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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

Now we come to the moment in my life that is permanently branded into the core of my being. This moment changed the course of my visible, chronological life and, even more, my whole interior being. I sensed immediately that what happened to me had transcended space and time. An eternal power touched me. It simply Was. It was the I Am. In that moment, for the first time in my temporal history, this living power struck me.

When this kind of moment happens, you know it. You do not just “understand” an eternal truth outside of space and time in a purely intellectual way. That would be far too superficial. Mere intellectual understanding can look, even in hindsight, like a natural development of your thinking, a psychological shift, an emotional turning point. No—this is different. You experience it. You feel it. You sense that this moment is alive.

It hits you as a power beyond you and outside of you, like a bolt of lightning. It is the work of an objective God—God as a real Person, with a will and a personality—reaching into your soul and leaving a branded mark still faintly wreathing in smoke. It is like staring at a black-and-white picture and suddenly, in a single instant, seeing the colors splash onto the canvas in a completely ordered way. You are stunned, but you also realize: This is how the image truly is, how it has always been for those who could see. You can no longer even imagine wanting to go back to the old view. Life is just different then, and there is no going back.

That is what happens when the Holy Spirit of the Almighty God, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, touches your soul. It is powerful and beautiful. It leaves you fearing God and understanding, perhaps for the first time, that the fear of the Lord truly is the beginning of wisdom.1 You love, adore, and fear God all at once. You fall to your knees before Something infinitely great, realizing that you are both an unworthy sinner and deeply loved—held in a paradox that somehow also restores your dignity.

And you know it is an objective reality, even though it is subjectively experienced, because this same encounter has been described by Catholics through the centuries in remarkably similar ways. That moment was, for me, the true beginning of my journey to Christendom. It was when God took the stirrings and providential hints from my youth and energized them, putting them into an orderly movement toward the great land.

Experiences like these are difficult to explain to others. Let me give you an example of why. When you talk about religion or spirituality with an atheist or with someone generally opposed to the Catholic faith, the conversation very quickly becomes a debate about philosophies and ideas. The atheist may assume that you are not especially intelligent for holding your beliefs and may even present a persuasive argument. You trade words back and forth, but the whole conversation is framed as if Christ and his Church were abstract concepts to be weighed and analyzed. It is assumed—often unconsciously—that human reasoning alone will decide the issue. That assumption already gives the first victory to materialism before you even begin.

It is like arguing with someone about the reality of lightning when you have just been struck by lightning. How can you explain what the lightning strike did to you if the other person refuses to believe lightning exists, or insists that if anything happened at all, it was merely in your mind? They will let you say you “felt” something, but they deny that anything objective actually occurred. What can you say to that?

That is the difficulty I face here. And there is another difficulty as well. When I describe what actually happened, it will not sound dramatic. It will not sound like a lightning strike. You may be tempted to say, “Is that it? Didn’t you levitate to the heavens? Didn’t streams of light pour down while a deep, booming voice shook the room? That’s what I was expecting.” The answer is no, none of those things happened. Yet I can tell you this: the moment affected me as if they had. I have never been shaken free from it. Whenever I have wandered too close to the edge of some deceptive philosophy, this experience has snapped me back to truth like a bungee cord pulling a falling body back from the brink.

To help you understand the Great Event, I should first tell you briefly what happened when I left Guymon to go to college.

I attended Princeton University after being accepted at top-tier schools such as Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Rice, and Stanford. I arrived in the fall of 1977. The Ivy League atmosphere thrilled me. Imagine a young man from the small, isolated town of Guymon walking into the great halls of one of the world’s most prestigious universities. My peers intimidated me. My professors were often notable scholars.

My first Economics lecture was taught by Burton Malkiel, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Jimmy Carter and author of the famous book A Random Walk Down Wall Street. My head spun with a kind of proud satisfaction. I believed I had arrived at a place that would set me, now and forever, above the “ordinary” people of the world.

Years later, as a senior, I would ask the most recent Nobel Prize winner in Economics to be my senior thesis advisor. He refused—rather rudely—and made it clear he would not be anyone’s advisor. But I was strangely unbothered. These were the kinds of people I was now dealing with. To be turned away by a Nobel Prize winner—how many people can even tell a story like that? Yes, I was turned away, but I had been close enough to ask. That was how I thought.

Intellectual pride tightened its grip on me at Princeton. During my sophomore year, I began to shrink toward self-centeredness and a kind of slavery to my senses. The people back in Guymon would not have recognized me, and rightly so. To my shame, I had become a very different person. This part of my story is important but secondary. I will not go into all the details here. It is enough to say that the “Revolution” was being born in my soul. Why worry about religion, I thought, when someone as “gifted” as I was could build his own kingdom and have “fun, fun, fun ‘till your daddy takes your T-bird away” at the same time? That is the Revolutionary spirit: the worship of self, of pleasure, and of power.

Clouds were gathering on my horizon. The innocence of my youth was being sacrificed on the altar of the world and of the Revolution. I heard the low, seductive whispers from the dark netherworld, and their promises attracted me. Darkness started to smother those early stirrings of contemplation that had arisen so gently when I gazed as a boy across the vast horizon of the Oklahoma Panhandle. It would be a slow, agonizing death march that stretched over many years.

Now, think for a moment about what the greatest imaginable miracle might be. Would it not be this: that such a miserable, slow death could be transformed into a new life—one more wonderful than the old life—with the promise of eternal resurrection, all without losing your own unique personhood?

If you follow Eastern New Age thinking, you may believe that death can lead to another form of life, but often in a way that seems impersonal, as if you dissolve into a great cosmic “nothingness” and then reappear in a new form. If you are an atheist, then as far as I can tell, your position is simple: you die, and that is the end. There is nowhere else your Reason can take you. It is straightforward: no God, no spiritual world, no afterlife, just death. It is a linear view, and in one sense, it is intellectually consistent. But being consistent does not make it true. Many ideas “make sense” on their own terms and yet are still false.

The personal resurrection I am speaking of is different. It would require a personal God, because such a miracle—raising you in your personhood—could only come from a personal Being. This is far more magnificent than anything Eastern religious thought could offer, and it is obviously a better hope than the dead end of atheism. This is worth contemplating as you continue reading my story.

After graduation, I began my professional career with a large corporation, but in time I returned to Guymon to help my father with the family business. I moved back in January of 1984. That year would be the most important year of my life. It was in 1984, after coming home, that the Great Event took place. But several significant things led up to it.

First, I was reintroduced to that beautiful young woman I mentioned in the previous chapter. Her brother worked in our plant while attending night classes at the local college. He recognized me from my high school basketball days and came into my office one day to tell me that his sister was in town.

I had only slightly more courage then than I did back in high school. It may have been courage, or it may have been sheer bravado, but I asked her out on a date. Within a day or two, we saw each other for the first time in seven years. That brief eye contact we had exchanged back in high school had somehow held steady over all that time, and now it was blossoming into an actual date. Some seeds take a while to sprout.

Later, I learned that she had been praying for us to get together for all seven of those years. That detail is important. It tells you something about her character and her faith. And it is certainly not the last time in this story you will hear about her praying for me.

In the fall of 1984, I began attending classes for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) at the local Catholic parish in Guymon, St. Peter’s—yes, the same church I had ignored throughout my youth.

The story of how I came to walk into RCIA is simple enough, and every man reading this will understand immediately. I was there because I wanted to marry that beautiful young woman—the one I had flirted with in high school, the one I finally asked out seven years later, the one who is now my wife.

Josey is a cradle Catholic. She explained things to me very clearly. She told me she would marry me, but that she was Catholic and would always remain Catholic. Our children would have to be Catholic, and I would have to go to Mass with the family. Other than that, she assured me, I was free to be whatever faith I wanted.

This was not presented as a question or an opening for dialogue. It was my first serious encounter with something like a dogmatic pronouncement. At that point, thoroughly infected by the Revolutionary spirit I have been describing, I did not truly “believe” in anything. I did, however, know one thing: I wanted to marry her. So I agreed to her conditions on the spot. There were no negotiations. Her willingness to marry me made me feel I had already won. I was not about to let something as “small” as religion spoil my victory.

A few weeks later, the priest who was going to marry us suggested that I might want to know a little about my future wife’s faith. That sounded reasonable enough. He recommended I attend at least a few RCIA classes. I agreed.

I was, generally speaking, a decent sort of fellow, though quite arrogant about my supposed intellectual superiority. Still, I listened respectfully to the priests and the deacon who ran the program. The classes began in September and met every Monday night for about six months, concluding around Easter for those who wished to enter the Church.

I ended up attending every session but one. I was fascinated. No one had ever spoken to me about the Catholic faith in this way before. As I mentioned earlier, no one had ever told me there was any substantial Christian faith before the sixteenth century.

Beyond the historical information—about Christianity’s roots and Catholicism’s role as the true Mother Church—the way they spoke struck me. They were reasonable. To my surprise, it actually made intellectual sense. Up until then, I had viewed Christian belief as mainly emotional, something for people who lacked the intellect and independence of thought I imagined I possessed. But this was more than emotion. It appealed to the mind. So I kept coming back.

Just before the Great Event, one particular moment softened my heart even further toward the Catholic Church. It came through a simple prayer: the Hail Mary.

I had never heard this prayer before, or at least not in a way that I remembered. The line that struck me was: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” I remember thinking, “These people actually see themselves as sinners and know they need help.” That was new for me.

Rightly or wrongly, I had always perceived other Christian groups as seeing themselves primarily as “saved”—already “inside.” Their evangelization often felt more like recruiting. In their eyes, I was “not saved” and needed to get inside as quickly as possible, which could apparently be accomplished in about fifteen seconds by verbally accepting Jesus as my Savior. After that, it seemed, I should not have much to worry about except recruiting others.

Was this what the Protestant Reformers really intended? More importantly, was this what Jesus intended? Could I really move from “sinner” to “saved and secure” by offering a brief verbal assent, without truly giving myself? I did not know. But what struck me in the Hail Mary was different: these Catholics did not see themselves as already perfected. They saw themselves as travelers on a journey. They were asking the Mother of God for help along the way. That interested me very much.

A journey is a commitment. A journey is something you truly give your life to. And deep down, I knew I was living a very sinful life. The question that began to form in my heart was: Could even a sinner like me make this journey? Could even a sinner pray to the Mother of God?

That thought, surprisingly, warmed my heart. I had assumed she would be far beyond my reach. I found myself wondering whether even a sinner could be saved. My heart began to open to the idea that sinners could ask the Mother of God for help. I was starting to understand that I might need that help. I began to see that I could start the journey from the very place where I was standing.

I would be forgiven, “spot-cleaned” in confession, but the process of getting to heaven and straightening out my life would be a journey. I gathered all of this from the Hail Mary—a prayer I had never truly heard before.

But a new question arose: could even these reasonable, devout Catholics really show me the path? How could I know this path was more reliable than all the others? I had not yet experienced the Great Event, but the Blessed Mother had already begun to loosen up the hardened ground of my soul.

Her timing, looking back, was perfect. The terrible self-imposed prison of my Revolutionary self-indulgence was tightening its grip. I was caught in its claws when she intervened through her intercession with her Son, our Lord.

It was October 1, 1984, the Feast Day of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. The day of the Great Event had arrived, though I had no idea. I was not expecting any great experience. I thought I was simply attending another RCIA class.

Before I describe what happened, I must tell you something marvelous. The doors to Catholicism were opened for me by real people who are now in eternal beatitude with God—people who are alive in heaven but whom you cannot see. Saints are real. They make the best of friends.

I will say more about them later. For now, know that they are not just “memories” living in my heart or poetic symbols that are “real for me” in some subjective, Eastern New Age sense. That is how some Eastern thinkers treat saints: as noble figures who “live on” in our memories. It sounds sweet on the surface, but it is a kind of treachery. It imitates the voice of the Catholic homeland, but in reality, it is reaching for your soul to pull you away from truth.

Forget the soft subjectivity of New Age spirituality. Saints truly live. They are real people, more alive than we are, for they live in heaven. That is one of the many objective truths you will find on the Catholic path. I am a sinner, but I have friends in heaven—saints—who help me. That should be an encouraging thought. Sinners can have saints for companions. The family of God is very large.

