This is a brief personal remembrance of the late Father Louis J. Campbell, whom we were privileged to know as a priest whose friendship will be treasured for as long as we live.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.

May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Yesterday was the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle. Saint Thomas did not believe that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had risen from the dead on Easter Sunday. Our Lord told the doubting Apostle to press his finger into His nail marks and to press his hand into His wounded side. Saint Thomas believed. Along with the other Apostles, including the one who replaced Judas Iscariot, Saint Matthias, Saint Thomas became a bold proclaimer of the Catholic Faith, going to India, where he sacrificed his life for the Holy Faith. Saint Thomas the Apostle touched the flesh of the Risen Saviour with his own hands. He then went on to touch the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of that same Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ with his own priestly hands as he uttered the words at Holy Mass that made the Messias incarnate under the appearances of bread and wine. The very words Saint Thomas uttered after he had touched Our Lord on Low Sunday, Dominus meus et Deus meus, are what we pray every time a true priest utters these words at Holy Mass: "Hoc Est Enim Corpus Meum." As we prepare the celebration of Christmas Day four days from now, we should ask Saint Thomas to help us reverence Our Lord in His Real Presence with greater fervor as we grow stronger in the Faith with every passing day, consecrated as we are to Our Lord through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Medical appointments and the worsening nature of my various and sundry orthopedic problems have interfered with my ability to write, although I should have a personal remniscence of the late Father Louis J. Campbell to post by tomorrow, Saturday, December 23, 2023, or the Vigil of Christmas, Sunday, December 24, 2023. I will not publish my commentary on Victor Manuel Fernandez's antipapally sanctioned decision to bestow "blessings" upon those who living in states of Mortal Sin and, as such, have souls that are odious in the sight of the Most Blessed Trinity until after Christmas Day. 

For the moment, Antipope Appoveth, Antipope Undermineth What He Approveth, which was published thirty-two months ago, provides some background to the newest Jorge and Pals in Wonderland of the Absurd exercise.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Thomas the Apostle, pray for us.

With apologies for the delay, here is a new commentary, which continues the work of the "Sin: More Deadly Than the Coronavirus" series under a different title.

There are important facts contained in this commentary as well as Dom Prosper Gueranger's reflection on the Feast of Our Lady's Expectation, which can be celebrated today, December 18, 2023.

Another new commentary will follow in a few days as my health and strength permits. One thing is for sure, though: those cataract surgeries have improved my eyesight to such an extent that I am now able to work on the computer without any kind of glasses, including reading glasses. The vision is getting back as the eyes heal. Now, this is no guarantee that I, the all-time king of typographical errors, misplaced or omitted words and other such problems, will not continue to show my great fallibility on the keyboard. However, I have a better chance now of spotting my mistakes than I have had at any time in the past thirty-one years since I started using prescription glasses. Deo gratias.

As always, non-tax-deductible financial gifts are greatly appreciated and much needed in this week before Christmas. Thank you.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

As the next original article will not be ready for publication until tomorrow, Monday, December 18, 2023, an Advent ferial day on which can be celebrated the Feast of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I am presenting a brief reflection on Gaudete Sunday that draws principally from Dom Prosper Gueranger's The Liturgical Year and also from Father Benedict Baur's reflections on the "O" antiphons prayed at Vespers starting this evening with "O Wisdom."

A blessed Gaudete Sunday to you all.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

The saint whose feast we celebrate today, Saint Lucy, resisted all efforts made by the civil authorities to induce her to worship the idols when a suitor, who was angered by her rejection of him after she had given away her riches to the poor, betrayed her as Christian to the pagan officials of the Roman Empire in Syracuse, Sicily, at the beginning of the Fourth Century A.D., in the year 304 A.D.

Saint Lucy could have saved her life if only she worshiped the idols. Unlike the conciliar "pontiffs," men who have esteemed the symbols of various and sundry false religions, with their own consecrated hands, Saint Lucy refused to do so and was immovable when taken to a house of sin. She refused even to look upon the vice that was before her.

May this immovable foe of religious liberty help us to see more clearly with the eyes of our immortal souls that the Catholic Church cannot be in the least responsible for the abominations and blasphemies and sacrileges and defections from the Faith perpetrated by the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

May Saint Lucy, a model of purity and gentleness and grace and courage, help us to see so clearly that we flee to the catacombs where the Faith is protected without any concessions to conciliarism.

A blessed Feast of Saint Lucy to all who are named after this great witness to the Faith, especially my dear wife, who took Saint Lucy as her patron at Baptism, and our dear daughter, Lucy Mary Therese Norma, who has, of course, a special devotion to the virgin and martyr from Syracuse, Sicily.

I ask your prayers also for the repose of the soul of the late Father Salvatore V. Franco, who died on this day twenty-one years ago now. Father Franco, who suffered from serious heart problems but died of a form of leukemia that he only found out he had weeks before he died, was good enough to offer us refuge in his kitchen in Westbury, Long Island, New York, in April of 2002 until November of 2002 as he offered the Immemorial Mass of Tradition for us each weekday.

