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 23, 2013

Léon Harmel: Pioneer of the Just Wage

by Christopher O. Blum

You could call the nineteenth century stupid, but hardly dull. At its birth, it was the stage for Napoleon’s antics and for the heroism of the captains of wooden ships; at its death, the old Europe itself was giving way…

May 16, 2013

Cardinal Pie and the Social Kingship of Christ

by Joseph F. X. Sladky

Near the close of the year 1925, Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical Quas Primas, introducing the Feast of Christ the King. By the celebration of this feast, it was thought that the teaching on Christ’s Social Kingship would more…

May 6, 2013

Bl. Ladislaus of Gielniów and the Power of Catholic Culture

by Paul Radzilowski

In the year of Our Lord fourteen sixty-two, St. Peter’s chains’ day, I took the cloister’s bonds. In Gielniów, Peter begot me, but Peter, most kind, in the cloister enclosed me: smashed my chains. Thanking good God, with the Psalmist…

April 29, 2013

Jacques Maritain’s Service to Truth

by Christopher Shannon

In the nineteenth century, the West took great pride in its independence from the Church, an independence based on a new public authority rooted in the language of the natural sciences. Liberals and socialists disagreed on the nature of the…

April 25, 2013

The First Catholic Feminist?

by Christopher Check

A little over a decade ago, a gathering of the who’s who of Catholic feminism issued the Madeleva Manifesto: A Message of Hope and Courage to Women in the Church. The signatories to the Manifesto included Charlie Curran’s defender Monika…

April 22, 2013

St. Anselm of Canterbury: Scholarship Rooted in Prayer

by John P. Bequette

When we study the history of the Church, we encounter what many have called the res Catholica, the “Catholic thing.” We use the non-descript Latin res quite deliberately in order to evoke within the reader a sense of enigma, of…

April 8, 2013

The Primacy of the Spiritual: Saint Nicholas of Flue

by Christopher O. Blum

Although our minds are limited in their ability to attain God in this life, we are capable of “greater desire, and love, and pleasure in knowing divine matters” than we are able to find in “the perfect knowledge of the…

April 4, 2013

St. Vincent Ferrer and the Divided Papacy

by Fr. Michael Keating

The resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of Pope Francis have set the eyes of the world on the papacy, and in the midst of the great joy of Catholics everywhere, there have been no lack of prognostications and…

March 28, 2013

The Passion

by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

O most charitable Jesus, you desired to enrich us, and so you first gave us your blood to wash us so that, having been purified, we might be able to receive the gifts you offer. O my dear Savior, you…

March 25, 2013

The Anointing

by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

As his time came near, Jesus came forth from his retreat at Ephraim and returned to Bethany, to the neighborhood of Jerusalem, just six days before the Passover. He came for a feast at the house of his friend Lazarus….

March 18, 2013

The Linchpin of High Scholasticism: Hugh of St. Cher

by Donald S. Prudlo

Humans are given to easy answers, especially when confronted with the dizzying intricacy of the world we inhabit. It is far simpler to attempt to account for complex causes with simple explanations, or to distill sophisticated historical and theological arguments…

March 11, 2013

He Chose to Die for Christ: Saint Eulogius

by Robert Shaffern

Often buried within the international section of American national newspapers may be found accounts of Muslim vandalism against Christian churches, so say nothing of Muslim attacks on the Christians of the Middle East. Just last week a Muslim mob badly…

March 4, 2013

St. Casimir: The Prince without Reproach

by Paul Radzilowski

In early 1472, the thirteen-year-old Prince Casimir of Poland returned to his native land from a campaign in Hungary with a dispirited and malcontented army. Much of the remaining force was made up of unpaid mercenaries. Even before crossing the…

February 25, 2013

Blandina Segale, Sister of Charity in the Wild West

by Kevin Schmiesing

Stagecoach rides across the Great Plains. Runaway horses. Murderous outlaws. Her life had all the adventure of a stock character out of a Hollywood western, but she was neither a pioneering homesteader nor a lady of doubtful virtue. She was…

February 21, 2013

St. Robert Southwell: Poet and Martyr

by R. Jared Staudt

A line that is so overused that it has almost become trite is Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be.” Yet, it hits at the existential struggle of the modern world. Hamlet’s struggle embodies the difficulty of living in a…

February 14, 2013

Fr. Vincent Capodanno, Medal of Honor Recipient

by Sydney Leach

Just before reaching the imposing, stainless steel structure of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, one finds a simple stone and glass building situated on a nearby hill. It is the Semper Fidelis Memorial Chapel: a…

February 11, 2013

Divine Wisdom at the Root of Things: Hugh of St. Victor

by Brian FitzGerald

Shortly before the first Gothic arches of Paris began bearing the weight of their spires, a young man arrived in Paris. His origins are unknown to us now, but his destination was clear: he had come to join the new…

February 4, 2013

Victory’s Spoils: The Edict of Milan

by Donald S. Prudlo

G. K. Chesterton was a master at making plain the paradoxical character of Christianity. He knew that to stray too far to one side or another was to leave the path of orthodoxy far behind. To stay on that road…

January 31, 2013

How to be an American Catholic: Bishop Francis Kelley

by Christopher Check

Francis Clement Kelley, founder of the Catholic Church Extension Society and second Bishop of Oklahoma was born in 1870 on Price Edward Island. His Irish father was a sea trader, so Francis was formed in a one-room country school and…

January 28, 2013

Remembering Ralph McInerny

by Christopher Kaczor

My office holds many treasured keepsakes—a wedding photo, my children’s baptismal candles, and a fiftieth anniversary picture of my parents. In sight of where I write is also a picture of a young man and an old man, a joyful…

January 24, 2013

Dietrich von Hildebrand: Exemplar of Catholic Intellectual Life

by Denis Kitzinger

To find a recent exemplar of Catholic intellectual life, one ought to look to the personalist philosopher and cultural critic Dietrich von Hildebrand (12 October 1889 – 26 January 1977). Few have exercised this calling more courageously, faithfully, or with…

← Previous Entries