Bulletins, Newsletters, and Flocknotes

The young mother found hope holding her son in the darkness when she realized there was a Bible resting just underneath her.

The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion, Wisconsin, will host an exhibit July 1–9 honoring holy men and women from the United States.

Sister Alessandra Smerilli becomes the second woman in history to lead a Vatican dicastery as prefect.

On the eve of the traditionalist society's planned episcopal consecrations without papal approval, the pontiff issued a written appeal to the SSPX superior general.

The saint whose visions helped spread devotion to the Sacred Heart is inspiring a new wave of prayer as her major relics travel across the United States.

On January 4 , President Joe Biden honored nineteen individuals with the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. While one could argue that some were less deserving of the award than others, I believe that one honoree deserved it without question: Ralph Lauren, a living embodiment of the American dream who in turn made America his muse. His designs pay homage to the cowboy, the soldier, the Ivy Leaguer. For Lauren, no aspect of the American character isn’t worth celebrating—a welcome contrast to the self-loathing that usually pervades the upper echelons of society.  

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Who attempts to overthrow a government without weapons? Why would the alleged leader of an insurrection authorize military force to protect the government, and why would the alleged insurrection victims countermand that authorization? How do people who listen to speeches about democratic procedures and election integrity in one location transform into enemies of the Constitution after walking a mile and a half to the east? Who believes that interrupting a vote would overturn a government? If there was an attempted insurrection, why would a notoriously creative and aggressive prosecutor fail to find any basis for filing insurrection charges?

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I first visited the University of Notre Dame du Lac (to use its proper inflated style) in 2017 as a guest of some friends in the law school. By then I had already hated the place for more or less my entire life. For me, Notre Dame was synonymous with the Roman Catholic Church as I had known her in childhood: dated folk art aesthetics (has anyone ever written about how ugly the buildings are?), the Breaking Bread missalette, the so-called “Celtic” Alleluia, the thought (though not the actual writings) of Fr. Richard McBrien, jolly fat Knights of Columbus in their blue satin jackets, avuncular permanent deacons named Tom, Pat, or, occasionally, Dave. At the age of twenty-seven, I expected to find preserved something of the religious atmosphere of the middle years of John Paul II’s papacy: the quiet half-acknowledged sense of desperation, the all-pervading horror of unbelief that could never be allowed formally to take shape among the grandchildren of European immigrants who had done well for themselves in the professions—perhaps too well.

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There’s a version of Bob Dylan for everyone: small-town boy from Duluth, Minnesota; scrappy folk troubadour of Greenwich Village; electric rock poet who defied expectations at Newport; introspective born-again Christian; Nobel Laureate. As any journalist who has interviewed him will attest, Dylan is an enigma. Capturing the whole man is harder than making a bead of mercury sit still in one’s palm. 

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É lisabeth-Paule Labat (1897–1975) was an accomplished pianist and composer when she entered the abbey of Saint-Michel de Kergonan in her early twenties. She devoted her later years to writing theology and an “Essay on the Mystery of Music,” published a decade ago as The Song That I Am , translated by Erik Varden . It’s a brilliant and beautiful essay, but what sets it apart from most explorations of music is its deeply theological character.

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