Although I had long before abandoned the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination on Sundays as I moved in "indult" circles, we made the decision to abandon all putative "offerings" of this abominable travesty during the week when Father Franco took ill and before he died. Father Franco, who was ordained as a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn in June of 1953, had a heart attack in 1963 at the age of thirty-seven, an act of God's Divine Mercy that kept him from being immersed in parish life as the conciliar revolution proceeded apace. Father Franco kept active, however, offering Mass and helping souls. We will be forever grateful to him for providing us with the refuge that he did in the months after Lucy's birth. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen. We still miss you, Father Salvatore V. Franco!

Finaly, my second cataract surgery yesterday, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was a little more difficult than the one on November 28, 2023,which is why I cannot complete the next original commentary for this site for another two days. Thank you,

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Two articles on Our Lady of Guadalupe are being republished today, Tuesday, December 12, 2023 Each has been slightly revised and, of course. In addition to this article, there is also "We Must Be Made As Simple and Trusting" that was published in four parts back in 2010.

A fuller description of today’s feast is found in the introduction to “We Must Be Made as Simple and Trusting” below. A Spanish language translation of this commentary that was prepared by the late Mr. Juan Carlos Areneta nine years ago can be read at: Las Américas Pertenecen a Nuestra Señora.

Finally, please pray for my younger brother (and only sibling), who turns seventy years of age today. Our late mother died on March 18, 1982, and our father died on September 5 1992. The years have certainly passed quickly.

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is not on the universal calendar of the Catholic Church nor is it a mandated feast in the United States of America except in the Archdioceses of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Santa Fe as well as in the Dioceses of Monterery, Fresno, Tuscson, and El Paso. We can nevertheless celebrate with joy on the Advent ferial day.

Oh, I was too tired from the commentary posted yestrerday to complete another original article today, especially since I have the second cataract surgery, this one on my left eye, upcoming this morning on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I will do what I can to get that next commentary publishsed as soon as possible.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

[N.B. The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is not on the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. According to the General Roman Calendar of 1954, this feast is particular to the Archdioceses of San Francisco and Los Angeles and to the Dioceses of Monterey, Fresno, El Paso, San Diego, and Tuscon. This having been noted, however, today is an Advent ferial day upon which a votive or requiem Mass may be offered. Thus, this Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe should celebrated as widely as possible.]

Our Blessed Mother gave us two great miracles on this day four hundred ninety-two years ago this very day.

Acceding to the demand of Apostolic Administrator [later Archbishop] Fray Juan de Zumarraga, O.F.M., the Mother of God saw to it that Castilian roses grew atop Tepeyac Hill so that her little "Juanito," Juan Diego, a fifty-five year-old widower to whom she had first appeared on December 9, 1531, could provide proof that it was she who had made the request of Fray de Zumarraga to build a shrine in her honor on the hill where she appeared. 

The administrator's guards, who had treated Juan Diego with such cruelty and even racism, spied those roses and tried to grab them out of Juan's tilma as he waited to see Fray de Zumarraga. The roses, quite miraculously, disappeared every time the guards sought to snatch them away from Juan Diego. Those Castilian roses were presented by Juan Diego to Fray Juan de Zumarraga, who knelt before the Indian convert to the Faith as he gazed upon the miraculous image that Juanito did not know was there: the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who was clearly expecting the Baby Jesus. 

Remember, this was Advent in the year 1531, just forty-nine years after Christopher Columbus first set foot on the Island of San Salvador to implant the Cross of the Divine Redeemer in this hemisphere for the first time since Saint Brendan the Navigator had done so in the First Millennium.

Our Lady's miraculous image showing her expecting the Baby Jesus is quite symbolic of the expectant desire she had then—and has now—for the conversion of the peoples of the Americas to the true Faith, that each person and each nation be born anew as they submit themselves to Christ the King through His Catholic Church. Over nine million indigenous people converted to the true Faith within a short time following her apparition to Juan Diego on this day four hundred ninety-two years ago, almost person for person the number of people lost to the Faith as a result of the Protestant Revolt in Europe. It was almost as though God was saying to those who left, “Fine. I will have My Mother get new souls to populate Holy Mother Church and hence Heaven itself.”

The Americas were indeed converted to Catholicism, which is why the devil had to attack the Faith in Latin America with such ferocity by means of the Masonic revolutionaries who were supported in both philosophical and monetary terms by the lodges in the nascent Untied States of America. Great crimes were committed against Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Most Blessed Mother as a result. These crimes continue to this day, which is, of course, one of the reasons that Saint Michael the Archangel appeared with Our Lady as she spoke to Juan Diego. Our Lady has crushed the head of the serpent with her heel and Saint Michael the Archangel is our helper to crush him in our own lives and in the Americas where he reigns, albeit temporarily, in civil government and in popular culture.

May we rely upon the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Empress and Patroness of the Americas, to help us to be courageous enough to plant seeds for the conversion of the Americas, including the United States of America, to the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be exercised by the Catholic Church.

Perhaps an extra Rosary today on this glorious feast day will help us to be more faithful and more courageous in our promotion of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. 

Finally, today is my only brother's (and my own sibling's) sixty-ninth birthday. Please pray for him today. Thank you.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Viva La Virgen de Guadalupe!

A blessed Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to you all.

This is one of those articles whose titles are self-explanatory.

It is my hope to have another brief commentary posted in about twenty-four hours prior to surgery to remove the cataract on my left eye tomorrow, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Pope Saint Damasus I, pray for us.