Brian Hanson

[Shane Schaetzel †☧ @ShaneSchaetzel]

👇🏻THIS is the Faith that Catholics profess every, single Sunday. If you want to know what Catholics really believe, in our own words, here it is.👇🏻

1. I believe in one God,
(Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29; Ephesians 4:6; 1 Corinthians 8:6)
2. the Father almighty,
(Matthew 6:9; 2 Corinthians 6:18; Genesis 17:1)
3. maker of heaven and earth,
(Genesis 1:1; Revelation 4:11)
4. of all things visible and invisible.
(Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 11:3; John 1:3)
5. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
(1 Corinthians 8:6; Ephesians 4:5)
6. the Only Begotten Son of God,
(John 3:16; John 1:18)
7. born of the Father before all ages.
(John 1:1-2; Colossians 1:15, 17; Hebrews 1:2-3)
8. God from God, Light from Light,
(John 1:1-5, 8:12; Hebrews 1:3)
9. true God from true God,
(John 1:1; 1 John 5:20; John 20:28)
10. begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
(John 1:14, 18; Hebrews 1:3; Philippians 2:6)
11. through him all things were made.
(John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2)
12. For us men and for our salvation
(1 Timothy 2:4-6; John 3:16-17)
13. he came down from heaven,
(John 3:13, 6:38, 3:31)
14. and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
(Luke 1:35; Matthew 1:18-20)
15. and became man.
(John 1:14; Philippians 2:7-8; Hebrews 2:14)
16. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
(Mark 15:15, 24-25; 1 Corinthians 15:3)
17. he suffered death and was buried,
(Isaiah 53:5-9; Matthew 27:50, 59-60; Romans 5:8)
18. and rose again on the third day
(Matthew 28:1-7; Mark 16:9; 1 Corinthians 15:4)
19. in accordance with the Scriptures.
(Luke 24:25-27, 44-46; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4)
20. He ascended into heaven
(Acts 1:9-11; Luke 24:51)
21. and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
(Mark 16:19; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3)
22. He will come again in glory
(Matthew 25:31; Acts 1:11; 1 Thessalonians 4:16)
23. to judge the living and the dead
(Matthew 25:31-46; 2 Timothy 4:1; Acts 10:42)
24. and his kingdom will have no end.
(Luke 1:33; Hebrews 1:8; Revelation 11:15)
25. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
(2 Corinthians 3:17-18; John 6:63; Acts 2:17-18)
26. who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
(John 15:26; John 16:7, 13-15)
27. who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
(Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14)
28. who has spoken through the prophets.
(2 Peter 1:21; Hebrews 1:1; Acts 28:25)
29. I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
(Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 4:4-6; 5:27; Ephesians 2:20)
30. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
(Ephesians 4:5; Acts 2:38; Titus 3:5)
31. and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
(John 5:28-29; 1 Corinthians 15:20-23; 1 Thessalonians 4:16)
32. and the life of the world to come. Amen.
(Revelation 21:1-4; 2 Peter 3:13; John 14:2-3)

And some Protestant Fundamentalists actually say “Catholics are not Christians.”

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Why does Mary look younger than Jesus in Michelangelo's Pietà?

The answer is one of the most beautiful in art history...

Mary is holding the body of her 33 year old son, but she looks 20. Critics noticed it the moment the sculpture was unveiled in 1499. The mother of a man who has just been crucified would have been in her late forties or early fifties. Michelangelo had carved her as a girl.

His own biographer, Ascanio Condivi, was the one who finally asked him why. The answer Michelangelo gave is preserved in Condivi's Life of Michelangelo and has been repeated for centuries: "Do you not know that chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste? How much more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that might change her body?"

Most modern critics treat this answer as a half-serious deflection. Michelangelo was famous for his sharp tongue and refused to explain himself to people he considered beneath his intellect.

The deeper answer is older, and it lies inside one of the greatest poems ever written. In the final canto of Dante's Paradiso, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux begins his prayer to the Virgin with one of the most extraordinary lines in Italian literature:

"Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio."
"Virgin mother, daughter of your own son."

Michelangelo, who knew Dante by heart, was carving that line into stone. Mary is younger than Jesus because Jesus is older than the universe... because she gave birth to her own creator.

But there is another reading, simpler than either of those, and it is the one I find myself thinking of today. Every mother who has held her child has held them at every age at once. The infant is still inside the toddler. The toddler is still inside the teenager. The young man on her lap, even dead, is also the boy she nursed and the baby she first carried home.

And maybe that's why Michelangelo did not carve Mary as the years had aged her. He carved her as love had kept her: outside of time, outside of grief, holding her son the way she had always held him...

Happy Mother's Day.

-- -- --

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[Catholic Arena @CatholicArena]

Baseball legend Babe Ruth was a Catholic who wrote this letter about Communion, Confession and the Miraculous Medal:

“In December, 1946, I was in French Hospital, New York, facing a serious operation. Paul Carey, one of my oldest and closest friends, was by my bed one night.

- They’re going to operate in the morning, Babe, Paul said. -Don’t you think you ought to put your house in order?

