Tag Archives: history

God’s Shadow over American History

Jean-Pierre Caussade in Abandonment to Divine Providence writes truthfully that God is behind all historical events. If so, then it is God’s will that the United States is in 2025 exactly where He wills it to be. And further, that … Continue reading

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The Southern Hill Country Mentality

Reflections on the people of the American South after the Civil War into the 20th and 21st centuries as they confronted the perils of modernization. The Southern hill country personality type is a reticence towards others, even a reticence toward … Continue reading

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Christianity and Independence Day

Independence Day in America is a secular holiday celebrating freedom with picnics, fireworks, parades, and the proud display of the American flag. For Christians, Independence Day means even more, for by the signing of the Declaration of Independence a series … Continue reading

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Bartholomew de Las Casas: Missionary Advocate for the Indigenous People of New Spain

When in 2016 Pope Francis visited Chiapas, Mexico, to demand rights for the indigenous people of Mexico, he was on familiar ground for champions of indigenous rights. Four hundred and eighty-one years earlier, in 1544, one of the great champions … Continue reading

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Fanny Allen (1784-1819): From Vermont to the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph

Fanny Allen’s commitment to the Great Commission was not flashy, the stuff of grand tales of perseverance, suffering, and martyrdom—more the everyday, the challenges to faith of family and friends, the renewed commitment time and again, the daily putting on … Continue reading

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Juniper Berthiaume (1744-?) French Missionary to the Penobscot Tribe

Pope Francis said on his Apostolic Journey to Canada in July 2022, “I have been waiting to come here and be with you! Here, from this place associated with painful memories, I would like to begin what I consider a … Continue reading

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Missionary John Thayer

John Thayer (1755-1815) was a New England convert, educated at Yale where he was taught that all things Roman Catholic were despicable. Then he went to Europe and underwent a conversion—a most unexpected religious change. He wrote a book about … Continue reading

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Junipero Serra: Work and Prayer

Franciscan Junipero Serra (1713-1784), one of the founders of Catholicism in California, should he miraculously walk the paths of California today (on tired, sore, bare feet, for he believed in the practice of mortification), he would be astonished at the … Continue reading

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Louis Hennepin (1626-1704), Missionary of Hope

When a person thinks back to the colonial American past imagining what the first Catholic missionaries who braved the elements, journeyed into the forests, and canoed down American rivers, must have been like, they are thinking of such a person … Continue reading

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Saint Athanasius: Saint and Doctor of the Church

Athanasius (196-373 AD) lived a long and varied life subject to philosophical, political, and theological controversies, violence, exile, and contentious relations with the most powerful rulers of his time, the Roman Emperors. Athanasius is well known for the Creed named … Continue reading

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