Category Archives: Reviews

Book Review: The Curé d’Ars by Françoise Trochu (With Extracts from the Book)

The relics of the Saint in the Basilica in Ars. Photo courtesy of Laifen. O St John-Marie-Baptiste Vianney! Who, what were you?! If I think back to my New Age days, I can still imagine answering such a question with words like: “Vast, cosmic, superhuman …” For words like “holy” or “saint” were not very [...]

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Book Review: Saint Catherine Labouré of the Miraculous Medal by Joseph Dirvin

Miracles in the Rue du Bac, Paris: The story of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and Saint Catherine Labouré beautifully told by Joseph Dirvin

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Book Review: St John Bosco by F.A. Forbes

Saint John Bosco, you have so deeply touched my heart. It has been moving to read of your unceasing love. A love that poured out of you, towards those poor boys. Those, who you so readily and thirstily took under your wing. Recently on returning to the UK after many years away, I met a [...]

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Book Review: Lazarus Come Forth by Valentin Tomberg

The first part here is a slightly edited version of a review I wrote for Amazon some years back … This book – I am incapable of thinking of it as anything other than one of the greatest books of the twentieth century. My writing of these words is very, very personal. Though I never [...]

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Book Review: The Pope’s Legion by Charles A. Coulombe

This is a book about the 60’s. Yet it has nothing to do with civil rights, sexual liberation, LSD and other forms of chemical liberation … Nor is there anything to do with student riots, the “right” to abortion on demand, Woodstock and general revolt against the Establishment. Neither Hugh Hefner nor Martin Luther King [...]

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Book Review: The Life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque by Emile Bougaud

In English, there are two books, which seem to me the most essential for understanding the traditions around the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The first is that admirable compendium of the Tradition Heart of the Redeemer by Timothy T. O’ Donnell, which I have already reviewed here. The second is this: The Life of Saint [...]

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Book Review: This is the Faith by Canon Francis Ripley

“They sure don’t make ‘em like this anymore!” Such I imagine might be the exclamation of many a traditional Catholic on discovering this storehouse of treasure. The storehouse of treasure in question here is a catechism of the Faith written by the English Father – later Canon – Francis Ripley in 1951. In its time, [...]

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Book Review: The Tragic Tale of Claire Ferchaud and the Great War – Raymond Jonas

It cannot be helped. After Loublande, this must perforce be a most personal of reviews. For speaking very personally, Loublande changed a lot of things for me. But among others, it changed my perspective on this book. And what is Loublande? Loublande is a small village at the edge of the Vendée in Western France, [...]

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Book Review: The New Faithful – Colleen Carroll

Bring on the Young Fogeys!

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DVD Review: Witness to Hope

This is a powerful, effective, moving telling of the life of Ven. John Paul II with documentary footage and recollections by those who knew him. And based as it is on the comprehensive biography by George Weigel, it also comes with Weigel’s exhaustively thorough examination of Ven. John Paul II’s colossal effect on the twentieth [...]

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Book Review: The Autobiography of Saint Margaret Mary

What we have to do with here is a small volume of autobiography by the Seventeenth Century French saint, who beheld the Sacred Heart and brought its Public Devotion to the entire Catholic world. This short book was written in the saint’s own hand in the form of a narrative, with no distinctive breaks or [...]

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Book Review: Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene

For centuries now, our world has been increasingly filled by purely humanistic culture. And the majority of what we regard as great literature turns on very worldly themes. In the novels of Jane Austen or E. M. Forster for instance, we do not have profound explorations of Divine Grace in our lives, nor matters of [...]

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Book Review: Marian Apparitions, the Bible and the Modern World – Donal Anthony Foley

Very highly recommended – a masterful account of Marian Apparitions in the Modern Age.

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Book Review: When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten

A Great Tree Trunk for understanding Corporate Control and the Idols of Modern Secular Civilisation.

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Book Review: The Secret of the Rosary by Saint Louis de Montfort

An Absolute Jewel …

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DVD Review: The Song of Bernadette

A very, very moving account not only of the Miracles of Our Lady, but also of the Lost Piety of Catholic France.

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Book Review: Puritan´s Empire by Charles A. Coulombe

A Very Personal Review of a Very Catholic Deconstruction of America.

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Book Review: Iota Unum by Romano Amerio

Razor sharp insight into the Crisis of the Church. The work of a master.

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Book Review: The Rise of Benedict XVI: The Inside Story of How the Pope was Elected and Where He Will Take the Catholic Church by John L Allen Jr

Exceptional journalism from John L Allen to counter media stereotypes of Catholicism and Benedict XVI.

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Book Review: The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World by Gilles Kepel

A secular book to give hope to traditionalists…

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