-I didn’t dodge the long, challenging look in his eyes. I knew what he meant. For the first time, I realized that death might strike me out. I nodded, and Paul got up, called in a chaplain, and I made a full confession.

-I’ll return in the morning and give you Holy Communion, the chaplain said, -But you don’t have to fast.

-I’ll fast, I said. I didn’t have even a drop of water.

-As I lay in bed that evening, I thought to myself what a comforting feeling to be free from fear and worries. I now could simply turn them over to God. Later on, my wife brought in a letter from a little kid in Jersey City.

‘Dear Babe,’ he wrote, ‘Everybody in the seventh grade class is pulling and praying for you. I am enclosing a medal, which if you wear will make you better. Your pal—Mike Quinlan. P.S. I know this will be your 61st homer. You’ll hit it.’

-I asked them to pin the Miraculous Medal to my pyjama coat. I’ve worn the medal constantly ever since. I’ll wear it to my grave.”

[T.E. Jentzen @Faithful2Pray]

I’ve read quite a few posts today about going to confession. Some people haven’t gone in a long time, some fear it, some seek out priests other than their home priest… I pray if going to confession still makes you uncomfortable, this short video brings you some peace 🙏🏻

[Sachin Jose @Sachinettiyil]

The cleaning of Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.

Video: Vatican Museums

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@AuronMacintyre Great speech! This is the type of modern statesmanship my ears long to hear.

[ⲡⲓⲗⲉⲱⲛ ⲛ̀ⲧⲉ ⲡⲓⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ @LionOf_Christ]

The process of creating the mosaic of Christ Pantocrator - from vision to sacred form 🙏🏻

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@MindDynamo True

[Eric Schwalm @Schwalm5132]

As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.

What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t “protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.

Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction—or worse.

This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace “ICE agents” with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.

The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers—complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal—you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.

I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night.

Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war.

We either recognize what we’re actually looking at—or we pretend it’s still just “activism” until the structures harden and spread.

Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn’t January 2026 politics anymore.
It’s phase one of something we’ve spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.

[DK🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸 @1Nicdar]

130 schools said no.
He led the losingest program in college football history to a national championship anyway.
Fernando Mendoza was a 2-star recruit from Miami.

He tried to walk on at his hometown school. They passed.
So did FIU.
So did FAU.
So did everyone else.

At 17, he was sitting in his bedroom, crying over a silent recruiting inbox—after driving to 18 camps with his dad and sending highlights to more than 100 programs.
Not one FBS offer.
His only option? Yale. No scholarship. No NFL path.

Everyone told him to be “realistic.”
“Know your place.”
“Be grateful.”
He didn’t listen.
Because Mendoza understood something most people miss:
The worst outcome isn’t failing.
It’s never getting the chance to try.

Two weeks before signing day in 2022, his phone rang.
Cal needed a body. One offer. Out of 134 schools.
He took it.
He arrived as the third-string quarterback.
Spent a year on the scout team.
Lost his first four starts.
Got sacked 41 times behind a broken offensive line.

Still got up. Every time.
Then Cal brought in a transfer instead of building around him.
So Mendoza left the only school that had ever said yes.
He transferred to Indiana—the losingest program in college football history.

People laughed.
“Career suicide.”
“Graveyard program.”
“Nobody wins there.”
One coach told him something different:
“I’m going to make you the best Fernando Mendoza possible.”
That was enough.
Mendoza wasn’t just playing for football.
His mother has battled multiple sclerosis for 18 years.

Before every snap, he thought of her.
“My mother is my why.”
Indiana went 16–0.
Beat six Top-10 teams.
Won their first Big Ten title since 1945.
Mendoza threw 41 touchdowns.
Won the Heisman—first in school history.
First Cuban-American to ever do it.

Then came the title game.
Miami. Near his hometown.
Fourth-and-4. Season on the line.
Quarterback draw.
The kid 134 schools rejected spun through defenders and dove into the end zone.

Game over.
Indiana—national champions.
The losingest program became the best team in America.
All because a 17-year-old refused to believe “no” was the end.

Rankings don’t decide your ceiling.
Gatekeepers don’t write your ending.
Being overlooked isn’t a verdict—it’s a starting point.

Sometimes all you need is one shot…
and the courage to bet on yourself when nobody else will.
Don’t quit.

Credit: Barclay Mullins

[Jon Gruden @BarstoolGruden]

That's how you sing the national anthem!

[Catholic Manhood ❤️‍🔥 @bethecreed]

https://t.co/WImj3k2reD

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@SwPrayer Amen

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@SwPrayer Amen!

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@SwPrayer Amen

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@SwPrayer Amen

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@SwPrayer Amen

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@SwPrayer Amen

[𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 ♱🇻🇦 @BillArnoldTeach]

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝘁𝘁 𝗛𝗮𝗵𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁.
It made him Catholic.

When Scripture is read without fear of where it leads,
it doesn’t splinter Christianity.
It explains it.

Watch closely. This is how conversions actually happen. 👀✝️

@DrScottHahn

[Brian Hanson @BrianHansonArch]

@SwPrayer Amen