On the night of the Great Event, the priest leading our RCIA session began a discussion on apostolic succession. It may sound like a dry topic, but it was this very teaching that splashed color across the canvas of my mind.

Apostolic succession was a new idea for me. As a Protestant, I had always relied on the particular pastor in front of me—his personality and his private interpretation—to guide me. I knew almost nothing of any larger, institutional authority in Christianity. We had no real creeds. In the Methodist church, we recited the Apostles’ Creed every Sunday, but it was never explained. The more evangelical denominations rejected formal creeds altogether. In the Protestant mindset I had absorbed, very little of real importance seemed to have happened in Christianity between the time of the Apostles and the sixteenth century.

That night, I learned something different. I learned that during those “forgotten” centuries, something extraordinary had happened: the Church had guarded the entire Tradition of Christianity so that Protestants and others could enjoy fragments of that truth over the last five hundred years.

The priest made an almost casual remark. He said that every bishop in the Catholic Church has been ordained through an unbroken chain of laying on of hands going back to the original Apostles. Every pope has been ordained in succession to St. Peter in that same unbroken line. There were times when there were competing claimants to the papacy, but there was always a legitimate Pope.

Later, I would verify this for myself. I would discover how historically solid this claim is. It was this very point that converted John Henry Newman, the Oxford Anglican scholar who set out to disprove Catholic claims and ended up becoming Catholic. He realized that the Church is the historical bearer of apostolic Tradition. At one point he wrote, “Whatever be historical Christianity, it is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.” And again, “To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”2

The priest did not shout. He did not pound the table. He simply stated the fact. But in that moment, I had an electrifying intellectual experience. If this were true—and I had no reason to doubt it—everything changed.

If the bishops and popes of the Catholic Church are truly the successors of the Apostles, then they are the rightful authorities. Their personal qualities—charming or dull, saintly or scandalous—do not alter the fact of their office. We naturally hope for holy and wise leaders, but authority itself does not rest on charisma or likability.

In my mind, this broke the spell of the “cult of personality” that so captivates our modern culture. Whether it is journalism worshiping the latest beautiful, rich, famous person, or a Christian community enthralled with a certain preacher, we are drawn to personalities. But what I saw that night was something larger—an authority stretching back almost two thousand years, regardless of the holiness or failings of its holders.

If the custodians of Joan of Arc’s historical records in Orléans happened to be corrupt, that would not make their archive any less authentic. At that moment, I saw the parallel. The authority of the Church did not depend on the personal impressiveness of any given bishop or pope.

In what felt like the span of one second, the meaning of apostolic succession dropped into my mind, and with it several crucial Catholic claims suddenly came alive. The colors splashed onto the canvas of my soul. The Church appeared to me as something living, breathing, and real.

My first thought was simple: if the Church truly speaks with the authority of the original Apostles, then everything she teaches with that authority is true—including her claim that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In that instant, I believed in the Real Presence. I can only describe it as a miracle of grace. That belief has never left me. Through every high and low of my spiritual life, this faith—that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist and that the Church has the authority to proclaim this—has remained steady. That is God’s grace holding me up.

This faith was clearly not just a psychological “phase.” It was objective. To illustrate this, I will share a small story.

Years later, when we lived in the New York City area, we visited some cousins one evening. They introduced us to a couple visiting from San Francisco. This couple was openly liberal in their thinking and clearly not religious. The conversation that evening was lively and enjoyable, even though our views and theirs could not have been more different.

At one point, the woman looked at me with a sudden seriousness. Her whole expression changed. Without any judgment in her tone, she said quietly, “You have faith.” That was all. But the way she said it struck me. She had seen something real—not just a personality trait, not just a “set of opinions,” but something objective. She called it out, almost prophetically. The God of Christian revelation is real, and his grace shines through, even to those who do not share our beliefs.

That is the Great Event. It was the grace of God, given freely, unearned and even unexpected. In that moment, He gave me the grace to submit to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and to believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. It was like a torrential river of dogma and faith pouring into my soul.

That night, I submitted my intellect to the Church’s authority, though I did not realize it fully at the time. Soon after, I understood that submitting my mind to the Church in faith was the same as submitting it to Jesus Christ, because the Church is his Body on earth, guided by the Holy Spirit.

Once this happens to you, there is no going back.

That fall evening in 1984, in a classroom at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Guymon, Oklahoma, changed my life forever. It set me on the path that led to the very words you are now reading. Perhaps now you can see more clearly why I feel compelled to write this book. I genuinely fear standing at heaven’s gate having failed to tell others about the great Lord and his Mother who gave me such wealth.

I must tell you, even if you laugh, reject it, or if in some way it were to cost me my life.

This Great Event was only the beginning of what I called the Freedom Dance. Soon I would meet those saintly friends who were calling me to the path of true freedom and life. They were dancing with joy, taking me by the hand, and leading me on a mysterious journey—one I would never have chosen on my own, but one I now know is the only path to eternal life.

That path leads to Calvary, to suffering, and to death on the Cross—and, I pray, to a glorious resurrection.

Eastern thinkers, New Agers, and materialistic atheists, cover your ears—or better yet, open your minds.

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

The Foretaste of Grace and the Vast Horizons of Guymon

I was born in Bakersfield, California, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley—a place as unassuming as the soil from which it springs. Of this city, I know little beyond its role in my life’s story. What strikes me as significant, however, is where I drew my first breath: Mercy Hospital, a Catholic institution. Though my family was Methodist, the hands that cradled me—those first signs of human love—belonged to nuns. How extraordinary it seems now that the gentle ministrations of women who lived in the shadow of the Cross marked my earliest moments. In hindsight, it feels like a foreshadowing, a whisper of the path I would eventually walk, though it was simply a fact—a beginning.

From Mercy, my parents brought me home to the small, dusty town of Shafter, twenty miles away, though I remember almost nothing of it. My memories begin in earnest when, at one, my father’s work in agriculture uprooted us to Guymon, Oklahoma, a frontier town perched on the windswept plains of the Panhandle. It was there, amidst the endless horizons, that the first stirrings of something deeper took root in me—a longing I couldn’t name, a yearning that stretched as wide as the sky itself.

The Gift of Guymon

To know Guymon was to understand the beauty of simplicity. Nestled in the heart of the high plains, it was delightfully remote, a tiny outpost of six thousand souls surrounded by miles of prairie. The land was flat, the sky vast, and the rhythm of life as predictable as the seasons. And yet, that predictability had its own charm—a kind of steadiness, a quiet reminder of the world’s order.

Autumn was my favorite season, though it lacked the fiery splendor of New England. Here, the few trees that stood shivered in their faded brown cloaks, and the grass lay dormant. But the air—oh, the air! Cool and crisp, the air carried an almost tangible energy, as if the wind itself whispered eternity. Even now, I remember how the sight of those far-reaching plains, bathed in golden light, would fill me with awe. It was there, staring out over that vast and empty landscape, that I first felt the stirrings of contemplation—a desire to grasp something beyond myself. Though I didn’t yet understand it, those moments were my first steps toward the divine.

Guymon was a town deeply rooted in its values, a slice of small-town America untouched by the frenzied pace of the cities. Its brick Main Street was the heart of the community, alive with the hum of daily life and the laughter of high schoolers “dragging main” in their cars. There was something timeless about it, a sense of belonging that tethered us all together. Even as the storms of the 1960s revolutionized the wider world’s culture, Guymon remained steadfast—a place where people still revered modesty, faith, and family. It was, in many ways, like Joan of Arc’s home village; it was a New Domrémy, a quiet sanctuary removed from the battles raging just beyond the horizon.

The Lessons of a Small-Town Childhood

Though predominantly Protestant, Guymon’s religious unity stemmed from something deeper: a shared moral order. The Ten Commandments were more than words etched in stone; even those who weren’t deeply devout respected the moral structure they provided. Christianity, in Guymon, was more than a religion; it was the foundation of the community. Looking back now, I see how this quiet, Bible-based ethos reflected a faint echo of Christendom—a society ordered under the law of Christ, where virtue was the aspiration and obedience a source of stability.

But for all its virtues, Guymon also lacked something crucial: an understanding of tradition. Ours was a young town, in a young state, in a young country, and the richness of the past—the heritage of Catholic Europe—was absent from our consciousness. Our teachers taught us to revere the Reformation as Christianity’s glorious moment of “liberation,” but no one spoke of the blood it spilled or the treasures it discarded. I was blind to the beauty of the Church’s long history—the universities, the art, the saints. It was only much later, as I stood within the walls of a little Catholic church I had once ignored, that I saw the deeper truth: that Christ’s Church is not merely a collection of believers but a living, visible body, guided by an unbroken chain of apostolic succession.

This realization would come in time. For now, as a boy growing up in Guymon, I was simply grateful for the gift of a stable, moral community—a place that, in its own way, reflected the order and beauty of God’s creation.

Threads of Providence

Looking back, I see the hand of God weaving its way through even the smallest details of my childhood. There were three moments, in particular, that stand out as threads of providence. Mercy Hospital, my birthplace, was the first; nuns enveloped me in their prayers before I could even speak. The second was my unlikely study of French in high school, a language that seemed out of place in the Panhandle but would later become a gateway to the saints of the French School of Spirituality. The third was a fleeting encounter with a beautiful girl at the local swimming pool—a moment that would take seven years to bear fruit but would forever change the course of my life.

These moments, scattered like seeds, seemed insignificant at the time. But now, from the vantage point of faith, I see how they were preparing me for the journey ahead. It is a journey that will take us from the plains of Oklahoma to the spiritual heights of Christendom, through forests of doubt and storms of suffering, and ultimately to the radiant light of God’s grace.

Reflections from the Castle Tower

As I stand now, looking back from the castle towers of faith, the landscape of my life unfolds before me like a great map. The paths and rivers, the mountains and valleys—they are all connected, though at the time I could not see how. Guymon, with its vast skies and humble ways, was the beginning of it all. It taught me to listen to the silence, to see beauty in simplicity, and to yearn for something greater than myself.

And so I invite you, as you read this, to consider your own life. Where have the quiet gifts of providence been at work? What sowed those seeds long before you realized their significance? Perhaps, like me, you find that the vast, empty places—the moments of stillness and longing—were not empty at all. They were the first whispers of grace, calling you to something greater. And that, I believe, is a journey worth taking.

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

The 1960s marked a transformative period in European and American history—a decade of immense cultural upheaval and societal decline, arguably one of the most dramatic in Western civilization. In the United States, we remember the Sixties as a cultural revolution, one that shattered centuries-old moral and religious traditions. These foundations, built painstakingly over more than a millennium, crumbled almost overnight, paving the way for what many view as a cultural collapse.

Long before the 1960s, Western civilization had already diminished into a shadow of its former grandeur, known in the Middle Ages as Christendom. The Sixties simply capitalized on the vulnerabilities left by centuries of erosion—religious revolutions, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the rise of twentieth-century communism—to deliver what some believe to be the final, devastating blow to this once-great civilization. Reflecting on this loss, one author remarked:

“I think it would be difficult to find a single decade in the history of Western culture when so much barbarism—so much calculated onslaught against culture and convention in any form, and so much sheer degradation of both culture and the individual—passed into music, into art, and onto the American stage as the decade of the Nineteen Sixties.”1

Christendom’s fortifications were already weak by the time the Sixties rolled around. The revolutionary forces of that decade struck the final blow, obliterating what remained of its spiritual and intellectual heritage. What followed were decades marked by moral confusion, philosophical chaos, and an open mockery of religious values. We might describe the era’s fallout as apocalyptic, as a civilization once rooted in order and faith now succumbed to disorder and arrogance.

The Erosion of Education and Reason

One of the most profound effects of the Sixties was its impact on education. Few people today were raised with a deep understanding of authentic Christianity as taught by the Roman Catholic Church. This deficiency, in part, stems from the collapse of traditional education, which once emphasized reason, logic, and debate—disciplines nurtured by the Church during the height of Christendom.

