’s assassination. As Lauren Smith writes, “The Left Is Getting a Taste of Its Own Medicine.”

Worthy of Note

In “Saint Maximus the Confessor and the Content of Christian Education,” Robert Lazu Kmita reminds us:

It is impossible to dedicate yourself to the education of children without first resolving the equation of your own education. I say this based on my own experience as a perpetual student. Yes, I am always learning. In fact, I believe that all those who have received a solid education know very well that one’s own formation never truly ends. Likewise, those who, as adults, realize they have gaps in their own formation have only one solution: self-education.

Charles Coulombe has written an eloquent reminder that civil war is NOT something anyone should desire and that everyone should try to prevent. Nevertheless, as Rod Dreher discusses at the European Conservative, it may come whether we want it or not.

Robert Keim asks the question (and answers it with customary insightfulness):

If human rights are a post-medieval phenomenon—ideas that began to develop in the Renaissance and reached fruition, if not yet full maturity, in the Enlightenment—must we conclude that Christians of the Middle Ages were chronically deprived of “freedom, justice, and peace”? Must we pity them as poor wretches for whom “the highest aspiration of the common people” was hopelessly out of reach?

Keim also comments on the paradoxes and conundrums of “free speech”:

Speech, whether vocalized or written, is a human action possessing immense power and producing highly variable consequences. I would not want to live in a community where ordinary citizens are free to use their fists, or free to drive vehicles while intoxicated, or free to defraud their neighbors through clever schemes, or free to vandalize churches belonging to rival denominations. How is the faculty of speech fundamentally different from these things? Why do we expect it to be “free,” when so many other human actions that could in theory be free are carefully regulated and restricted by laws?

Aaron Pattee writes on “Imperial Abbeys”:

As you may have guessed, Hollywood has performed yeoman’s work in tainting and even demonizing the concept of both monasticism and the term ‘empire’. Yet like most things that creep out of the production halls in Hollywood, they are only corruptions of the truth.

Here is what a Christian culture looks like: “Greek island has 1,000 private chapels. Families maintain them for faith and community.”

GUMISIRIZA’s Substack tells the revealing story about what happened with the attempt to re-create the ancient See of Carthage — reconstituted by Leo XIII and then pathetically dissolved by Paul VI. It’s the difference between the Church in a position of cultural conquest and the Church in a position of supine surrender.

Leave it to Timothy Flanders to kick the hornets’ nest! But I think this is an important perspective to consider:

Orientalium Ecclesiarum – along with a critical text from the New Catechism – creates the moral framework which undercuts the pre-Vatican II Neo-Scholastic reductionism which – together with hyperüberultramontanism – formed the entire framework of the New Iconoclasm that we oppose as Trads – all of which existed before Vatican II was dreamed up by Pope St. John XXIII! These texts from Vatican II form a critical solution to our problems with New Iconoclasm. We as Trads are shooting our movement in the foot by “rejecting” Vatican II and the “post-conciliar religion.” The pre-Vatican II Church created the potency for the Novus Ordo Missae by establishing the presuppositions upon which the New Iconoclasm rests. In other words, the exercise of Papal authority over the liturgy during the period of the False Spirit of Vatican One (1870-1962) was already the New Iconoclasm in potentia.

It may be well to consider whether the easiest interpretation of the much-quoted Matthew 16 is necessarily the best. At the Substack Ecce Agnus Dei, Filemonas offers a different (and in some ways more compelling) interpretation:

Since we also know that Jesus’ mystical body is represented by the Church, Jesus is telling Peter that the Church has power over the void—that the “gates of death” cannot keep out Life. Death cannot resist Him. Contrary to lazy interpretations, Christ makes no promises in this passage about the Church as an institution. Rather, he confirms that the power of the Church as the Body of Christ over death is absolute. What is more, by describing the inability of “hell,” understood as the realm of the dead, to withstand the power of Peter and the Church, he is characterizing the Church, understood as his mystical body, as an aggressor against death, not as a passive resistor. There are no truces, compromises, or accommodations. The Church is on the offensive and will win….

Confusing the temporal institutional “Church” with the eternal Church of Christ’s mystical body is not harmless. Its effects are deeply pernicious as the phrase “gates of hell will not prevail against it” is all too commonly used as an excuse for complacency.

