Standard Bearers of the King

Edited by Christopher Blum, Standard-Bearers of the King remembers with gratitude the labors and sufferings of those faithful servants of Christ who bravely held aloft the standard of the Cross for the faithful to see and to follow.

May 14, 2012

Peter Maurin: A Fool for Christ

by Christopher Shannon

“For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake . ….

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May 7, 2012

Al Sayyid: The Crusading Valor of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar

by Brendan J. McGuire

It has long been fashionable to disparage the notion that one can derive historical insight from medieval poems; an exception to this tendency can be found in the Castilian martial epic Poema del mio Cid, which displays a surprising fidelity…

April 30, 2012

Athanasius Contra Mundum: The Courage to Act Alone

by Christopher Check

Who among us does not long to go back and witness first-hand certain moments in Catholic history? Certain decisive moments. Here are a few of mine: On the eve of the battle of Lepanto, Don John of Austria silenced his…

April 23, 2012

St. Mark and Responding to the Rough Profession

by Ben Akers

“When we come to the service of Christ, we come to a rough profession.” The Jesuit poet and Elizabethan martyr, St. Robert Southwell, reminded his fellow prisoners of this sober truth in his “Epistle of Comfort.” He composed the letter…

April 16, 2012

The Passion of César Chávez

by Christopher Shannon

The Catholic community in America is at present politically adrift. In this presidential election year, candidates continue to strategize over how to win the Catholic vote despite any number of studies that continue to reveal that there is no Catholic…

April 9, 2012

Theodor Haecker

by M.D. Aeschliman

“Prussian idealism took the heart of flesh and blood from the German and in its place gave him one of iron and paper.” Theodor Haecker, 1940 For his open, published opposition to the German, National-Socialist “New Order,” the anti-Nazi humanist…

April 5, 2012

John Senior: In Piam Memoriam

by Philippe Maxence

How the time does pass . . . it was on April 8, 1999—already thirteen years ago—that Professor John Senior returned to our Father’s House. Since then, we have been all the more orphaned and greater has been our yearning…

March 27, 2012

Blessed Karl von Habsburg

by Denis Kitzinger

“Blessed be the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Mt. 5:9) Karl I (1887-1922), Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, said goodbye to his wife, Empress Zita. “I’ll love you forever”, he declared, just as he…

March 15, 2012

St. Jean de Brébeuf

by Christopher Blum

Why, there is Echon come back again . . . my nephew, my brother, my cousin, you have finally come back to us!” Thus with the warmth typical of their people did the Huron Indians greet their beloved father, Jean…

March 5, 2012

Sts. Perpetua and Felicity

by Christopher Shannon

If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and motherand wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple (Luke 15: 26) In the early Church,…

February 27, 2012

Bossuet’s Carême du Louvre at 350

by Christopher Blum

To begin well was a grace not given to Louis XIV. King before his fifth birthday, rudely shocked by the Fronde uprising as a mere child, and first seduced—the story goes—by a lady-in-waiting at the French court while still a…

February 20, 2012

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

by Fr. Michael Keating

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was marked out for greatness at a very young age. The son of a well-known sculptor, he arrived with his family in Rome as a young boy, and had soon captivated the city with his artistic…

February 13, 2012

Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the Apostle of Santa Fe

by Christopher Check

The man chosen by Blessed Pius IX to restore the Faith to the troubled American Southwest was the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamy, who died on the 13th of February in the year of Grace 1888.

February 12, 2012

A Son of Saint Louis

by Christopher Blum

Samuel de Champlain vindicates the ideal of the Christian explorer who brings the light of faith and the benefits of civilization to the heathen savage.

February 7, 2012

Saint Thomas More (1478-1535)

by William Fahey

February 7 (the anniversary of his birth) It was the stubble. That, more than anything, drew me to Saint Thomas More when I was young. Of course, I had seen the film version of Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for…