By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira A Lesson From the Early Education of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga The biographical notes about Saint Aloysius Gonzaga are as follows: “Saint Aloysius Gonzaga (1568-1591) was the eldest son of Ferdinand, Marquis of Castiglione. Coupled with his precocious piety, he also displayed the bellicose bubbling of his ancestral blood. The Marquis gave him...

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira How the Immaculate Conception Can Help Us Understand the Crisis in the Church There is a kind of interchangeability between the attributes of Our Lady and the Catholic Church. The things that are said of Our Lady, in their own way, can be said of the Catholic Church. Thus, when reciting...

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Saint John Fisher Teach Us to Have Vigilance and Serenity in the Face of Death On June 22, the Church celebrates the memory of Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More, both martyred in England for refusing to join Henry VIII’s revolt against the Papacy. “Let me Sleep Another Hour” We...

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Saint Bernard overcoming a demon. Saint Bernard was a Cistercian monk. He founded a religious Order that was a branch of the Order of Saint Benedict, destined to practice greater austerity and have a tougher life than required by the toughest rules of the monks of his time. He believed—how rightly!—that...

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira What Is Culture? People answer this question in many different ways. Some are inspired by philology, others by all kinds of philosophical and social systems. So many contradictions have arisen around defining culture, and the related word “civilisation” gives rise to so many contradictions that international congresses of scholars and professors...

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira That in Which They Are Equal—First Distinction The word mandate has two meanings. One is the general meaning which indicates an imperative order of a legitimate authority to a subject. Another is the most restricted sense of the mandate that Our Lord gave to the hierarchy. As it is easy to...

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Once while in Rome, a friend and I passed in front of a shop window with several jars of cherry compote and other fruits. I told my friend: “I generally like fruit jams much more than natural fruit, and so I think cherry compote is much better than fresh, raw cherries.”...

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira The word family indicates a plurality of persons. There is another word, one of special significance, that indicates just one person: Mother. A mother is the quintessence of a family, for she is the quintessence of love, the quintessence of affection and therefore, the quintessence of goodness and mercy. It...

By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira For example: Let’s say one young man meets another young man with a quality worthy of admiration. The first young man can have two attitudes of soul. The first is to admire, to see how beautiful and magnificent that quality is because he is joyful to see the quality of another....

I believe that the patriarchal society, like everything that exists in this valley of tears, becomes stronger over time, in proportion to its existence and production. However, at the same time, it grows older and older. Both institutions and families age. And, gradually, glory itself becomes a burden under which these institutions, just as individuals,...