In their place, modern education promoted superficiality. As a result, we now have generations that equate debate with personal invectives and logical reasoning with online insults. A quick glance at internet comments reveals the tragic state of intellectual discourse. Gone are the academic disciplines of rhetoric, logic, and critical thinking that once distinguished Western education.

Even worse, many teachers have taught young people concepts stripped from historical and philosophical context. They don’t know how the foundational principles of thought developed, particularly those arising from Catholic intellectual traditions. Meanwhile, their parents—products of the revolutionary Sixties—are often equally unaware. Ironically, scholars of the so-called “Dark Ages” seem more enlightened about their reasoning than many modern academics. G.K. Chesterton astutely observed,

“There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.”2

The Breaking of Tradition

The cultural revolution of the Sixties snapped the chain of Tradition—one that stretched back to the Apostles and flourished during Christendom’s high years. Yet, this grand Tradition remains alive within the Catholic Church through its unbroken succession of popes and bishops. However, outside the Church, people have largely abandoned this Tradition. Protestantism rejected it during the Reformation, and public schools—described here as bastions of revolutionary, anti-Christian philosophy—have further distanced young minds from their cultural and religious heritage.

The consequences of this cultural rupture are staggering. Future generations may only learn about Christendom through secretive accounts, much like the ideological erasure seen during the French Revolution or under 20th-century communist regimes. The suppression of authentic thinking today threatens to surpass even the infamous censorship of the Inquisition. These modern movements, described as cannon blasts against the castle of Christendom, set the stage for the Sixties and its ultimate cultural devastation.

A Civilization Lost—and a Glimmer of Hope

To fully grasp the gravity of this cultural decline, imagine a child born into the chaos following the Sixties. Protected by his parents, he might initially see this new world as an adventure. But as he grows older, he becomes entangled in its darkness, mistaking the groping for direction as “freedom.” Unaware of the precipice ahead, he hurtles toward destruction—until, perhaps, a saving hand intervenes.

Picture that hand, fragrant with the perfume of roses, pulling the young man from the edge of disaster. The hand lifts him from darkness into light, from despair into joy, and from death into eternal life. This is the image of redemption—a chance to choose a path of freedom and beatitude rather than the darkness of ruin. It is a choice each individual must make.

I was born in 1959, just before this cultural cataclysm began. My story is one of grappling with the fallout, rediscovering faith, and recognizing the enduring power of Tradition in a world determined to forget it.

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In Fall of 2008, I began a fifteen-year journey with St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux to the Mystical Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France. The four poetic prose in this series contain the spiritual themes of everything I later developed over the years. The seeds of every ensuing expression came from them.

Read them joyfully, prayerfully, and with a sense of discovery. They remain in the original free form in which I wrote them. I pray that you, too, will seek the friendship and sisterly care of St. Joan and St. Thérèse!

The Dance of Freedom was joyful
Again
Conquering the Bridge of Reason and 
Through the Dark Valley we survived
We were far from the Dark Forest
From where I had come

My saintly sister Therese and
My new friends
Danced on with a particular
Lightness
My destiny was at hand!

“How is it dear sister” I was
Energized now
“That this path of the Dogmatic Creed
Is so durable? So trustworthy?”
“It is neglected today, dare I say, 
Rebuked!”

“For I would never have dreamed,” I
Ran with them up the mountain
“That the path of the Apostolic
Fathers could have navigated
The Bridge of Reason and the Dark
Valley, both”

“Oh you see, dear brother,” she
Slowed for me
“It is the very certainty that makes you 
Free”
“You are free to act, others only to
Speculate”

“For so many in the Dark Forest
From where you came” she cried out
“Are slaves to useless arguments 
And words”
“Always wondering if they are right,
Never free to dance”

“Or so often” she continued on
“They wear the chains of power
Driven arguments”
“Trying to prove, no less, to
Themselves their own thoughts”

“For they see” she finally stopped to
Look at me square
“All things in themselves, they are
Their own gods, you see”
“Lost to mortality and speculation,
But we have a certainty we trust”

“For no man is his own god!” her
Eyes lit like dancing flames
“His noble reason, and I speak with
Reverence to it
Is obscured by the ill-fated First
Philosophy of self”

On we danced
I was happy now, joyful
The young lady and her
Friends, brighter than I first
Thought

We started to slow down
Therese held something in her
Hand
A golden edged folder, 
Glittering in the sunlight

I begged her
What was it?
She would not tell, and
Pointed to the palace below

There, below
Was the palace
I silenced myself, this was
More powerful than me

Down the open air steps
Came the King to greet me
The Logos, Love and
Reason, all in One

Behind Him came the Queen
Mother of the King, Mother of
God
She greeted me with an
Intensity of love…

She looked at Therese and
Therese’s eyes danced with light
It was then that I realized
I did not find them, why, they
Had been looking for me!

“Yes” the Queen and Mother bent
Down to me
“I was with you in the field, at the 
Bridge, in the valley
To strengthen you, and help you
Home, you are home son”

The King approached me
I fell to my knees
My face to the ground

The Master of Reason, Love and
Creation
Smiled toward Therese and nodded
Therese brought him her golden 
Edged folder

The folder was for me, it was
My destiny
Therese had had it all the time
But it was up to the King to
Decree my purpose for me

“My Mother the Queen”
“I ask you to wipe her tears, to love
Her”
It was for this that I created you,
No more pleasure can you bring
Me”

He handed me the golden edged
 Folder
Inside was His request for my life
Sacrificed to the Heart of Mary,
For His almighty pleasure

I knelt before her, tears in my
Eyes
This was my meaning, my purpose
I was no longer lost, I swore to her
My life

And I looked to thank
My dear Therese and my new 
Friends
Who had searched for me to the very 
World’s end

Previous: Prose 3 - The Dance of Suffering

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In Fall of 2008, I began a fifteen-year journey with St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux to the Mystical Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France. The four poetic prose in this series contain the spiritual themes of everything I later developed over the years. The seeds of every ensuing expression came from them.

Read them joyfully, prayerfully, and with a sense of discovery. They remain in the original free form in which I wrote them. I pray that you, too, will seek the friendship and sisterly care of St. Joan and St. Thérèse!

The Dance of Freedom had
Crossed
The Bridge of Reason
But I was not prepared for
What came next

In fact, I am not sure how to
 Tell it
My new saintly sister and my
Friends
Led me to the valley of necessity

The Valley of Tears
How can I begin?
Except to tell you I have
Never seen such courage

The clouds grew dark
And began to cover the
Sunlight
A storm was coming – and not
Just any storm

The wind began to pick up
It was becoming harder to dance
Though I pretended to 
Smile, I was afraid

The sun began to set
And a terrific and awful
Feeling overpowered me
I felt as if the sun would not
Rise again…

My saintly sister Therese was peaceful
But somber
She looked at me not with 
Dancing eyes

But with suffering eyes
Not sad eyes
But powerful, courageous
Suffering eyes

I shook, for this was my
Journey as well
I braced myself for the
Challenge
The challenge of courage

And nobility
And honor
And virtue

Attributes, characteristics
I had never known before in a
Life of self-indulgence
This would be like dying, in
Fact this was dying

Therese and her friends spoke 
With me as we
Prepared to descend
Because if I were to find my
Purpose

If I were to meet my destiny
The Valley was the path
In fact, it was the Apostolic
Path of the Dogmatic Creed

It was, she explained
Uniquely the path of the
Fathers, the Apostolic Fathers
For others who wished to
Reach our destination

Tried other paths
Paths that avoid the valley
Paths that only seek
Pleasure – and many fell lost

It would be absolutely critical, she
Added
To stay on the path of the Creed
For only orthodoxy and the
Dogmatic path would be visible in
The storm

And so
Down we went
To the Valley of Darkness

Therese and her friends held
Their cloaks
Tight
As the gale force winds began
To hit all around us

They told me, to give me courage
That on the other side of the 
Valley
Were the King, the Queen and my
Destiny

As I began to stumble and
Fall
For the earth shook
They held me up

Therese yelled through the blasting
Rain
“Your strength and your power, that of 
Yourself are not your safety!”
“Your safety is Fidelity, Faithfulness
To the path – stay on it!”

I could see nothing but the
Path
The Dogmatic Path of the 
Creed was all
Around it was darkness

I crawled and cut myself
I was bleeding
And cold, feeling near
Death

As the storm raged
Therese explained to me
The nature of the malady
The reason for the Valley

“In your dark forest” she began
“You blasphemed the very 
Science and Reason
That you sought to worship”

“For by stretching the material beyond it’s
Noble place” she came down to me
“You attempted to make it a first
Philosophy
You defined all from that start
And in the dark forest you fell!”

“And in that dark forest” softly 
Spoke Therese
“Of misguided first-philosophies
Your evolution became involution
Enlightenment became darkness!”

“Now” Therese stared through me
“You must be
Created in the True First
Philosophy”
I felt my eyes close, in sleep or in
Death, I could not be sure

I woke suddenly
The sun was shining, I was alive!
My clothes were new, my body
And spirit filled with enormous
Strength

My saintly sister Therese and
My friends
Were there smiling again
They beckoned me to hurry, to
Stop dragging my feet

But I needed to turn and stare
At the dark valley behind me
The young warrior woman
Appeared again and with
Therese stood next to me

“That path had been closed to all”
Said the warrior, The Maid of Orleans
“Until the One, the Logos, the
Reason, Love itself
Opened it for all by suffering through
It, now we are free”

I turned toward the light
Distant, I saw a beautiful place, a
Palace on our path hence
I ran after my friends again, being
Newly made, and heading to my
Destiny next…

Previous: Prose 2 - The Dance of Reason

Next: Prose 4 - The Dance of Destiny

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In Fall of 2008, I began a fifteen-year journey with St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux to the Mystical Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France. The four poetic prose in this series contain the spiritual themes of everything I later developed over the years. The seeds of every ensuing expression came from them.

Read them joyfully, prayerfully, and with a sense of discovery. They remain in the original free form in which I wrote them. I pray that you, too, will seek the friendship and sisterly care of St. Joan and St. Thérèse!

Joyously through the woods on
The dance of freedom
We came to a bridge where I
Froze in my tracks

“What? This on the path of the
Dogmatic Creed?” I could not accept
“The path of the Dogmatic Creed 
Cannot contain this!”
“No, it cannot be…I became lost
Looking for this very bridge”

The bridge had a sign on the front
“The Bridge of Reason”
On the other side was another sign
But it could only be read from
There

My new saintly sister and my new
 Family
Ran joyously over the thing with no
Hesitation
They were lighter and simpler than
Me, though

I could not cross like them
For if Reason has a bridge here
On the Dogmatic Creed
It had to be a mighty weak 
And shadowy bridge

My saintly new sister beckoned
From the bridge
“You must have Reason to find
Our destination – come!”
She waved me on

“This path,” I stammered “Cannot
Hold true Reason!”
“In the beginning was, well
Nothing”
“I have enjoyed the journey, but I
Am afraid it is a mere dream!”

“Tell? Your reason came from nothing?”
Her eyes widened but danced and smiled
“Then your rational reason is born of
Irrational nothing!”
“Rationality swims out of a pool of
Irrationality!” she burst out laughing

“No wonder you were lost,
Dear brother” she gazed
“I must take you to the Logos
The Verbum”
“Hurry along!”

Her gaze penetrated my soul
Something that gave me joy
But I had come to fear
I had trouble answering her

“No! True Reason cannot come
From Unreason!” she giggled
“You’re mad!”
She laughed again and waved
Me on

“Only Creative Reason can create
Reason – come on!” she was anxious
“We shall meet love, yes”
“But in meeting love we shall also
Meet the Logos! Reason Himself!”

Hesitating no longer
I ran to meet her on the
Bridge
It was much stronger than I
Had anticipated

To my saintly sister’s
Annoyance
I stayed for a while
To soak in the joy of the
View, that of real Reason

From the bridge on the
Narrow path
Of the Dogmatic Creed
The path of the Apostolic
Fathers

Giving in
I ran to the other side and
Continued the journey
But wait! I turned to read the
Sign forbidden me before

The sign read:
“In Principio erat Verbum”
“In the beginning was the
Word”

Once more my saintly sister
Had brought light and wisdom
To my eyes
In the beginning was Verbum
The Word of Reason

As we danced on from our (or
Should I say my)
Harrowing ordeal
My saintly sister yelled back to
 Me

“Reason is Love
And Love is the Reason!”
She danced and laughed
What next?

