Tuesday, April 30, 2019

On the Timely Wisdom of St. Thomas

The Angelic Doctor.  Universal Doctor of the Church.  St. Thomas. Thomas. Thomas Aquinas.  St. Thomas Aquinas goes by many names. He is still a part of secular vocabulary. Ask most any modern and odds are they’ve heard his name connected to that of the Catholic Church, the Middle Ages, theology, or philosophy.  He is sometimes scorned as a throw back to the “Dark Ages;” in the modern Church he is usually marginalized as a mere pre-Vatican II reference or worse an ossified rationalist whose thought they claim lacks in spirituality.

St. Thomas.  The greatest mind, teacher, and intellectual saint in the history of the Church.  Not my opinion. That’s the opinion of a centuries old lineage of popes up to and even after the Second Vatican Council.

And I can tell you from personal experience reading St. Thomas, absorbing his wisdom coupled with accounts of his saintly intellectual humility, that what these popes have taught rings true.  His teachings give the intellectual soul wings to rise above ignorance, foolishness, and any jouvenile or fragmented sense of morals.  Thomistic wisdom is like putting on glasses and seeing the world in all its divine and natural hierarchical organization.  To see the proper relation between the material and spiritual, the vegetative, animal, human, and angelic.  To see how the Creator orders Creation upward in an organized way as a path to Him.  And that metaphysical hierarchy isn’t just a development of Aristotle but likewise Plato.  Modern classical Thomists like J.P. Torrell or Ralph McInerny have highlighted this, with the insight that the Thomistic world view is not only a hierarchy of existence but also a cycle of life.  All come from God and return to Him, but the return is necessarily vertical.

In other words, to ascend back to God, according to the Angelic Doctor, to find our ultimate self-actualization in the ultimate source of our existence, we must follow the path of Creation as God set it out.  With St. Thomas then we can and must discern the wisdom embedded in Creation and by means of it climb upward toward sainthood.

That is one of the most profound messages of St. Thomas for modern man.  It runs against our horizontalist mindset, but is liberating as I can attest.

To read St. Thomas, go to his Summa Theologicae all online for free at New Advent.com.

Friday, April 26, 2019

OKC Catholic Relates History of Trad Movement in OKC Diocese

Tomorrow we need to go to OKC for a bit of business so I thought, why not make a full day of leisure out of it? So we leave at 8am to take the historic Route 66 to OKC, stopping at a small town diner for breakfast and checking out Catholic churches along the way. Then tour the indoor Myriad Gardens in downtown OKC followed by lunch, then our business appointment, then shop at the Asian market, then before leaving town attending the Saturday Latin Mass at the SSPX chapel of St. Michael’s. Will have to blog how it went with photos. But all this reminded me of s short history of the Traditional Movement in that diocese, once shared with me through the blog. So here it is, enjoy:


St. Michael's Chapel in OKC was originally called St. Athanasius. Here's a link to some history about St. Michael's : www.saintmichaelschapel.com/father-themanns-farewell.html What a struggle they maintained to keep the Mass alive in this diocese, especially in the 70's and 80's, often flying priest and even bishops in on a Sunday to celebrate the Mass of the Ages. 

Queen of Angels, let by Father Walters, begain in the early 80's as well. You can read more about his story in the book "Mass Where is They Priest, Priest Where is Thy Mass?"

Best I can tell, Fr. Jerome Talloen was the first non-independent diocesan priest to begin saying the Mass of the Ages under the auspices of the bishop, first privately and then publicly. Despite repeated requests for permission,

Archbishop Salatka denied Fr. Talloen permission to say the Mass of the Ages publicly. Archbishop Beltrain initially denied permission as well. Beltrain's hand was forced by Ecclesia Dei in the early 90's. The small group led by Fr. Talloen became known as St. Anne's Latin Mass Community. Once Father Talloen began saying the Mass publicly, the FSSP (Father Rizzo) was then able to start saying the Mass at St. Michael's chapel, though Fr. Rizzo had been there before while he was still SSPX.


The FSSP played some politics with the bishop in the early 2000's, and Beltrain consolidated St. Anne's Latin Mass

Community with the FSSP Community (because we all know you can't have more than one!).

The Bishop moved the FSSP out to Piedmont/Edmond/Middle of Nowhere in 2010, forming St. Damien's Parish. Some speculate the move had a connection to this lawsuit regarding oil royalties: newsok.com/article/2915123

Thanks be to God for sending the SSPX to Oklahoma City in 2010, who keep the Mass alive at St. Michael's and who feed its parishioners with the traditional doctrine.

If you haven't visited St. Michael's, please do! Low Mass on Saturdays at 5PM and High Mass on Sundays at 9AM.

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Who Burnt Down Notre Dame?

Answer: we all did.  In a sense. 

When society murders its own children by the millions, these kinds of tragedies to me are omens of God’s wrath and impending chastisement. 

Have you seen those infernal photos of the tallest steeple over Notre Dame Cathedral engulfed in a deep red flame?  It looked apocalyptic, am I wrong?

People are rightly speculating if Muslim terrorists did it.  I mean come on, this happened on Holy Monday of Holy Week in a nation recently known for such symbolic attacks on the Faith. 

But it’s just a building, some are saying. True, we shouldn’t get torn up over the loss of a cultural symbol made popular by Victor Hugo.  But it’s the symbolism of this loss. 

One of the greatest physical structures on Earth giving testament to the eternal truth of Christ and His Church. 

Time will tell how spiritual writers, priests, and the faithful fully interpret this sad, telling event. 

Our Lady pray for us sinners.  Blessed Holy Week. 

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Turkey Mountain Hike. Pain creates Happiness.

Lovin’ this Spring weather.  I feel like a bear emerging from his den.  Or an isolated mountain man suffering from cabin fever re-entering normal existence.  SAD is sad.  Seasonal Affective Disorder that is.  And I think most of us get hit by it in the winter months, and that 80% of it is preventable if our elected officials would pull their heads out of their *** and abolish once and for Daylight Savings Time.  I know I’m a Traditionalist, but I think that’s one tradition that needs to be abolished.

So I could literally feel my serotonin, dopamine, and cortisol levels re-balancing as we ascended steep, rocky hiking trails a few hundred feet up Turkey Mountain in Tulsa, which is now the #1 hiking spot for Tulsans.  Flowering red bud trees cheered me on as I broke a good sweat up the hill, with a hiking stick in one hand and my Dauchshund Peanut’s leash in the other.  


Turkey Mountain
Tulsa, OK

And each climb to a higher elevation I hit it pretty hard, David Goggins-style (watch his life story on Joe Rogan’s podcast).   The trail was muddy, but as Goggins, a quiet Navy Seal, says, the key to peace, health, and happiness is doing daily challenges that are doable but very hard.  He preaches, like a Catholic, which I suspect he is from a google search, that we must go through major pain and suffering every single day until we die, to be our true selves.  He’s got his own podcast which I highly recommend. 


David Goggins

Happy weekend. And blessed Lent.