As you know, one of the most common complaints against my life is that "hermits shouldn't travel."  Besides the fact that my rule of life has 20 days contemplative and 10 days active life approved every month by my superiors, it's important to look at Catholic Church history on the life of contemplatives to see if there's any precedent to my way of life.  We're going to go look way back to the First Millennium of Catholicism to the country whence my ancestors come:  Ireland. Raymond O'Flynn in Frank Sheed's book The Saints Are Not Sad wrote about an army of Irish and Scottish monks that left their monasteries and [...]

The above is my Paris Metro card from 1997.  It was the subway pass I used to get around the city while I studied at the University of Paris as a 19 year old.  Yes, the above is me as a 19 year old, not a 12 year old.  I weighed about 100 lbs and had to shave maybe once a month.  Walking the lonely streets of Paris, I had almost no friends. I was once mugged at knifepoint by a Muslim while talking to my own mother back in the states in a phone-booth. One day after that, I walked into a Catholic bookstore and I saw the autobiography [...]

Over the summer of 2019, there was a lot of righteous anger among traditional Catholics online (and in real life) over the fact that the folks in charge of the Vatican the last decade had placed Pachamama idols—idols Burgles' staff admitted to Catholic News Agency were not the Blessed Virgin Mary—in various Catholic Churches in Rome, including St. Mary Transpontina near the Vatican. Dr. Taylor Marshall and I had decided to go dunk these wicked idols, but he had to bail at the last minute. I still went to Rome, in any case, with a different Taylor M. (not kidding) and a traditional gentleman from England. You see, Dr. Marshall [...]

Thirteen years ago, I was a parish priest at the above Church in the Archdiocese of Denver. I was only two years into my priesthood and already it was my third parish as a parochial vicar. Most of my enemies online now say I was kicked out of all these places. I briefly discuss this accusation in a new interview released today regarding my switch from Novus Ordo Missæ (NOM) to Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). But as you will see, the letter below is one I wrote in 2012 to our interim bishop (neither the one who ordained me, nor our current one who was only just named in 2012) [...]

In the Roman Canon of the Traditional Latin Mass, as well as my Rosaries, I found find myself repeatedly praying for the same major things across the globe and locally. Maybe it’s just my mild OCD, but I was surprised to find that my most important prayer intentions even fit into the beginning of the alphabet! I believe they refer to Holy Mother Church and the salvation of the world. At least, these are the things I find most pressing, and you can join me in prayer for them, too: A—Abortion and Trafficking, the end of:  This has been my main prayer intention for a long time.  While I may [...]

Airport adventures and meeting Bishop Henry Rene Gracida again. I will be speaking at LifeSite News' Rome Life Forum on 5 December 2025.  Please come to Rome and we can hopefully find time together after the conference.

The rightly-ordered Catholic priest (not one attracted to a lifestyle contra naturam) gives his life entirely to Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church.  Christ is my friend, my God and my Savior.  The Catholic Church is my mother, and I hope to stand as the best-man for her bridegroom, Christ, in His marriage to her in the Apocalypse.   You lay people also love the Catholic Church, but some of you can't understand how personal it is when I see modernists invade her.  It's like watching your own mother be harmed by intruders who have no rights to be in your home, especially when she is all you have. How [...]

Charlie Kirk was a Protestant, but defended Our Lady’s honor. In fact, he frequently went to daily Mass in Phoenix with his wife according to several sources I know in real life. Thus, I think it’s safe to say that if he was not a catechumen, he was on his way to being a catechumen. And the Catholic Church claimed catechumens as their own. That’s why I have a hope for his salvation. However, I won’t declare him a martyr, so we should all keep praying for his soul. We will of course be praying for his beautiful family and children that he leaves behind. And I will be offering [...]

Modernists often like to pigeon-hole real Catholics as "traditional Catholics" not because they have anything against certain traditions in the Catholic Church, but because they want to make it sound like we live in a LARPing time-warp to the 1940s.  As I have written before, modernists will happily admit that the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) has its roots in the Council of Trent, but this is only to insist that the Novus Ordo Missæ (NOM) is the simpler "catacombs version" of the Mass, meaning the new-Mass is ironically older than the old-Mass! Of course, that doesn't even make sense linguistically, not to mention theologically.  As I have written before here, [...]

In the theology section of my site, I write very confidently about tradition versus modernism.  But to be honest with the few readers who read the Life Update section of my site here, I have to admit I am very confused at the current Church crisis.  Try as people might compare it to past crises in the Church, it always falls flat.  We've never had someone on the Chair of Peter worship a demon-idol (Pachamama) or promote gay-blessings (Fiducia Supplicans) before the 21st century. And then the next guy on the Chair tells us all he's in heaven and he's going to totally imitate his synodal church. Lay folks who [...]