Traditium returns in mid-June 2020 with the column:
“Relativism, Sacks of Meat and the Return of the Unseen”
See you then!
-T
Author: Traditium
Peace?
Today, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to make add my voice to the cry which rises up with increasing anguish from every part of the world, from every people, from the heart of each person, from the one great family which is humanity: it is the cry for peace! It is a cry which declares with force: we want a peaceful world, we want to be men and women of peace, and we want in our society, torn apart by divisions and conflict, that peace break out! War never again! Never again war!
— Pope Francis. See here about his call for September 7.
A Visit To St. Leo Abbey
Traditium has added the page A Visit To St. Leo Abbey to the site (see under Pilgrimages, on the gray bar above).
Please feel free to check out the slideshow tour from a visit there on Pentecost of 2013. Add links to the comments section if you know of a similar page for a location near you! (Nothing like a little e-pilgrimage every once in a while).
Insanity
I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree.
— Erasmus
Experience
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Questions?
Free thought has exhausted its own freedom. It is weary of its own success. If any eager freethinker now hails philosophic freedom as the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark Twain who came out wrapped in blankets to see the sun rise and was just in time to see it set. . . . We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers.
Presence
Conversion On The Road To Damascus

The Conversion on the Road To Damascus was created in 1601 by Caravaggio. It depicts the conversion of Saul (later St. Paul) on his trip to Damascus to persecute the Christians there. See Acts Chapter 9.
It’s an amazing work, capturing the emotion of the event as told, but certainly containing many of Caravaggio’s own impressions. The horse, unsurprised, looks on casually. Meanwhile Paul looks stunned, blinded and as if the world just came out from under him. And it did. All of the action of the picture is on the ground with Paul, with most of the emotion and power of it lying behind his eyelids.
For more about the work see its entry on Wikipedia. For more about Caravaggio, there is Wikipedia or this history. This was an interesting writeup on the depictions of this event.
Idols?
Humility
The most perfect degree of humility is to take pleasure in contempt and humiliations. It is worth more before God contempt suffered patiently for love of Him than a thousand fastings and disciplines.
— St. Francis de Sales
Who?
Of Highest Value
On the Top 5
Father Robert Barron and his Word On Fire website, found here, have been meeting the popular culture where it lives, on podcoasts, youtube and the internet in general, for quite some time. He does so in an engaging way, weaving the contemporary with the timeless. Those who haven’t heard of him owe it to themselves to take a look. Here Traditium links to its Top 5 Father Barron videos for those who are open to a different perspective on popular culture and life in general.
Perfection & Prayer
Life
Be who you are, and be that well, in order to bring honor to the master craftsman whose handiwork you are.
— St. Francis de Sales
Who?
Preachin’
Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.
— St. Francis of Assisi
Who?