The Narthex
Defending Holy Innocents against Bait and Switch
We must stop woke politics from displacing received Church teaching
By John M. Grondelski | December 30th 2024 12:46 PMOn the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr, Pope Francis went to Rome’s Rebibbia Prison to open the holy door he established there. In his subsequent Angelus address (linked below), Francis focused on “martyrs” and those “persecuted.” And while he did not make an explicit connection to his prison…
READ FULL BLOG POSTSt. Maximilian Kolbe: A New Kind of Martyr
Before him, martyrdom traditionally involved the element of 'in odium fidei'
By John M. Grondelski | August 14th 2024 12:18 PMAugust 14 is the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, martyr. Kolbe, a 47-year old Polish Franciscan, gave his life in substitution for another man in Auschwitz’s starvation bunker. To recap: Kolbe was arrested by the German occupiers of Poland in February 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In…
READ FULL BLOG POSTSt. Maximilian Kolbe: Some Lessons
The great saint was a pastor to the end
By John M. Grondelski | August 14th 2023 8:15 PMSeventy-two years ago today, St. Maximilian Kolbe was murdered by a poison injection at Auschwitz, after about two weeks in a starvation bunker. Most probably on August 15 -- the feast of she to whom he was devoted -- his emaciated body went up in smoke through Auschwitz's crematorium chimney.…
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