Just another writer
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Ferdinand
Today’s saint is Saint Ferdinand, who, reading his biography, is kind of politically incorrect as saints go, being notable for “christianizing” Spain which largely consisted of military conquests on the Iberian peninsula. This is the guy who pissed off Osama Bin Laden so much, he felt obliged to mention him in his justification of the…
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The Catholic nerd pilgrimage continues: Ascension
Today is Ascension Thursday, which has been moved to next Sunday by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, but since the Sunday I showed up at a church and said I wanted to be Catholic was the Sunday before Ascension Thursday when it was still on Thursday, I have a bit of an emotional connection…
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Today’s saint picture, slightly crummier today—Saint Bernard of Montjoux
Today is the feast of St Bernard of Montjoux who, it turns out is exactly the St Bernard that the dogs are named after thanks to his establishing a pair of permanent rest houses in passes through that Alpines. That said, even though one of the two pictures I found online shows him with a…
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Today’s somewhat less crummy saint picture—Saint Augustine of Canterbury
No church available for any of today’s saints, so I decided to do a portrait of Saint Augustine of Canterbury. Less well-known than his namesake, Augustine of Hippo, Augustine of Canterbury led a delegation of monks to England where he would become the first bishop of Canterbury. Not long after leaving Rome, this group of…
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Today’s crummy saint picture—St Philip Neri
There is a St Philip Neri church in Chicago, but it’s been renamed for a different saint and the daily Mass was too early to drag the kids to, so I’m doing a saint drawing again today. This time around, I decided to do it with a felt tip marker thinking this might make the…
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Today’s crummy saint picture
Continuing my saint a day project, since both St Bede the Venerable parishes in the archdiocese were a bit far to go with my kids, I opted to do another crummy drawing. This one is a colored pencil impressionist rendering of the James Doyle Penrose painting, “The Venerable Bede Translates John” which depicts Bede on…
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Another lousy drawing
Since I wasn’t able to make it to Our Lady of the Wayside church this morning, I instead did a drawing taken from the painting, Madonna Della Strada. The original painting was in a church dating back to the fifth century, although the painting itself only dates back to the 13th or 14th century. The…
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A visit with my younger self: 18 June 1988
Well, I missed a day for the first time back in 1988 and I return with an entry that is embarrassing in more ways than one: Why do people read or watch movies or TV or whatever? More than ever, I’m convinced that it’s because we’re all looking for answers but we aren’t even sure…
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Once again I pretend to be an artist
Since there’s no church for me to visit for any of today’s saints, I decided I’d do the art thing and draw one of the saints. Looking through my Penguin Dictionary of the Saints, I found Saint Desiderius of Vienne who had a really rough time of things: he was rebuked by the pope for…