Previous: Prose 1 - The Dance of Freedom

Next: Prose 3 - The Dance of Suffering

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In Fall of 2008, I began a fifteen-year journey with St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux to the Mystical Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France. The four poetic prose in this series contain the spiritual themes of everything I later developed over the years. The seeds of every ensuing expression came from them.

Read them joyfully, prayerfully, and with a sense of discovery. They remain in the original free form in which I wrote them. I pray that you, too, will seek the friendship and sisterly care of St. Joan and St. Thérèse!

One day 
I was walking
 Through a forest

In an open field I saw an
Unusual scene
There, a group of bright,
Smiling people were,
Dancing

I should say they were
Travelling
For they were dancing and
Moving toward
A destination I could not see

They were happy and danced
With freedom
You could sense the grace in
Their movements
I had never seen such beauty

A young girl noticed me
She danced to me and
Took my hand

She was not afraid that I was 
Filthy
I balked but she insisted
“Come join us.”
“Are you free?” she queried

“Of course,” I walked along, “I
Have lived the way I wanted”
“I have travelled where I wish”
“But are you free?” she
Danced with happiness

I stared “But I am free”
“Freedom is doing what you wish
Following no creed but the creed of
Self” I insisted
She merely danced with me some more

I could not help but to follow
With wonder
Foolish and awkward-like I
Moved to the group’s rhythm
I kind of liked it

I ran to catch up with
The young woman and 
Her friends

“But how are you so free?” I
Cried over her shoulder
She turned, her eyes were filled
With grace
“Obedience” she smiled

“To God” she continued
She swirled and danced
“Impossible! God is not one
Path-but many!” I cried back

“We follow this single path – called
The dogmatic creed” she was firm
“This way we travel together with
Certain knowledge
Of the path of our Fathers – who
Have arrived to our destination”

“Through light and darkness” she
Went on
“In safety and in danger
In joy and in heartache – we
Stay on the dogmatic path”

“You are a slave to your path!” I
Was in disbelief
“That is not freedom”
“It is not rational to follow a
Dogmatic path – I make my own
Path”

“Are you not free to consent to
Believe?” she pulled me along the
Path
“Are you not free to choose obedience?”
“Is your freedom only freedom to rebel?”

“You are free to choose” she
Continued
“And only you can do that”
“For your will is yours, and it is
Free”

The group continued dancing
Joyfully through the day
And into the evening
As they journeyed through the
Land

Confused, I could not help but
Follow along
For truth be told
I had been lost when I stumbled
Across these saints

I stood alone in a broad field
I looked back into the dark forest
Like from where I had come

I remembered how it was I was lost
Individualism, rebellion, relativism
Believing everything can be
Believed, therefore, believing nothing

I cried as I had to make a
Decision
Yes, I was free
Free to make a choice

As I struggled and watched my new 
Friends dance on
Another young woman, a warrior
Approached  me
“C’est pour cela que je fus nais” she
Whispered  to me

Yes! “C’est pour cela que je fus nais!”
I turned toward my friends
I ran fast, stumbling through the
Grass
To join them on their path

I made my decision
In total freedom
And now I dance with them – 
Seeing now the destination

Those at the front
Who are getting close
Break their rhythm – and run
Toward it with joy

Previous: Introduction

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The four poetic prose below are the inception of Mystical France and The House of New Bethany. On my way home from Eucharistic adoration one day in October 2008, the following phrase came to my mind.

One day 
I was walking
 Through a forest

Arriving home, I sat at my desk and wrote the first prose, The Dance of Freedom, using the phrase above as my opening. I then wrote one additional prose each day for the next three days. A few weeks later, through the inspiration of St. Joan of Arc, I began writing my first book, Journey to Christendom - The Freedom Dance, not aware until I was well into it that these writings were the storyline of the book. Joan had already given me the outline of a newly developing life project and through these prose had circumscribed my heart and mind with her own. I had recently come to know St. Joan through the poetry and plays of St. Thérèse to whom I had been deeply devoted since my conversion in 1984. My saintly sisters in Christ were leading me to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

That Fall of 2008, I began a fifteen-year journey with St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux to the Mystical Kingdom of Catholic and Royal France. The prose contained the spiritual theme of everything I would later develop over the years. The seeds of every ensuing expression came from them.

Read them joyfully, prayerfully, and with a sense of discovery. They remain in the original free form in which I wrote them. I pray that you, too, will seek the friendship and sisterly care of St. Joan and St. Thérèse!

Prose 1 - The Dance of Freedom

Prose 2 - The Dance of Reason

Prose 3 - The Dance of Suffering

Prose 4 - The Dance of Destiny

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

Every story has a turning point, a moment that pushes us beyond hesitation and into action. For me, that moment came from an unexpected source—a book. But not just any book. It was Joan of Arc by Mark Twain, a work that Twain himself considered his finest, even though few people realize he ever wrote it. The story of Joan of Arc captivated me, but it was one character in particular who struck a chord—the Paladin.

The Paladin was a larger-than-life figure, named by his childhood friends after the twelve noble Paladins of Charlemagne. He was always boasting of his heroism, painting himself as a grand figure of courage and valor. But in truth, he was a coward who never lived up to his words. When he accompanied Joan on her perilous journey through enemy territory, he was more likely to climb a tree to avoid a fight than to stand his ground. Yet afterward, he would boast of victories that only existed in his imagination.

As I read about the Paladin, I felt an uncomfortable recognition. His story was, in many ways, my own. I too had often spoken of noble deeds and lofty ambitions, only to shrink away when faced with real challenges. In the safety of familiar company, I could weave grand tales of bravery and purpose. But when difficulties arose, I would retreat, only to return later with embellished stories of triumph.

It was then that I remembered something that had always been true in my life—God sends me the friends I need when I need them most. And now, He had sent me Joan of Arc. I prayed a simple prayer: “St. Joan of Arc, pray that I might have the courage to follow God’s will faithfully as you did; give me courage, Joan of Arc!”

Shortly after that prayer, I continued reading. I reached the part where Joan, now empowered by Charles VII, gathered her army. She was assigning honors to those who would ride with her, and to my surprise, she chose the Paladin to be her standard-bearer—the one who would ride at her side into battle. The words she spoke to him were powerful:

“I watched you on the road. You began badly but improved. Of old, you were a fantastic talker, but there is a man in you, and I will bring it out.”

Then she asked him directly, “Will you follow where I lead?”

It was in that moment, reading those words, that something inside me shifted. I put the book down, opened my computer, and began to write.

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

In this forthcoming reflection, my intention is to go beyond simply retelling the events and delve into the profound aspects of my spiritual journey. I will focus on the core of my conversion to Catholicism and the significant moments that influenced it to uncover the deeper meanings and structures behind these experiences.

The opening to the story begins with a visit I made with my family and a friend to the church of St. Stanislaus Kostka in Chicago. As soon as we stepped into the holy sanctuary, the overwhelming aura of Catholicism’s profound spirituality immediately embraced me. This presence was not just a vague feeling, but a tangible manifestation of the spirit, a recognition of the sacredness of the place. As I stepped into St. Stanislaus, a sense of tranquility washed over me. The faint scent of incense filled the air, creating an atmosphere of reverence. As the sunlight filtered through the ornate stained glass windows, it cast a soft hue of colors across the pews. In that moment, I felt a deep connection to something greater than myself, igniting a spark that would ultimately lead to my inspiration to write.

We met the priest. His revelation that the Cardinal Archbishop had designated the church the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy added a layer of historical and spiritual significance. This designation, which originated from a heavenly request by the Virgin Mary to the priest, struck a profound chord within me, fortifying my faith in an intimate story of divine intervention.

One year later, during a break from a professional trip to Chicago, the Holy Spirit inspired me to go back to St. Stanislaus Kostka. This return to the St. Stanislaus was unplanned, but I felt pulled irresistibly to the sacred sanctuary. Walking into the nearly empty church around five o’clock in the evening, the serene beauty of the sanctuary struck me once again. The Blessed Sacrament, displayed in a beautiful monstrance, and the exquisite statue of the Queen of Heaven next to it, created a profound spiritual ambiance. This encounter with Our Lady’s presence was overwhelming, filling the sanctuary, a powerful foretaste of deeper spiritual experiences to come.

Over the following weeks, I found myself drawn to the church repeatedly. Each visit marked a growing sense of Mary’s desire to make her Son known and loved in a world that seemed increasingly cold and lost. The near-empty church during my visits contrasted with the powerful sense of mission and presence I felt, highlighting the spiritual desolation and the call for renewal and devotion.

A month later, the announcement of the dedication of the Iconic Monstrance of Our Lady of the Sign, Ark of Mercy, by the Cardinal, filled me with anticipation. The monstrance, a towering nine-foot sculpture of the Virgin Mary with the Eucharistic host in her womb, symbolized the union of heaven and earth. The public unveiling of this icon was a moment of communal and personal significance, where the divine narrative at St. Stanislaus intersected with my own spiritual journey.

Arriving at the church early to secure parking for the event, we miraculously found a spot close to the entrance. This seemingly inconspicuous event carried a profound meaning, as if Mary herself had personally greeted us, validating our faith and commitment. Inside, the church buzzed with people and a palpable sense of anticipation filled the air. The unveiling of the icon during Mass was a moment of profound revelation, where the sacred and the sublime converged on my consciousness as an experience with being itself. The image of Our Lady, holding the Blessed Sacrament, spoke volumes without words, evoking a sense of apocalyptic beauty and divine grace.

This spiritual awakening continued beyond the event. On subsequent visits, the icon served as a constant reminder of Mary’s presence and guidance. The long journey from our home to the church became a weekly pilgrimage, a testament to the enduring influence of this sacred space on my spiritual life. Mary’s guidance extended further into my intellectual pursuits, leading me to significant theological works that deepened my understanding and devotion.

One evening, while adoring the Blessed Sacrament at a local church, I felt a profound connection to the story of Jesus’ youth, growing in wisdom and knowledge under Mary’s guidance. This connection reinforced the idea that Mary, the ultimate spiritual teacher, teaching Jesus himself, was guiding me on a similar path. I opened my catechism, landing on the Ten Commandments. The subsequent study of the Ten Commandments from the catechism over the next few weeks became a tangible manifestation of this heavenly Marian pedagogy.

Mary’s influence led me to three seminal works: St. Augustine’s “City of God,” Dietrich von Hildebrand’s “Transformation in Christ,” and H.W. Crocker III’s “Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church.” These books provided a comprehensive framework for understanding the Catholic worldview, spiritual life, and the Church’s history. Augustine’s work illuminated the dichotomy between the City of God and the city of man, offering a lens to interpret contemporary moral and philosophical issues. Von Hildebrand’s insights into authentic values and Christ as the highest value brought clarity to the interior of spiritual life. Crocker’s historical narrative reinforced the Church’s enduring legacy and divine foundation.

Through these works and my visits to the Blessed Sacrament at St. Stanislaus, I found that Mary’s inspiration played a crucial role in unlocking the language of my heart. The serenity and divine presence experienced during these visits gave me the courage to express and articulate my spiritual journey. The reflection forthcoming is not merely a recounting of events but an exploration of the profound meanings and structures that have shaped my conversion, revealing the divine narrative that continues to guide and inspire me.

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

As I write this, I am moved to reflect on my personal experiences and the reasons behind my hesitation to discuss these profound gifts from God. The essence of my reluctance lies in fear—a fear of misunderstanding and isolation. I am often paralyzed by the thought of being judged or ostracized when I consider speaking out about the truths I hold dear.

There is a vivid memory that comes to mind, akin to being at a dinner party where I alone believe the square root of nine is three. Despite knowing this to be true, I hesitate to voice it, not wanting to offend or alienate my friends. The tension builds until it feels necessary to speak up, only to face disapproval and discomfort. This fear of social exclusion has often led me to silence myself, choosing instead to write away from the potential backlash. Yet, I recognize a pressing need to overcome this fear, especially in a time where clear, courageous expression is crucial.

