SPIRITED THINKING SINCE 1888
Charles Coulombe

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Pertinacious Popery: The Roman Origins of the Notary Public
March 16, 2021
During the early persecutions of the Church, Pope St. Clement I appointed seven notaries to record the acts of the martyrs in each of the seven sectors of the city. The rest is history.
Catholic Action: A tireless idealist from an era of great converts
December 20, 2020
Bertram Ashburnham, 5th Earl of Ashburnham (1840-1913) was received into the Church in 1872 and inherited his title at the death of his father six years later.
A foe of eugenics: The Catholic author who was sued for libel by Marie Stopes
November 20, 2020
Halliday Sutherland was a brilliant travel writer - and so much more
Graveyard visits, Remembrance Day and St Andrew: November traditions
November 02, 2020
The month of November has always been a magical time for me – as it is for many other people
The EU founding father who longed for Europe to return to the Faith
October 16, 2020
Sanctity is probably not something we would immediately associate with anyone connected with the European Union. But just as the Founding Fathers might not recognise their handiwork in the modern United States government, nor Dag Hammarskjold his in the current dominant ideology at the United Nations, nor the framers of the Statute of Westminster theirs
The baron who transformed workers’ rights in Austria – and beyond
September 18, 2020
Karl Baron von Vogelsang was born in 1818 in Liegnitz, Prussian Silesia, to a Pomeranian noble family. Studying law and political science in Bonn, Rostock, and Berlin, he inherited an estate in Mecklenburg in 1848 and was elected to the Grand Duchy’s legislature. Two years later, in Berlin, he met that city’s new Catholic bishop,
St John Capistran, the Franciscan priest who led troops into battle
August 28, 2020
St Francis and the Franciscans are constantly portrayed as hippie-esque children of nature. The Holy Man of Assisi and his disciples are known in the popular mind as garden statues accompanied by birds – one step above gnomes. But the reality is quite different. Francis himself had a gallant and chivalric nature which initially impelled
The movies ignore it, but Robin Hood was a very Catholic hero
August 06, 2020
In the collective imagination of the Anglosphere, Robin Hood is second only to King Arthur in the hold he has on the public mind. The idea of the Merry Men living in self-constructed freedom “all under the merry greenwood tree” in Sherwood Forest – robbing the rich and helping the poor and staying loyal to
Blessed Hildegard Burjan: A mother and MP who helped the poor
July 24, 2020
The first half of the 20th century produced incredible amounts of bloodshed, warfare and social unrest: of the hapless nations visited by these plagues, Austria was among the foremost. Yet the Catholic empire-turned-rump-republic also produced some of the brightest lights during that dark time, and one of these was Hildegard Burjan (1883-1933). She was born
Catholic Action: The president who transformed Ecuador
June 20, 2020
From Mexico to Argentina, the countries of Hispanic America (Portuguese-speaking Brazil had a different experience) followed similar patterns after independence. In almost every case, the oligarchy that had brought about the break with Spain would split into two: liberals, who were anticlerical and looked to the United States for inspiration (often enough receiving American funding
Never mind the hippies. Glastonbury has a rich Catholic history
May 25, 2020
Glastonbury! What a wealth of – mostly strange – associations that name conjures up! The little town in the West of England has a cultural significance out of all proportion to its size or political weight. Had it not been for the onset of the coronavirus, the 50th Glastonbury Festival would have been held this
Catholic Action: The bishop who directed a siege defence
May 15, 2020
One of the most dramatic episodes in history, the siege of the foreign legations in Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, gave birth to an equally dramatic film, 55 Days at Peking. As thrilling a tale in fact as on screen, the story of how 900 European, American, and Japanese soldiers, marines, and civilians
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