Sanctus Ranch
Got back a few days ago from a wonderful, refreshing visit to Sanctus Ranch in Pipe Creek, TX, where (among other activities, of which more anon) I gave the keynote for a gala on behalf of the Lumen Christi Academy, which uses the ranch as its campus from Monday through Thursday during the school year.
The whole weekend was splendid. What a fantastic place this ranch is! It easily exceeded my already high expectations. For one thing, Dan & Jennifer Sevigny, the couple who run it, are outstanding hosts. Hospitality must be the blood in their veins. Here they are:
The ranch is beautifully built up, with two chapels (one still being completed), two dormitories (one of them hotel-style, one with bunk beds), a main building for events, another for meals (and the cooking was, if I might go colloquial for a moment, real good), the original stone ranch home where the Sevigny family live, and a newly-added large tent for outdoor events that can hold hundreds. And they have sheep, goats, and longhorn cattle.
Here I am bonding over milk with a black sheep: how appropriate for my line of work! (He was plied with milk; I prefer stronger beverages.)
Here’s a shot from the big-tent gala on Saturday, which brought together people from all over Texas and beyond. My topic was “True Obedience in a Time of False Churchmen.” It will soon go up on my YouTube channel, I’ll let y’all know when that happens.
On Sunday I gave a talk on “When the Sunday Mass Obligation Binds and Ceases to Bind.” This, too, will be available on video, with its gigantic Q&A afterwards. (Upon concluding, Dan promptly served me a G&T, as I must have been looking needy.)
I had the joy of cantoring at two High Masses, one for St. Peter Canisius (of course we sang the Creed…), and one for the Fourth Sunday after Easter. Here’s a photo someone sent me. If I had to guess, I’d say the concentrated look must be for the Alleluias, the hardest Propers!
One of the highlights of my weekend was getting to know some of the wonderful students of Lumen Christi Academy (see also the photo at the very top of this post). They are joyful, intelligent, articulate, and zealous — obvious beneficiaries of a Great Books Socratic education and daily prayer in the traditional Roman Rite, on a peaceful bucolic campus with handsome buildings and livestock. Even though John Senior is not (yet) officially a part of their school’s philosophy, the fact is, they are “born Seniorites” who are already implementing much of his vision of Catholic and humane education.
Families in the San Antonio area who wish to have their children learning in a truly Catholic environment should go there for a visit, evaluating the school with their own eyes and ears. God bless Lumen Christi Academy and give it many students and many happy years!
Another unexpected blessing of the weekend was having the chance to see and hold a crucifix that belonged to Cardinal Zen, donated by him to a group that is promoting awareness of the plight of the suffering Church in China, thrown under the bus by the Vatican.
Really, the only thing I was lacking on the visit was my Stetson. I actually have one — a gift from Wyoming Catholic College upon my departure in 2018, the same hat that all the graduates receive.
New features
If you primarily interact with this Substack by reading the emails that arrive in your inboxes, let me encourage you to head over, just for a moment, to the landing page of Tradition & Sanity to see its new layout as you scroll down. With the help of my ultra-capable collaborator and fellow author, Julian Kwasniewski, I have enriched the landing page with five categories of articles — Sacred Liturgy, Theology and Philosophy, The Arts and the Beautiful, Spirituality, and Varia and Whimsy — to make it easier to navigate the now-considerable stash of writing that finds its home at this site.
Here’s what you’ll see as you scroll further down the home page (the last category, Varia and Whimsy, didn’t fit into this screen shot):
This development of the home page is another step forward in expanding our reach, as more and more readers visit Tradition & Sanity in search of articles they won’t find elsewhere — or at least, not in the official channels of the secular and ecclesiastical “establishments.”
One last new feature: if you’d prefer offering occasional support for my work instead of taking out a regular subscription — or if, as a paying subscriber, you’d like to add an extra something now and again — you may now do it via my “Buy Me a Coffee” page:
Exciting news: Sicily pilgrimage, February 3-15, 2025
Italy is one of my favorite places on earth. I’ve been blessed with time in Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Verona, Orvieto, Padua, Siena, Assisi, and many other cities, and, as an oblate, I have visited the Benedictine monastery in Norcia more than any other place outside the USA (perhaps ten times by now). The main reason I’ve been able to visit the Italian peninsula so often is that for seven and a half years I lived with my wife and children in Austria, and it wasn’t all that hard to drive there in our stick-shift Skoda Octavia (how I miss that vehicle…). When a long vacation came up, we almost always set out sights southward.
However, we never made it quite as far south as Sicily, which has always been on my bucket list. When St. Charles Pilgrimages approached me with the possibility of leading a traditional Catholic pilgrimage there, I leapt at it faster than you can say arancini and caponata!
There are many reasons to go there — beginning with the annual over-the-top celebration of Sicily’s patroness St. Agatha on February 5th, which we will attend! But at the top of the list for me, as a lover of the fine arts, are the absolutely stunning masterpieces of church architecture to be found on that island. Let me share a few photos to give you a sense of just some of what we’ll be seeing.
From top to bottom, left to right: Catania, where we start; Acireale, the city of 100 churches; Modica; Ragusa; Erice (check out the incredibly detailed carving on the ceiling!); Monreale (which some have called “the most beautiful church in the world”); Cefalù, with its marvelous Byzantine mosaics.
When we get to Palermo, we will be dazzled by the cathedral in honor of Our Lady’s Assumption, and the Cappella Palatina, both of them spectacular fusions of Norman, Byzantine, and Arabic architecture and decoration:
If you love gorgeous churches, religious art, castles, and towers, THIS is the pilgrimage for you.
The great defender of the TLM, Dietrich von Hildebrand, called Italy “the land of beauty” — and always made sure to include Sicily on the trips he made with students. No wonder.
And I haven’t even mentioned the crypts, caves, castles, towers; the Etruscan, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman ruins; the hilltop vistas and ocean scenery!
Best of all, we will have daily Mass in the traditional Dominican rite (for those of you who aren’t familiar with that Western liturgical use, it will look very much like the Tridentine rite; it was the Mass prayed by St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Vincent Ferrer, and all the Dominican priest-saints). Whenever possible, we will have chanted High Masses.
The dates are February 3-15, 2025. Registration is open!
For further information and a very detailed PDF brochure, visit here.
On June 4, we’ll have a Zoom call for those who are interested. You can find out about that at the same link.
Thanks for reading, and God bless you!
This is a suggestion for a future post…I’m curious what your thoughts are on the trend of dioceses restoring the traditional order of the sacraments of initiation. My 9-year old son will be receiving Confirmation and First Communion next month (in a FSSP parish). Theologically, it makes perfect sense, although I understand the historical and practical reasons for why they became separated. Do you think more bishops should consider this?
Dr. Kwasniewski, there was a fiasco some time ago with the bishop of the diocese regarding Sanctus Ranch, whose result I thought had been that Masses could no longer be celebrated there (because the bishop supposedly removed the priest's faculties, I think?). If you heard of the situation, may I ask what your opinion of it all was? (At the time, the bishop's attacks on Sanctus seemed rather out-of-place, given they are only a retreat center, but now that they've had the dangerous, ultra-Trad-extremist Peter Kwasniewski, I can understand why he may have had something against it...)