MARCH 2023 EDITION: Amidst Persecution, Follow St. Patrick’s Example

March 2023 Edition Now Available — Preview HERE

March 1, 2023
Ember Wednesday, First Week of Lent

Dear Friends of Catholic Tradition,

The month of March includes the feast of St. Patrick, Patron of Ireland (March 17). His life can be a model for our times of persecution from within the Church and also from her external enemies.

St. Patrick was captured and brought to Ireland as a slave. After several hard years suffering as a slave, he managed to escape. Having been ordained a priest, Patrick could not stop thinking of the poor Irish people lost in paganism. He thus requested to be sent back to Ireland to bring the Faith to the people who had captured and enslaved him. Rather than remaining bitter and angry against his oppressors, Patrick took pity on the Irish people and sought to bring them the truth of Christ to enlighten the darkness of their paganism. He returned to set Ireland on fire for Christ, converting the Irish people so that the island would eventually become known as the Isle of Saints and Scholars.

Religious life flourished throughout Ireland. The Irish people kept the Faith against centuries of persecution by the Protestant English. Then, when the New World was discovered and settled, Ireland’s sons answered the call to become missionaries. They left their homes to serve the needs of the people in the new nations of the Western Hemisphere. All of this spiritual flourishing was a result of Patrick’s generous and supernatural response to his persecutors.

St. Patrick should be a guide for our reaction to our persecutors. Pope Francis seems poised to inflict more persecution on the Church through the heterodox Synod on Synodality and a further attack on the Mass offered by St. Patrick himself. Yet, rather than becoming bitter and angry at such persecutors, we should, like Patrick, desire their conversion. We should offer our prayers and good works for the conversion of these men who enslave the human element of Christ’s Church to their neo-pagan principles. We should not desire their damnation but rather their miraculous conversion. Imagine the impact that a miraculous conversion of Pope Francis and his Modernist henchmen would have upon the world.

Like Patrick, we should joyfully offer our sufferings at their hands for their conversion. Within our station in life, we should preach the unadulterated doctrine of Christ and His Church by word and action. Like Patrick’s work, such conversion will be clearly the work of God, not ours, and will produce an unshakeable faith that will restore all things in Christ for centuries. This is our hope; this is our prayer.

Catholic Family News strives to play its humble role in this grand work of Christ the King. We work to keep the traditional Faith and praxis known in the darkness of our neo-pagan times. At the heart of our apostolate is our monthly newspaper, now available in both print and electronic versions. In seeking to use the tools of our times, in recent years we have expanded to disseminate free content through web, video, and audio content to reach as many lost souls as possible, as well as to bring reassurance and truth to those faithful Catholics working to practice the Faith of our fathers. Please support our apostolate by renewing or purchasing a subscription for yourself or others you know. A one-year subscription not only gives you access to the exclusive content in our newspaper but supports the work of our free content. Thank you for your continued support!

All of us at CFN wish you a holy and fruitful Lenten season as we prepare for the coming of the mysteries of our Redemption in April.

In Christ the King,

Brian M. McCall
Editor-in-Chief