Traditionalist publishing renaissance (5): The newly-established Cenacle Press

Many readers will already be familiar with the wonderful online giftshop of the traditional Benedictine monastery of Silverstream Priory in Ireland. The same monastery has recently launched Cenacle Press, with six classic reprints, all newly typeset -- four by Robert Hugh Benson and two by Dom Hubert van Zeller -- along with biography of a remarkable Polish nun, Sr. Maria Bernadette of the Cross, and a collection of new poetic works and poetic translations from Latin by the monks of Silverstream.

All titles are available from the online giftshop (ships to anywhere) and also at online retailers such as Amazon. Happy reading!

Newly Published: Two Historical Novels by Benson, Two Classic Liturgical Commentaries, and a Great Vocations Pamphlet

I am pleased to announce new reprints of five works that should never have gone out of print in the first place. All are available from Amazon sites; the titles below give the hyperlinks. 

Crisis in the Church: "The Mass, Prayer, the Rosary — nothing else can avail"

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson 

Persecution, he said, was coming. There had been a riot or two already. But persecution was not to be feared. It would no doubt cause apostasies, as it had always done, but these were deplorable only on account of the individual apostates. On the other hand, it would reassure the faithful; and purge out the half-hearted.

On the Solemnity of Our Lady of the Rosary, First Sunday in October: "The Mass, Prayer, the Rosary — nothing else can avail"

Persecution, he said, was coming. There had been a riot or two already. But persecution was not to be feared. It would no doubt cause apostasies, as it had always done, but these were deplorable only on account of the individual apostates. On the other hand, it would reassure the faithful; and purge out the half-hearted.

Once, in the early ages, Satan's attack had been made on the bodily side, with whips and fire and beasts; in the sixteenth century it had been on the intellectual side; in the twentieth century on the springs of moral and spiritual life. Now it seemed as if the assault was on all three planes at once.

The Denial of the Law of God and His Rights

In his great encyclical letter Libertas Praestantissimum, Pope Leo XIII explains that it is not man’s place to dictate to God what man owes Him, but rather humbly and obediently to receive from God the law that must be followed if we are to please Him and attain the happiness for which He created us:

If the human mind be so presumptuous as to define the nature and extent of God’s rights and its own duties, reverence for the divine law will be apparent rather than real, and arbitrary judgment will prevail over the authority and providence of God. Man must, therefore, take his standard of a loyal and religious life from the eternal law; and from all and every one of those laws which God, in His infinite wisdom and power, has been pleased to enact, and to make known to us by such clear and unmistakable signs as to leave no room for doubt. And the more so because laws of this kind have the same origin, the same author, as the eternal law, are absolutely in accordance with right reason, and perfect the natural law. These laws it is that embody the government of God, who graciously guides and directs the intellect and the will of man lest these fall into error. (Libertas 17)

We see in these luminous words the confidence of a pope and of a church convinced of the reality and primacy of God, the existence of absolute truth, the ability of reason and faith to know that truth—and the ability of even fallen men to live according to that truth with the help of God’s grace (as Pope Leo develops at greater length elsewhere in the same encyclical, and as John Paul II was to do so masterfully in Veritatis Splendor).

Benson at 100"The Royal Catholic Church: Ruthless with heresy and sin, kind with the heretic and the sinner"

"The Church will yield to the world,
so long as her Divine Right remains intact."

For our third post celebrating the centenary of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (October 19, 1914), some reflections from his Paradoxes of Catholicism (conferences and sermons preached mostly in New York in 1912 and in Rome in 1913, and published not long before his death). They are reflections on the apparent contradiction between our meek and sweet Lord and His holy People, the Church, described as unyielding and rigid -- shockingly, today, even by some Catholic pastors themselves, even at a Synod!

This reflection, preached on a Palm Sunday, is perfect as a meditation on the feast of the upcoming Sunday, Our Lord Jesus Christ the King, and the Royal people we ourselves are in his Royal Bride, ruthless with sin, infinitely kind with the sinner.

Benson at 100: "The Mass, Prayer, the Rosary — nothing else can avail"

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson 
died exactly 100 years ago, 
on October 19, 1914.

Persecution, he said, was coming. There had been a riot or two already. But persecution was not to be feared. It would no doubt cause apostasies, as it had always done, but these were deplorable only on account of the individual apostates. On the other hand, it would reassure the faithful; and purge out the half-hearted.

Benson at 100: Paganism and Puritanism, Enemies of the Church's Immutable Standards of Moral Perfection

"The Church alone has the
secret of the sinner's cure."