I agree entirely with political philosopher Emily Finley:

I found the conversion story of Paul Kingsnorth, who writes at The Abbey of Misrule, from atheist eco-terrorism to Orthodox Christianity to be very moving and beautifully written…. But his speech last year for the First Things Erasmus Lecture titled “Against Christian Civilization” veers far from traditional Christianity and sends Christians the wrong message about the meaning of civilization and our calling to live a sanctified life here on earth. I find it especially wrongheaded and disturbing in the wake of the recent examples of how brutal life can be when the barriers of Christian culture have broken, and the vile smoke of Satan has been allowed in….

Instead of seeing the decline of Christian civilization as a death sentence and something to be accepted or even accelerated in the name of a more “authentic” Christianity, we ought to be rebuilding the walls. Christians must have hope, and to passively accept the fall of Christian civilization would be to lose that hope. There is no Christianity apart from civilization on this earth. There is not “Christ or civilization” as Kingsnorth arbitrarily decides.

Book Nook

Fr. Perricone’s Essays

Os Justi Press has released a new book that Tradition & Sanity readers will find of interest: Torches Against the Abyss: The Complete Essays of Rev. John A. Perricone.

In 139 essays penned between 1996 and 2025 (I’ve shared many of them here on my Substack), Fr. Perricone confronts the spiritual collapse of our times with razor-sharp prose and an unwavering fidelity to Catholic tradition. He challenges the fashionable heresies of modernity, dismantles sentimental distortions of truth and love, and rekindles the brilliance shed upon the world by saints, philosophers, and martyrs. The essays are arranged in twelve categories:

• Timely Truths and Egregious Errors

• Of Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops

• Of Councils and Synods

• Of Priests and Priesthood

• Divine Worship (with special emphasis on the TLM)

• The Most Holy Eucharist

• Beauty in the Church

• Death and Resurrection

• Spiritual Combat

• Lessons from the Saints

• Marriage and the Family

• Our Fraying Culture

Bishop Athanasius Schneider enthuses over Torches Against the Abyss:

I commend to the faithful Fr. Perricone’s collected essays, which speak with a clarity and forthrightness so urgently required in our times, reminiscent of the voice of the Fathers in their unwavering fidelity to the deposit of faith. In an age that witnesses the eclipse of perennial truths, Fr. Perricone stands as a steadfast herald of Christ’s immutable doctrine and the luminous beauty of Sacred Tradition.

At the book’s page you can peak inside at the Table of Contents and a sampling of chapters.

Dunn’s Poetry

At The Imaginative Conservative, Joseph Pearce recommends several new works of fiction and poetry, including one published by Os Justi Press:

Songs of Desert Winds by William Dunn takes a penetrative delve and dive into darkness, without ever losing sight of redeeming light. What makes Dunn a first-rate poet is the eloquence with which his mystical and philosophical musings, expressed with poignant starkness, oscillate between the consolation of God’s presence and the desolation and darkness of His absence.

Ecstasy in Aquinas

I am grateful to Robert Lazu Kmita for his glowing words about my book:

The title of his book is highly significant: The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Emmaus Academic, 2021) [or at OJP | Amazon]. Scholars familiar with Saint Thomas’s works might find such a title surprising, for reasons you can likely imagine. For most readers, the demands of rational thought—as perceived today under the influence of Enlightenment and Kantian rationalism—are considered distinct from, if not incompatible with, the seemingly “frivolous” theme of love. Exploited heavily by mass culture, particularly in its widespread cinematic forms, “love” is almost always understood as belonging to the realm of passion, incompatible with the “cold” activity of the intellect. While this perspective might sometimes hold, it is entirely inapplicable to an author who teaches that the goal of our lives is happiness, to which love contributes essentially.

To clarify such issues and free Saint Thomas from the influence of strictly rationalist exegesis, Dr. Kwasniewski examines one of the most significant concepts in the history of Christian theological thought: ecstasy....

Personally, I have never read anything like it. Dr. Kwasniewski’s book not only opens a specific perspective on St. Thomas’s works but also proposes an interpretive framework that completely reshapes how we understand and receive his monumental philosophical and theological writings. This is why I consider this book an absolute must-have for the library of any educated Catholic seeking to properly engage with the work of the Angelic Doctor.

Congratulations in order!

Last but not least, I’d be remiss not to congratulate my dear friend and much-appreciated contributor to this Substack, Dr. Sebastian Morello, for his recent appointment to the new Wolfgang Smith Chair in Philosophy established at St Mary’s University in London. The purpose of the professorship will be to induct students into the Catholic sapiential tradition, as modeled by the polymath in whose honor it was endowed. I am very pleased about this development and wish Dr. Morello all the best as he assumes his post.