In this reflection, I see a world ensnared in a collective anxiety, driven by a loss of spiritual orientation. There is a pervasive belief that all viewpoints are valid, which undermines genuine belief. This environment makes it difficult to live one’s faith without fear of offending others. The pressure to conform and the risk of being perceived as intolerant or judgmental stifle genuine expression. This struggle is something I have felt.

Observing a world in turmoil where intolerance and violence seem to grow compounds my fear. This turmoil is not just external but also internal, affecting how I perceive and engage with my faith. The secular ideologies that have emerged over centuries seem to challenge the foundations of my beliefs, creating a disorienting landscape where spiritual truths feel marginalized.

Reflecting on these experiences, I realize that my fear has often kept me from being a faithful steward of the treasures of my faith. These treasures, gifts from a tradition that has brought me immense healing and joy, compel me to share them despite the risk. The inner pain I feel when I withhold these gifts is a testament to the love that drives me to speak. This love, a profound and uncontainable force, urges me to express it, to let it burst forth into the world.

The parable of the talents resonates with me.

Matthew 25: 14-30 (Douay-Rheims)

“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.

Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’

And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

The fear of the third servant, who buried his talent, mirrors my hesitation. This parable brings to light my responsibility to use the gifts I have received, to bring them into the light rather than hide them out of fear. The pain of holding back and the fear of being the third servant constantly remind me to share love.

In summary, this reflection is driven by love—a love that demands expression and action. Just as creation bursts forth in vibrant color and the sun rises to dispel the darkness, so too must this love shine forth from within me. It is this imperative that finally moves me to write, to share, and to act.

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

I have a deeply personal journey I want to share with you. It’s about the burning Catholic Dogma that lives in my soul and how it became a part of me. I do not intend to argue or engage in power struggles. Too often, such debates feel like clumsy fencing matches, each side aiming to score points rather than genuinely connect. Instead, my story is one of love—love for God and love for humanity, a universal love rooted in my faith.

You might wonder how Dogma and love can coexist. Isn’t Dogma often seen as rigid, even intolerant, while love is open and accepting? I, too, grappled with this seeming contradiction. Yet, in my experience, God’s truth and love are not only compatible but intertwined. It’s like St. Joan of Arc on the battlefield, comforting a dying enemy soldier—her actions were driven by a profound love rooted in her faith.

When I think of Jesus, I recall how he taught us to love our enemies, even as he said he came not to bring peace but a sword. He cleared the Temple of money changers with force, yet loved those very people enough to die for them. This paradox isn’t just theoretical for me; it’s a lived reality. Jesus Christ, alive and active in my life, guides me with both unwavering truth and boundless love.

Reflecting on my journey, I see how this understanding has grown within me. Jesus Christ isn’t a distant figure or a mere concept. He is a living presence, one who loves deeply and desires the best for us. This realization has shaped my worldview and actions, infusing my life with a sense of purpose and love that transcends mere dogmatic adherence.

In my own moments of doubt and struggle, I’ve found strength in the stories of saints like Joan of Arc, whose love for Jesus and Mary fueled her courage in battle and compassion for her enemies. These stories aren’t just historical anecdotes; they resonate deeply with my own experiences of faith and love.

I’ve encountered many who view Jesus through a modern lens as a philosophical figure or an enlightened spirit. But for me, Jesus is much more. His resurrection is a tangible truth, a foundation for my belief and actions. This isn’t about abstract theology or subjective consciousness; it’s about a relationship with a living, loving God who calls me to both hold firm to my faith and act with love.

This journey hasn’t been easy. Dogmatism without love is off-putting and often pushes people away from religion. But genuine faith, driven by love, has the power to attract and transform. It’s a balance of holding true to my beliefs while embracing others with compassion.

The living Christ, who still speaks today as he did two thousand years ago, forms the basis of my Dogma. He doesn’t change, and this constancy provides a foundation for my faith. For instance, he teaches that there is right and wrong, and as God, he defines these truths. This understanding shapes my actions and interactions with the world.

I recall the historical context of Joan of Arc’s mission during the Hundred Years War, driven by her voices telling her to liberate France. Jesus’ love for all people, including the English she fought against, illustrates the complex interplay of love and Dogma. His will for us as individuals and communities often challenges our human inclinations but always has its roots in a deeper love.

This critical point in my reflection brings me to the understanding that the battle for God’s kingdom, both personal and communal, finds its foundation in love. It’s not about religious triumphalism, but about embodying the love of Christ in all aspects of life. This spiritual warfare is as much about internal transformation as it is about external actions.

Reflecting on my experiences, I see how Dogma, when infused with love, guides my life. It’s not about rigid adherence to rules, but about living out the love and truth of Christ in every situation. This love-driven Dogma is what I strive to embody, even when it leads to difficult or unpopular stances.

In our modern world, where relativism and individualism often prevail, proclaiming Christ as the universal moral authority can seem contentious. Yet, my lived experience tells me that this truth, grounded in love, offers genuine freedom and fulfillment. It’s a message that challenges but ultimately enriches.

So, I write this not to impose my beliefs, but to share the transformative power of a love-driven faith. It’s a journey that continually deepens my relationship with God and shapes how I engage with the world. This faith isn’t static; it’s a dynamic, living reality that calls me to love more fully and live more authentically.

My journey with Catholic Dogma and love isn’t about intellectual victory but about living a faith that is both true and loving. It’s a call to embrace the paradox of Dogma and love, finding in it a path to deeper connection with God and with others. Through this lens, I see my faith not as a set of rigid rules but as a living, loving relationship with the resurrected Christ, who continually calls me to love more deeply and live more fully.

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

Despite the challenges, I found the courage to write a book on the God-inspired purpose of my life. If you continue reading this chapter, or even just the next few paragraphs, you’ll understand why it has been challenging. In today’s relativistic culture, people rarely make the religious statements that follow, at least not beyond the privacy of their family dinner table.

The modern world often promotes philosophies that encourage unrestricted personal affirmation. This only leads along a continuum toward chaos. Yet, this same world often expects Catholics to be restrained and relativistic in their beliefs. It curtails religious discussions, insisting on radical individual rights of expression while denying religious beliefs the same force of certainty. The prevailing mindset suggests that the only objective truth is that there is no objective truth, except the one that forbids contradicting the modern spirit.

In this book, I share my spiritual journey through Catholicism, demonstrating the opposite. By defying the world’s spirit, I uncovered the flaws in the modern world and confirmed the truth of the ancient Catholic Religion. This realization has revitalized my spirit, mind, and body. Before I delve into my story, I want to explain in the next few chapters my purpose in writing, why I am doing it now, and the recent events that inspired me. This front section aims to help you understand my conversion story and gain more from it.

My motivation, in summary, is to declare to you what I have received from Jesus.

This book is a testimony to a universal authority beyond us all. My goal is to persuade you of its authenticity. This work might be challenging, but like Joan of Arc persuading the English of Charles VII’s legitimacy as King of France, I feel compelled to speak my truth despite the dangers. I am determined to confront the spirit of the world and proclaim that my religion is right, providing proof through the life-giving fruits it produces.

Now, let us lay the foundation for what I am writing in this book.

Despite abundant gifts from God, I have struggled with the courage to speak from the heart, resulting in misery. For years, I felt I was missing my calling to share my life’s journey for the benefit of others whom God is calling. This journey has brought me freedom, joy, and the hope of salvation. The triune God freely gave me these gifts. These gifts showed God has a will for our world. The Roman Catholic Church has safeguarded this treasure through the ages, which reveals the total revelation of the triune God in the Church’s Dogma, Creed, Scriptures, and Sacred Tradition. The Church’s Magisterium has preserved Jesus Christ’s teachings, offering eternal life.

This is the God, the Creator of all, who founded not a religion but the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Through it, he walks with humanity through each generation. God’s blessings of new life through the Church are what I write about. These gifts are objective, universal, and supernatural realities shared with the communion of saints, not products of subjective natural conditioning.

These gifts include miraculous healings through the intercession of the saints. The Virgin Mary, St. Joan of Arc, and St. Therese of Lisieux have been notable intercessors for these gifts. God has intervened in my life, saving me from conditions considered predetermined by scientific minds.

The greatest gift is transformation through suffering. This means dying to oneself, and being reborn through the merits of Jesus Christ. Reach for the heavens, yearn for eternal life - concepts dismissed by the world, but which are God’s power. By humbling myself, like God did on the cross, and becoming nothing to be all in God, I achieve my ultimate aspiration. Many today follow self-gratifying beliefs leading to a precipice, but I have faced these precipices and found a genuine hope of salvation through suffering.

You might find my assertions challenging. Through the Holy Roman Catholic Church, God has granted me graces that oppose every major heresy and misguided philosophy today. My life contradicts modern philosophies, demonstrating the Truth in communion with His saints and showing God has a will and purpose for us.

If He has done this for me, imagine what God can do for you. In my soul, the Dogma of the Roman Catholic Church burns alive, as I reject superficial religious relativity, atheistic determinism, and New Age darkness. If anything I write contradicts the Church’s teachings, let me discard it, and may I repent. My life story is what my book is about.

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

I did not know that growing up as a Christian-thinking, mainstream young man in Oklahoma during the 1960s and 1970s would lead me to live a life so different from modern American culture. But that is exactly what happened, and I am writing to share how it all came about. I believe that modern culture has shifted significantly since the 1960s, moving away from a once Christian-oriented society. As a youth, it never crossed my mind that my country and its civilization would so swiftly embrace a more pagan culture that prevails today.

While modern society moved towards paganism, I turned in the opposite direction, embracing Roman Catholicism, a religion often misunderstood by the secular world. Saints drew me to it—heavenly friends outside of my childhood circle, outside of time and space. They led me to a peaceful freedom, wholeness of faith, true reason, and the unity of Catholic tradition. They opened a gateway to a new spiritual realm, one rooted in the ancient Christendom of the Middle Ages. My journey to the uplifting highlands and clear air of Christendom, through the completeness of Catholic faith, reason, and tradition, is the essence of my book.

If modern culture leaves you feeling physically, mentally, and spiritually unfulfilled with its lifestyles, or if its superficial spiritual solutions or nihilistic philosophies unsettle you, this book is for you. Even if you enjoy modern culture, you might still find value in this book, though it may challenge your views. As G. K. Chesterton said, “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”[1]

I can describe my situation in the same spirit, but differently from Mr. Chesterton’s analogy. At a crucial point in my life, I found the Faith as a rock that does not move—a rock two thousand years old, whose foundation predates the physical universe. This rock is solid. I clung to this rock like a drowning man in a turbulent sea. The joy and freedom of discovering the rock of truth amidst the storm of modern thinking is my thesis.

I wrote this story from the heart. If everyone has a story that could benefit at least one other person, this writing represents my story. It is the outcome of my spiritual journey through the lifesaving world of the Dogma, Creeds, Traditions, and Scriptures of the two-thousand-year-old Roman Catholic Church. To some, these words may sound like sweet music; to others, like nails on a chalkboard; and to still others, like a chaotic mix of thoughts.

Though my language may sound subjective, the spiritual journey I discuss is one of objective certainty. The life of the Church is authentic and available to everyone, even though my description is based on personal experience. This is crucial. The joy, freedom, and grace I speak of are not because of any special merit of mine. I am an average person with no fundamental worldly importance. This means everyone can and should take this journey. If you think this story is about a unique, subjective experience, only mine, you’ve missed the point. I hope you follow the same path, discovering your own personal possibilities based on shared, objective truth. We can achieve unity through objective truth and grow into the individuals God intended us to be by following the path of the dogmatic Roman Catholic Church. It is glorious! Only God could conceive and found it this way; I will show you he did.

