It's the Fifth of November...

And I direct you here for the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia's coverage thereof.

In other Catholic news, the four "Golden Calves" described here are extremely pertinent to some of the discussions we've been having about Calvert House (and the American Catholic Church in general). I'll just quote the three most pertinent here.

Politicized faith -- "I can look back also and see that my own intellectual pride helped me build a weak foundation for my faith. When I converted to Catholicism in 1992 . . . it was a sincere Christian conversion. But I also took on as my own all the cultural and intellectual trappings of the American Catholic right."

Churchcraft as a hobby -- "I had become the sort of Catholic who thought preoccupying himself with Church controversies and Church politics was the same thing as preoccupying himself with Christ. Me and my friends would go on for hours and hours about what was wrong with the Church, and everything we had to say was true. But if you keep on like that, it will have its effect."

Clericalism -- "Without quite realizing what was happening, I became a Professional Catholic, and got so caught up in identifying with the various controversies in the American church that I began to substitute that for an authentic spirituality. This is nobody's fault but my own. Part of that involved hero-worshipping Pope John Paul II, and despite having a healthy awareness of the sins and failings of various bishops, exaggerating the virtues of bishops my side deemed 'orthodox.'"

From Kevin Knight writing about Rod Dreher's article on his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.