Imagine traveling with someone on the same road. Objectively, it’s the same path, though each of you may describe the trip differently based on your experiences. This is important to remember while reading this book, as many today view everything subjectively and deny an objectively true path for the world. No one is supposed to say there is objective truth, a truth that speaks dogmatically about right and wrong, and how to get to heaven and avoid hell. Yet, Jesus Christ, through the Scriptures, Sacred Traditions, and the Magisterial teaching authority of his two-thousand-year-old Church, tells us there is such a path. It is true and solid ground.

My journey has been on this glorious path of Catholic Dogma, handed down directly and completely from the original apostles. It is the only road valid reason leads to, traveled with freedom and joy by countless others before us. By God’s will, all people are meant to cross it, for it is the way to our ultimate destiny, beyond the suffering material world. God opened this road for us, willing us to travel it. He is a Father who wishes all his children to find their way out of the wilderness. He has given us his only Son to lead us.

It is saddening that many do not choose to follow this path, preferring to reject the will of the Good God. They have the freedom to make that choice. The very freedom that atheists, New Agers, and secularists seek is already given by God, though they rarely realize it. God has given humanity the radical freedom to accept or reject him. It is unfortunate that more do not use that freedom to obey rather than disobey. Free obedience to God makes eternal beatitude an objective reality. This we know by God’s promise. Rejecting God for an inauthentic, godless freedom ultimately enslaves humanity, an objective reality I know well!

Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, opened this path by allowing himself to be crucified by non-believers without resistance. Despite having the power to prevent it, he chose not to, so we might travel this path of freedom with him. He rose from the dead in real terms, witnessed by many. He established the Roman Catholic Church as his body on earth so that he could walk visibly with humanity in every generation until all willing to accept the way are brought home.

He desires everyone to accept it. Therefore, we must share this gospel, despite opposition from a superficial, godless humanism that speaks of universal love but shows indifference toward God and those who follow him. As G. K. Chesterton noted, “There are those who hate Christianity, and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”[2] Our Lord also asked what good it would be for a man to gain the entire world but lose his soul.[3] Any humanism that rejects Christ is not lasting; it is superficial. Christ rose from the dead; no other did. Should we not pay attention to him? What rational person could reject a resurrected Christ? What godless humanism makes sense considering the resurrection? Think about that; if you are truly reasonable, you will grasp the primary message: Christ is the objective reality! He is life!

Some might argue that organized religion is dangerous, causing many conflicts. But religion involves the eternal destiny of our souls, something worth fighting for. It is more rational to fight for our faith than our country. Our ancestors knew this. Tell me to abandon my Catholic faith for atheism or a one-world spirituality, and I am prepared to fight. I want to go to heaven and will let nothing deter me. I agree with G. K. Chesterton that religious conviction, though sometimes leading to conflict, is more rational than patriotic fervor:

“The Crusade was a religious movement, but it was also a perfectly rational movement; one might almost say a rationalist movement...But it certainly is the fact that religious war is in itself much more rational than patriotic war. I for one have often defended and even encouraged patriotic war and should always be ready to defend and encourage patriotic passion. But it cannot be denied that there is more of mere passion, of mere preference and prejudice, in short of mere personal accident, in fighting another nation than in fighting another faith. The Crusader is in every sense more rational than the modern conscript or professional soldier. He is more rational in his object, which is the intelligent and intelligible object of conversion; where the modern militarist has an object much more confused by momentary vanity and one-sided satisfaction.”[4]

Religion deals with both the here and the hereafter. I will try to share my faith out of love, even in difficult circumstances. It is love that drives the Catholic faith, not conflict. We choose to follow our faith out of love, and I will explain that in this book.

In discussing my path to freedom, I present an alternative to the deterministic worldview that can feel oppressive today. The Western world, significantly influenced by atheism and Eastern spirituality, has lost its traditional Catholic base. We are so entrenched in relativistic morality that we sometimes look to non-Christian philosophies for guidance about Christ. This spiritual disorientation shows how far we have strayed.

The modern mind often attempts to see beyond objective morality. Eastern thinkers who write about Christ as if he were a Hindu or Buddhist are spreading confusion, not clarity. They have no authority to teach about Christ. The authority to teach Christ rests in the Church he founded, which has preserved the Faith for over two thousand years.

“In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left Bishops as their successors. They gave them ‘their own position of teaching authority.”[5]

“The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.”[6]

To say an Eastern thinker has no authority to teach about Christ might be difficult for the modern mind, influenced by subjective, non-judgmental thought. This was not the case for the first one thousand five hundred years of Christianity. If God seems distant, who moved? It wasn’t the Roman Catholic Church, which maintained apostolic succession from Christ and held the authority to teach the apostolic message.

My desire to write this journey is driven by a love for humanity and a desire to share the truth. My words may be challenging for some to accept, like addressing a serious issue with someone we care about. Offering a positive alternative is essential. Regular participation in the sacraments, prayer, better education in the Faith, and the practice of virtue will bring health back to the soul, mind, and body. These are the alternatives the Roman Catholic Church offered for over two thousand years. Saving souls is genuine love. Jesus Christ saved us; no philosophy or ideology can do that. Sometimes, clear and direct communication is necessary to convey this truth. And direct communication out of love is my aim.

I hope those who read this book will join me in joyfully embracing this path to freedom. I call it The Freedom Dance, inspired by those who led me to it with their own joyful steps. This vision of dancing joyfully on a path of Catholic Dogma challenges the modern mind, which often seeks solutions in therapy or medication. The sacrament of confession offers absolution and healing, something therapy alone cannot provide. Yet, we are called silly for joyfully following this path. I pray others will join us on this journey.

I care only that nothing in this writing opposes the teachings of the Holy Mother Church. I desire to please Our Lord and Our Lady, to be in union with the Pope and the magisterial teachings of the Church. I care nothing for any man’s opinion, except Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died on the Cross for the world’s redemption. He, the Founder of the Roman Catholic Church, created all things, and there is no other. It will be to him that all powers on earth will kneel. “Then he will judge between the nations and arbitrate between many peoples.” He is the mediator with the Father in heaven, and there is no other. Finally, I desire to please the Mother of Our Lord, who brought me from darkness into the light of her Son.

^[1] G.K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man, 1925, http://chesterton.org/discover/quotations.html (December 2008)

^[2] G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 1/13/06, http://chesterton.org/acs/quotes.htm#Religion%20and%20Faith (December 2008)

^[3] Mark 8:36

^[4] G.K. Chesterton, “The Meaning of the Crusade”, 1920, http://chesterton.org/gkc/historian/crusade.html (December 2008)

^[5] Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 77.

^[6] Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 85.

^[7] Isaiah 2:4

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Reader's Guide to the Sky-Veil

France, outside of Jargeau, the Loire Valley, June 1429

 Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, stands on the brink of history. At just seventeen-years-old years old, this extraordinary young woman commands the French Army, the youngest ever to hold such power.[1] With her devoted troops, she prepares to assault the English stronghold in Jargeau, determined to reclaim France from English occupation. Her ultimate goal? To pave the way for Charles VII's crowning in Reims as the legitimate King of France, all in obedience to the divine voices she hears from heaven. These voices, including that of St. Michael the Archangel, who cast Satan from heaven by God's power, have guided her since childhood.

Captain La Hire, loyal and fierce, addresses a group of hesitant captains in Joan’s army. These men, fearing direct confrontation with the formidable English forces, prefer a prolonged siege. Let’s listen in as La Hire passionately sets the record straight about Joan’s mission and the new era of warfare she embodies. Picture him throwing his helmet against the wall, his voice rising as he speaks. As you do, consider the Church in today’s world and the strongholds of evil we face. Reflect on the battle before us to free souls from tyranny and pray for a modern-day Joan of Arc. Now, hear La Hire's words:

“There are some that never know how to change. Circumstances may change, but those people are never able to see that they have got to change too, to meet those circumstances. All that they know is the one beaten track that their fathers and grandfathers have followed and that they themselves have followed in their turn. If an earthquake come and rip the land to chaos, and that beaten track now lead over precipices and into morasses, those people can’t learn that they must strike out a new road – no; they will march stupidly along and follow the old one to death and perdition. Men, there’s a new state of things; and a surpassing military genius has perceived it with her clear eye. And a new road is required, and that same clear eye has noted where it must go, and has marked it out for us. The man does not live, never has lived, never will live, that can improve upon it! The old state of things was defeat, defeat, defeat – and by consequence we had troops with no dash, no heart, no hope. Would you assault stone walls with such? No – there was but one way, with that kind; sit down before a place and wait, wait – starve it out if you could. The new case is the very opposite; it is this: men all on fire with pluck and dash and vim and fury and energy – a restrained conflagration! What would you do with it? Hold it down and let it smoulder and perish and go out? What would Joan of Arc do with it? Turn it loose, by the Lord God of heaven and earth, and let it swallow up the foe in the whirlwind of its fires! Nothing shows the wisdom and splendor of her military genius like her instant comprehension of the size of the change which has come about, and her instant perception of the right and only right way to take advantage of it. With her is no sitting down or starving out; no dilly-dallying and fooling around; no lazying and loafing, and going to sleep; no, it is storm! storm! storm! And still storm! storm! storm! And forever storm! storm! storm! hunt the enemy to his hole, then turn her French hurricanes loose and carry him by storm! And that is my sort!  Jargeau?  What of Jargeau, with its battlements and towers, its devastating artillery, and its seven thousand picked veterans? Joan of Arc is to the fore, and by the splendor of God its fate is sealed!”[2]

With divine inspiration and leadership, Joan of Arc led her troops to storm Jargeau, putting the enemy to flight. In what may be one of the most successful and charitable military campaigns in history, Joan achieved remarkable victories in just seven weeks with minimal bloodshed. Her leadership ended the English siege of Orléans, secured the Loire Valley, and led to a miraculously bloodless march to Reims for the king’s coronation. Stronghold after stronghold fell without a fight, purely on the reputation of this holy warrior, a mere seventeen-year-old country girl.

Though betrayed and martyred, Joan's efforts eventually freed France and established Charles VII as king. Her heroism and divine calling transformed him into a more courageous leader, a testament to the grace and wisdom of Our Lord. Crucially, this divine guidance and Joan’s unwavering faith ended the Hundred Years War. Jesus Christ, through Joan of Arc's selfless cooperation, brought peace to a war-torn continent.

Is there anything more worth fighting for than what Joan of Arc fought for? Would the French have been better off surrendering their beliefs for a false sense of unity with their oppressors? They were right to fight, to believe deeply and defend their kingdom.

Today, like 15^th century France, we find the Christian religion and culture under siege, particularly the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Some suggest Catholics should keep their beliefs private while modern atheism and ancient Eastern spiritualities encroach upon our Western, formerly Christian civilization. Should we, inheritors of the Church that gave birth to France, the Eldest Daughter of the Church, and built Western civilization, remain silent? Or should we, inspired by Joan of Arc’s spirit, storm the gates of hell to reclaim our land?

Let us remember this as we witness the siege on our Holy Mother Church, the Roman Catholic Church, founded by the Lord Himself. May we fight the good fight, raise the siege of darkness, and revel in the freedom of our Catholic faith and culture!

St. Joan of Arc – pray for us!

[1] “Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of human history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex, who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a nation at the age of seventeen.” Louis Kossuth

Twain, Mark. Joan of Arc. San Francisco CA: Ignatius Press, 2007.

[2] Mark Twain, Joan of Arc (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007) 228-229.

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Most importantly, enjoy yourself because I appreciate that you are here.

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Purchase Seek First the Kingdom

The previous chapter, combined with its imagery, was a purposeful setup for telling the all-important story in this next and pivotal juncture concerning the March of Hope. The story I have to say to you in this and the following chapter, on the heels of the contemplative, panoramic imagery introduced just previously, drives to the central theme of the March of Hope and is, in fact, the mystical reality leading to the apex of the mountain top to where I am leading. There, on the top of that mountain, is the view to the other side that has astonished me, and is a land that, once I understood what it was at which I was looking, I felt the great compulsion to run down and seek other travelers to tell them what I have seen. I have seen a vision of something that has forever altered my life. It is so astonishing that I have sold everything I have to obtain it. It is the pearl for which one would sell all he owns to purchase.^[1]

You might recall that this journey began in 1984 when I, in a moment, not unlike a bolt of lightning, came to understand the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church and, in a second beyond that, to understand and believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Very soon after that, I found myself curiously fascinated with the person of, and even praying to, the Blessed Virgin Mary. The connection between my conversion to the Church, the Eucharist, and the Virgin Mary could not be mistaken as a coincidence or deriving from psychological forces. It came to me from without; it simply was the I AM. Furthermore, it was a force consistent in both content and effect as described in the Sacred Traditions of the Church and the writings of the Fathers and saints. It was not a unique experience but one that has been experienced as an ordinary course of events in the life of the Church down through the centuries. It was the great surety and certainty of dogma, and it was alive.

I also came to understand and believe a little later that the graces of my conversion, poured into my soul by the hands of the Virgin Mary, were won for me in Christ by the blessed little St. Thérèse of Lisieux. While on earth, she proclaimed that she would spend her time in heaven converting souls, and I genuinely believe I am one of those souls she converted.

I want you to remember this general theme and sequence of events when I eventually tell you the marvelous story of how Joan of Arc became such an important person and relationship in my life. Though subjugated appropriately first to Jesus Christ and then to the Virgin Mary, her role in my life has been just as pivotal as and complementary to the role Thérèse has played. Why is she the one leading me on my journey? As Our Lady has bequeathed me particular graces I do not deserve, I have, through these graces, found the similarities between the Great Event of 1984 and the coming of Joan of Arc remarkable. But we must go one step at a time to get this story right.

I am telling you what happened after The Freedom Dance brought me to that beautiful mystical mountainside where the dark Revolution must be left behind and where I must now cross over a threshold to a new and beautiful land that leads to the City of God. I have described that threshold as being the very gateway into the mysterious land of Roman Catholicism. Seeing in your mind that the top of the mountain is the gateway to this land will bring together these two images, that of a mountain top and that of a gateway. I continue to press the imagery of both the active element of the journey, going through a gate, with the contemplative aspect of watching the mist rise from our mountaintop or hillside.

I felt compelled to tell my journey beyond and through the walls of Catholicism. I realized that many souls may wish to travel it and should do so by the will of God, who established his Church on earth in the form of the second person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ. He established neither a religion nor a philosophy nor an Eastern New Age spiritualism but a Church, and this is the crux of our communication problems with the rest of the world. The Catholic Church is not a man-made religion. It is an institution founded by a Godman! You obey it; you don’t theorize over its potential self-affirming value in your life. You follow it because it is life; it is God’s revelation.

But to my primary point, who could know about this great land if those of us who have been bold enough to accept its promises do not run back to tell others? The vast majority of souls in the modern culture are struck numb (and dumb) with twenty-four-hour media, vulgar music, and useless gossip for entertainment. The kingdom of God cannot be found there. Why spend so much time with it? Why, quite frankly, spend any time with it? If one is looking for riches, one does not spend most of one’s waking hours on skid row asking for venture capital. If one is seeking God, the true God of Christian revelation and his kingdom, one does not look in the modern culture or its entertainment and media industry. The Evil One does not want you to pray; he is in full charge of our so-called progressive culture. Twenty-four-hour noise and soul garbage fill our minds and hearts like cigarette smoke fills one’s lungs.

Many people hear about the Catholic Church from those outside who know little about her. Relying on the media to inform you of the Catholic Church is like depending on the press in Tehran to teach you about the American Revolution and the development of our constitution. Worse yet are the ex-Catholics who leave a Church and preach against a Church that does not exist. I have been astounded to hear their errant understanding of doctrine as they attempted to condemn her with "Bible-based" speculation. Yet, others will look to them as "experts" on Catholicism who have escaped the torture chambers of oppression and are living to tell about it. Who will tell people about the great land that lies through her gates? I have done that through The Freedom Dance, and the following discussion of Joan of Arc is its apex. Walking through the gateway of the kingdom with her is the direct path through the heart of Mary and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

To safely go forward, it is vital that we first keep track of the order of things, that is, the authentic order of our values in this land of Catholicism. In this genuine ordering of values, we find the safety of the path of the Dogmatic Creed. In this ordering of our values, we ensure we follow the correct guideposts and do not end up again in the Dark Forest. One of the greatest gifts that Christ gives to us in his Church is an understanding of the correct ordering of values. This enlightenment from the Holy Spirit through the magisterial teachings of the Church is vital to being safe on our journey.

This last point cannot be stressed enough, for everywhere in our modern world, we see one of the greatest wiles of the evil one. Nothing can confuse the hearts of people of goodwill more than having them pursue all the right things in all the wrong order. For example, people speak of "tolerance" for others' lifestyles and world views or "respecting individual rights." But now, this otherwise good value of "respecting individual rights" forces us to subjectively respect the opinions of those who choose to terminate a baby's life in the womb. Without any moral authority, we have the framework for an actual conflict here. Clearly, the two sides are irreconcilable. Either the life may not be taken, and one side is "oppressed," or, conversely, the life can be destroyed in the name of "individual rights," and the other is oppressed. The modern world has cast off any notion of a moral authority to guide us other than that of individual conscience, but here, we have two opposing "consciences." We cannot escape the duality of it and the inherent conflict.

The Evil One has all of modern society going in ever-widening and ever-more dizzying circles. The chief weapon is moral and religious relativity. No one can say that anything or any religion is absolutely true. It must all be kept as a matter of mere opinion. We should accept all beliefs as equally valid. The notion that no belief should be assumed absolute implies an absolute hierarchy of values. And the promise of this confusing relativity is similarly deceptive, that is, the commitment that this will lead to peace and eliminate the dualistic conflicts that people of genuine, dogmatic belief are accused of causing. But we see above that this belief does nothing to eradicate dualism and conflict; in fact,  it increases it. With no higher authority on which to call than that of our own individual belief systems, we increase potential and actual conflict exponentially.

The reduction of moral authority to no more than personal opinion leaves us spinning in circles. And the joke on us, enjoyed by the hellions of the netherworld, is that we are all arguing over "good values." We are all being "good people." We are also very "lost" people. Without proper, objective moral authority, no authentic progress can be made.

So, moral and religious relativism and actual progress are antithetical. And in an age that has long ago thrown aside the Church as the proper moral authority, we have turned to allow our political leaders to be that authority as people with nowhere else to turn. Now we are down to simply following what his personal opinion is. The circle keeps spinning faster.

That great society of Christendom in the Middle Ages would know that what we are attempting to pass off as a legitimate culture is sheer nonsense. They knew that moral authority rested in Jesus Christ and the Church he founded. They fought the Crusades, and rightfully so, to defend that culture and Church. In the modern, “progressive” world, we have surrendered with no apparent will to fight for any belief. “The military spirit is quite different from that of the executioner.”^[2] Pacifism, whether spiritual or military, is part of the decline and completely ignores the proper hierarchy of values. It contributes nowhere to actual progress. The early Crusaders fought to defend the great land behind them, not out of hatred or bigotry for what was before them. And while it is true that some later Crusades were less than noble (notably the 4th, which resulted in the sacking of Constantinople and a deepening of the existing wound between the Eastern and Western Church), the Faith was generally there in its proper order for the defenders of Christendom. The Faith and the culture developed out of it were worth dying for. In sad contradistinction, in our culture, belief is, after all, only a matter of opinion. Of course, Crusades make no sense to us today. Why battle over something irrelevant or impossible to truly define as an absolute belief?

So, let us ensure that we follow this March of Hope on the Dogmatic Creed of Roman Catholicism with great attention to the authentic order of our steps. Otherwise, we could easily fall into a dark crevice and hurt or even kill ourselves.

With all this in mind, I ask you to finish your respite, and, having now caught our breath, we will return to moving toward what I have called the apex of my journey. I have told you that I must tell this story, for I cannot leave the story of Catholicism in the hands of a media and culture that are the sworn enemies of the Church. And I have told you that we must take this step by step to keep from losing our way to the great promise lying through the gates and over the mountaintop. Without this care, the story might never be understood. We might never arrive at the great land.

Where do we begin in describing these next steps on the March of Hope? We start not with philosophy, spiritualism, or even theology but with a person who is the summation of all proper values, Jesus Christ. Any hierarchy of values that does not recognize Jesus Christ as the point to which all other valid values are directed is not authentic. Von Hildebrand states it as follows:

“The heroic man is simple, and his heroic act becomes the simpler. Every heroic act is the victory of a dominant aim over a multitude of petty ties and distractions. All experiences which enlarge our hearts, which expand and embolden our souls, and which render us able to sacrifice inferior things heroically – as does, above all a great love under Jesus – contribute to our achieving true simplicity. What we must seek is a general readiness to give away lower things for the sake of higher ones, according to the divinely sanctioned legitimate order of values, and in this sense, ultimately, even to abandon any and every high good for the sake of the highest one – that is, Christ.”^[3]

A proper order of things is a hierarchy of values that supports a willingness to give up even "good" objectives for the sake of the highest, Jesus Christ. I am, in the proper state of things, willing to give up, or at least subjugate anyway, what I consider to be a "right" to render obedience to the opinion, law, and attitude of Christ. I believe in "tolerance" wholeheartedly, but I want to see that value in its proper position related to Christ.

Jesus was compassionate but did not tolerate evil, nor shall we if we wish to keep the proper state of affairs. Under Christ as our God, Savior, and moral authority, we are no longer "good" people squabbling over which "good" value should super cede another in a divided, pluralistic society. We are now united under the banner of the Cross and understand what we must sacrifice for authentic progress. This was the superior attitude of ancient Christendom to our own culture. This is why Crusaders carried the banner of the Cross to defend their land, families, and Church.

In other words, describing the following steps on the March of Hope begins with Jesus Christ. From the early chapters in this book, the first order of things to which Our Lady was leading me after the great moment of my healing and restoration to sanity was to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The Mass, the sacraments, and the primary sacrament deriving from the Mass, the Eucharist, along with obedience to the magisterial teachings of the Pope and the Bishops in communion with him, must be that to which we surrender or subjugate all other values, even our highest and most cherished ones. All described above is Jesus Christ as he teaches through his body, the Church, under the Pope's and Magisterium's direction and leadership. He administers his sacraments through his priests and Bishops, and he stays with us really and substantially in the Holy Eucharist. Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of the entire human race. Any order of values that does not recognize this is inauthentic and, ultimately, divisive and deadly, despite even the sweet promises of universal love that some value schemes offer.

You may be pausing for a moment now, perhaps a little confused. Having read all that above and knowing what you do of Catholicism and the land inside of that faith I have described, your curiosity might be piqued. Have I not consistently and boldly proclaimed my great love for and surrender to the Holy Mother of God, the Virgin Mary? I have, and I do. I follow the Tradition of the Church from apostolic times forward of devotion to Mary.

Devotion to Mary has been the most significant earmark of the Church’s faith after that of Jesus himself. Devotion to Mary is not a new doctrine nor a novel aberration of the faith. Devotion to Our Lady has been the Tradition of the Church from the moment Jesus Christ gave his life on the Cross^[4] to the earliest Church Fathers, through the Middle Ages, surviving the attack on it in the Protestant Revolution, and into the modern world of the 21^st century. Not only is Marian devotion a beautiful and consistent reality of historic Christianity, but it is also essential to our salvation according to the teachings of our great saints. It is also quite a joyful path and is true, as St. Louis de Montfort made clear, the ultimate and most direct path to Jesus Christ, our highest value!

I consecrated myself to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the formula given to us by Saint Louis de Montfort and, later in life, by that of another great saint, Maximilian Kolbe. They are essentially the same, and both are highly approved by the Church. Pope St. John Paul II was consecrated to Mary under the De Montfort formula. In this consecration, we give everything we have, all of our natural and spiritual goods, our very souls, to the Holy Mother of God as the shortest, easiest, and safest path to her Son, Jesus Christ.

How can this be? Are we not falling off into one of those crevices? Have we yet to find ourselves back in the Dark Forest? No, we have not. We are on the surest and solid ground. The pathway to Jesus through Mary is the next step in the hierarchy of principles that must be explained before we can make any sense in our discussion of Joan of Arc.

When explaining this doctrine of True Devotion to Mary to non-Catholics, I typically get two responses from spiritually oriented people. The first will be from those infected with that deadly spiritual disease New Age, which is nothing more than Eastern religion and spirituality commercially packaged for a superficial and materialistic Western world. It is not only valueless; it is deadly. The proposed value schemes there are completely topsy-turvy and inauthentic. But these fine and well-meaning souls will often join me in a great exclamation of love for Mary as if she were to be considered one of their "goddesses," "manifestations," "spirit guides," or whatever it is that they call these spiritual concepts. They will delight in her but for all the wrong reasons. As soon as I describe Mary in the context of orthodox Catholicism, these New Agers head for the hills.

The others I run across in these matters are Protestants. They have no idea what I am talking about. Their typical reaction is similar to that of the New Agers in that they figure we must be worshiping her (along with all those other saints) as one would worship God. They do not see that the esteem we give her and, to a lesser degree, the rest of the saints is perfectly sound as that which is rightfully given unto mere creatures. It is all proper to the authentic order of values that begins with Christ. It is appropriate to honor worthy men and women without implying that we are giving them adoration due to God alone. Latin distinguishes between these two senses in a way that clarifies what we refer to in English as "worship." The Church, with its Latin foundation, has consistently taught us that there are two kinds of worship: "latria," which is given to God alone, and "dulia," which is the honor properly offered to the saints (as proper to mere created beings). "Hyperdulia" is a higher form of "dulia" that is reserved for Mary alone as the Mother of God and the first among the angels and the saints (and therefore the most honored with that dignity proper to created beings). This is a severe point of confusion among many Protestants regarding the Catholic's love for and devotion to Mary and the rest of the angels and saints.

Yes, if we were to worship Mary with the adoration of latria due to God alone, these Protestants would have every right to condemn us if God did not do it for them. In fact, the Virgin Mary would be the first to protest us; she would be the most saddened of all. For, she teaches us quite the opposite, that, despite her extraordinary dignity and the love which the Church pours on her with the honor of hyperdulia, we are to adore and worship with latria no one but the Holy Trinity. And her Son is the second person of that almighty Trinity. As properly expressed by "hyperdulia," true devotion to Mary always leads to stronger devotion to and "latria" of Jesus Christ; she is his mother and wants all souls to be reconciled with him.

If we all agree that neither Mary nor any saint is to be honored with the latria by which God is worshiped, what do we make of all this? Why even worry about it? Is it not easier, in fact, to forget about honoring all these saints and such and go "straight to Jesus," as my Protestant friends never fail to advise me? Is all this saint business just unnecessary complexity? No, this is not complexity; it is the richness of the Faith in the simplicity of an authentic and unifying dominant principle, as we discussed above.

What, I usually query with them, makes you think that these saints do not lead us directly to Jesus? How is it that if I drive from Chicago through Cleveland to Boston, I have yet to go straight to Boston? In fact, I could say that one "must" go through Cleveland as the shortest, easiest, and most effective way to drive to Boston from my home. One would certainly want to avoid the pitfall of driving from Chicago through Denver to go to Boston.

Using the imagery above is advantageous, combining the active journey with the contemplative experience of watching the mist rise. Indeed, Jesus is the endpoint and summation of all our objectives and values. In that sense, we experience him through his great light of day that clears that mist from our minds and souls. But we are also on a journey in our desire to reach Jesus. We have things to experience and knowledge to gain; in other words, we must grow toward and into that tremendous contemplative vision we have before us. And there, on that journey, into union with Christ, we must follow the most "direct" path. Only by the most direct route will we go "straight to Jesus." And that path straight to Jesus, handed to us through two millennia of Sacred Tradition and confirmed in the Sacred Scriptures, is the way through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Mary will lead you "straight" to Jesus. She will not send you to Denver in an attempt to reach Boston.

To use another analogy, what could improve our relationship more than if I loved your mother with all my heart and learned about you from her perspective? Do you think Jesus is indifferent to his mother and does not love her and listen to and obey his mother in heaven as he did on earth? Do not those who esteem his mother make him immensely happy? St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that grace builds on nature; grace never destroys nature. Has the natural order of things changed in heaven? And does she not continue to love her son in heaven and desire that all people follow him and know him? Why would a relationship with Mary do anything but create a positive foundation for understanding and loving Jesus Christ ever more strongly?

This is simple. Mary is Jesus’ mother. She loves you and wants you to be saved. She wants you to be united with Jesus and will do everything in her remarkable power to bring you to salvation in truth. Love her and consecrate yourself to her. Give your life and soul to her. You will find the fullness of Jesus more quickly and effectively than in any other way. You do not have to trust me on this matter. There are so many writings on this subject in the history and Traditions of the Church that I cannot even begin to sift through the most poignant ones to quote here.

I have a remarkable story to tell you on this very point. This story demonstrates everything I find delightful in telling others about the Virgin Mary. I am always happy to find new ways to start a conversation about Mary!

This story takes place in Texarkana, Texas., a fine small city where we lived for two years. It sits in the extreme Eastern part of Texas, straddles the state line of Texas and Arkansas, and is, I would call it, a pretty Protestant and evangelical place. There are two Catholic Churches in the area, one on the Texas side and the other on the Arkansas side.

One day I was at the checkout counter in a local grocery store when the young lady checking my goods noticed the brown scapular I had around my neck that had come out from under my shirt. The brown scapular is a small square cut of cloth worn around the neck that represents the large scapulars worn by the religious of the Carmelite Order, an Order primarily devoted to Mary and the contemplative life. St. Thérèse of Lisieux was a Carmelite nun. The scapular is a sign of love for and consecration to the Virgin Mary. But this young lady did not know that.

She asked me what it was. She had the beginnings of a terrified look on her face. I sensed that while she could not identify it, she knew it must have come from hell, whatever it was. I could see the look building on her face. So, I told her it was a "scapular" and a sign of love for and devotion to Mary.

Her face went pale; my explanation had confirmed her worst fears. She had probably heard of these saint-worshiping Catholics, and now she was standing in the shadows of one! She blurted out, and I love this with all my heart, "You know that only Jesus can save you!"

What I loved about her proclamation was that it was the absolute truth. There, at the checkout counter at the local grocery store, this young lady proclaimed the truth of the gospel to me. She almost fainted in the process, but she declared it beautifully. Yes. Only Jesus can save us. I smiled at her and replied, "Yes, what you said is true. But it never hurts to have his mother on your side!" She was flustered by that yet graciously bagged my groceries and sent me on my way.

This incident undoubtedly made for hot gossip at the next prayer group meeting. But let me tell you this. That was the ecumenical movement; that was true inter-faith dialogue. Together, she and I made two of the most sublime and powerful theological constructs this side of the Vatican, enough to make the faculty chairs at most seminaries sit up with a start in their leather seats. Only Jesus can save us; the sure way to secure and build our relationship with him is to love and honor his mother. The Vatican can meet with leaders of other faiths, but genuine dialogue between us is held at the checkout counter in your local grocery store, not in the ivy halls of intellectual theorists.

So, in catching your breath here, we have taken another giant leap forward on the March of Hope. We are, you will recall, stepping into the footprints of the mighty saints who went before us on the path of the Dogmatic Creed of Roman Catholicism. This is the path handed to us by the Apostles of Jesus and then through their heirs, the Bishops in union with the Pope, for two thousand years in the form of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. These first two steps are, respectively, the primacy in both heaven and on earth of Jesus Christ as the resurrected Son of God and Savior of the human race, followed by the beautiful, heart-warming leap into True Devotion to Mary as the surest way to an authentic love for that Godman.

We took our time here. We have taken these affairs in the authentic order of "to Jesus through Mary." The steps have become swifter now, for we feel joyful and free. We are on true and solid ground, following the path of our fathers in the Church. We are secure in the heart of Mary as she leads us to her divine son.

With this order of business taken care of, we may now run with joy on our journey to discuss the even larger framework of the family of God, the saints. With all I have told you above about the Virgin Mary, you should see now that with the mother, there are also brothers and sisters; in fact, there is a whole family in heaven, the family of God. We have the hundred-fold return that Our Lord promised us. They are waiting to lead us to Jesus.

With that behind us now, it is time to tell you how I came to experience the arrival of Joan of Arc.

^[1] See Mathew 13:44-45

^[2]Correa de Oliveira, Plinio. (1993). Revolution and Counter-Revolution. PA: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property. P. 70.

^[3] Von Hildebrand, Dietrich (1948). Transformation in Christ. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, P.104.

^[4] See John 19:25-27.

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Continuation from Introduction - Part 1.

Suffice it to say that any humanism that rejects Christ is not lasting; it is, as I have said, superficial. It is Christ who rose from the dead; there is no other. Should we not pay attention to him? What rational person could reject a resurrected Christ? What godless humanism makes sense in light of the resurrection? Mull that over for a while, and if you are, in fact, a person of true reason, you will not need to read this book, for you will have the main message. Christ is the objective reality! He is life! Why do we waste time with so many empty words and useless arguments favoring a world without him? It is nonsensical and very deadly to do so.

One might argue that in apparent contrast to what I am saying, organized and institutional religion is demonstrably very dangerous as it seems to be at the heart of many a deadly war. But the reason that religion has caused so much bloodshed is that the eternal destination of our souls is something for which we should be willing to fight! We should be more inclined to fight for our religion than our country, for that would be more rational. Our ancestors knew this well. Tell me I must sell my soul and reject my Catholic religion for atheism or a blasphemous one-world spirituality, and I am ready to fight! I want to go to heaven and have no intention of letting you stop me. On this matter, I agree with G.K. Chesterton that religious war, though undesirable, is far more rational than wars between nations:

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Listen to me discuss this chapter on the Dove and Rose podcast.

I had no idea growing up as a Christian-thinking, mainstream, popular young man in Oklahoma in the 1960s and 1970s that I would end up living a life that runs so absolutely obtusely with American culture. But that is what happened, and I am writing to tell you how it all came about. Really, I think that the modern culture is more the one to have changed, with a climax in the 1960s, to run obtusely with a formerly Christian-oriented society. The thought never crossed my mind as a youth that my country and the civilization from which it was born would detour with hyper-space speed to embrace the cold, secularist, anti-Christian culture it sadly glories in today. I made a turn, but it was in the opposite direction toward a dogmatic religion so often despised today by the secular world, called Roman Catholicism. I was called to it by people outside of my circle of childhood friends and acquaintances, outside of time and space now, whom we call saints. I did not come to it on my own merit. What these heavenly friends showed me brought me peacefully to freedom as a whole person with authentic faith, true reason, and a sense of unity through Catholic tradition. They opened the gateway to a new spiritual milieu, that of ancient Christendom, whose high point was in the Middle Ages. My journey to the edifying high lands and clear air of Christendom through the wholeness of the Catholic faith, reason, and tradition is what my book is about.

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Forward to Journey to Christendom - The Freedom Dance.

Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans and Supreme Commander of the French Army, is a young woman, only seventeen years of age. She is the youngest person in history to hold supreme command of a nation’s military[1]. Joan prepares her devoted troops to assault the English stronghold in Jargeau on her campaign to win northern France back from English occupation. Victory will clear the way for the crowning of Charles VII in Reims as the legitimate King of France. Joan is acting in obedience to the will of God as commanded by her voices from heaven. St. Michael the Archangel communicated the earliest of these heavenly messages during her childhood.

Devoted Captain La Hire wishes to clear up the muddled heads of a few captains in Joan's army, who, being soft, cowardly souls, desire to avoid a direct confrontation with the powerful English army. Against Joan's wishes, they want to sit and starve the English out in a lengthy siege. Let us sit quietly for a moment and listen, feel, and see with the eyes of our souls as La Hire explodes on his peers to tidy up this little misunderstanding about who Joan of Arc is and exactly what her mission is. They need to understand how the landscape of war has changed. Please sit by the side and observe as he throws his helmet, crashing against the wall, maybe close by you, before he speaks. And think about the Church in today's world. Conversely, think about the mighty strongholds that evil holds – about the battle we have before us to free souls from tyranny and pray that God will send us a Joan of Arc! Listen to him now:

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