James M. Patterson, April 2020First Things Magazine C-Span: The important lecture of Thomas Reeves on America’s Bishop (including an the account of his many sufferings and persecutions). Watch it here. Fulton J. Sheen is defined in popular imagination by the persona he adopted on Life Is Worth Living, his Emmy-winning television program. During each episode, the… Read More Taking Sheen Seriously
by John Waters 4.29.22.First Things Magazine Elon Musk is typically the object of considerable masculine envy, and so, in the interests of avoiding accusations of green-eye, it would be nice to be able to declare him unequivocally as on the side of the angels. But, for all his legendary space-adventuring, this is by no means clear.… Read More Elon Musk And the Post Humanist Threat — First Things Magazine
“One body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Father of us all” — Eph. 4: 4-6 Every ecclesial community brings its tradition(s) to bear in the exegesis and understanding of Scripture. Even independent Protestant Fundamentalist pastors and larger Protestant denominations employ their traditions [i.e., their received community understanding of texts] as a… Read More Catholicism, Tradition and Protestantism
A Synod “filled with the usual modern technocratic, therapeutic linguistics of faux egalitarian tyranny”. Will the Church still be a “listening” Church in ten years or will the “Spirit” go mute once the Germans have given the final definitive word on the Spirit’s intentions? Larry ChappCatholic World Report April 22, 2022 I am not opposed… Read More The quintessentially modern approach to “synodality” is empty and artificial
This documentary shows only one tragic instance of the proficient use of propaganda in the 20th century. Of course, the Communists did the same, even if a little more clumsily. But what about us today in the 21st century? Western people today live, move and think in a 24×7 media hall of mirrors. George Orwell,… Read More The Propaganda Machines of Yesterday Should Give Us Pause Today
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to… Read More The Image of God in Our Turning Techno-logical Moment
He purchased Twitter, the largest “Public Square” in the entire world. And coterminous with it . Elon Musk is also making implants to link the brain with computers and Smartphones — and very much more. There will be “many applications” in time for all, he insists. Spiritual Derangement, Specious Rationalizations, toying with improving the Imago… Read More Elon Musk? What’s Everybody So Happy About?
Jerry D. Salyer,Crisis Magazine. American conservatism has certainly come a long way since the days of Richard Weaver, the Southern philosopher who identified “contempt for natural order” as the underlying ailment of the modern mind. Back in the 1960s, when he was known and celebrated as a conservative intellectual icon, Weaver saw “the foolish and… Read More Are Women in the Workplace a Good Thing?
It’s not about personalities, he insists. “We have stupid people running our country now” and if we don’t change, he says, “you’re going to have no world.” [Full disclosure: I am Politically Independent. I will vote for Right or Left candidates, or not vote at all, depending on the truth of the issues and the… Read More Trump: Change or “The World is Going to Blow Itself Up”
Excerpted from “Debunking Howard Zinn“: by scholar Mary Grabar. “Howard Zinn rode to fame and fortune on the “untold story” of Christopher Columbus—a shocking tale of severed hands, raped women, and gentle, enslaved people worked to death to slake the white Europeans’ lust for gold. Today, that story is anything but untold. Zinn’s narrative about the… Read More On Howard Zinn and Christopher Columbus
Written in 1948, its truths are more timely than ever. By Carol Robinson, Integrity magazine. Nothing could be more unnatural by way of discovering one’s life work than the current, debasing system of “job-hunting.” … Back of today’s perusal of the want-ad columns, back of today’s dreary trek from employment agency to employment agency, back… Read More Vocation Versus Job Hunting. The Catholic Alternative.
You know you have to read “between the lines” to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to write between the lines. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind… Read More How to Mark a Book By Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?” These words of St. Paul climax his mystical and historical experience of the risen Christwho triumphed over death and all the terrors of death, which, until the resurrection, shadowed every one of man’s hopes, accomplishments, and joys. St. Paul was no dreamer. He… Read More Christ’s Victory Over Death & Post-Modern Despair
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen on the Word of the Cross of Jesus Christ
The Silence of the Tomb. “Today, there is a great silence. The Savior has died. He rests in the tomb. Many hearts were filled with uncontrollable grief and confusion. Was He really gone? Had all their hopes been shattered? These and many other thoughts of despair filled the minds and hearts of so many who loved… Read More Holy Saturday
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen: the Meaning of the Cross of Jesus Christ. By Way of The Cross He Leads Us Through Both Light and Darkness. “Your care for me is greater than all the care I can take of myself. For he who does not cast all his care upon You stands very unsafely. If… Read More The Meaning of the Cross
(CNA). Except for the resurrection on Easter, Holy Thursday is possibly one of the most important, complex, and profound days of celebration in the Catholic Church. Holy Thursday celebrates the institution of the Eucharist as the true body and blood of Jesus Christ and the institution of the sacrament of the priesthood. During the Last… Read More The Significance of Holy Thursday
“Separation of church and state? I can think of a couple of other things I’d like to see separated from the state, or connected with the state in only a slender and indirect fashion. One of them is the school. The other is the home. — Read it all _______ The Irreducible Loneliness of Life… Read More Anthony Esolen on Separation of Home and State
Matt Taibbi writes at his TK News site, “News2Share and Ford Fischer recap the history of “Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising,” or “PAUU,” a group mentioned in this space during anti-abortion demonstrations last December. The group’s director of activism, Lauren Handy, was arrested along with eight other group members in connection with an incident in 2020 when they allegedly blocked access… Read More Progressivist Prolifers on Trial
“Tucked at the end of a hotly debated passage in Lumen Gentium about the Church’s role in salvation comes one sentence that has not received as much attention. What follows the statement that “all the Church’s children” have received their holy Catholic faith not from merit, but from “the special grace of Christ,” is the… Read More The Most Harrowing Text of Vatican II
Homily of Benedict XVI, Palm Sunday, 2006 To understand what occurred on Palm Sunday and to know what it meant not only for that time but for all times, a detail is important, which became for his disciples the key to understand that event when, after Easter, they recalled those tumultuous days with a new… Read More “The Cross Is the Tree of Life” – Benedict XVI
By Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D. O Jesus Crucified, teach me the science of the Cross; make me understand the value of suffering. 1. The Passion of Jesus teaches us in a concrete way that in the Christian life we must be able to accept suffering for the love of God. This is… Read More The Value of Suffering in Christ
It Ain’t Broke, But Let’s Fix It Anyhow June 2004, NOR We picked up a Catholic magazine, and on the cover was one big headline, and it was a striking one: “Was Vatican II a Mistake?” In the background to the headline were a litany of post-Vatican II disasters: “practicing homosexuals in the priesthood,” “pro-abortion… Read More The New Oxford Review Exchange on Whether Vatican II Was Necessary
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or read of people blaming their personal troubles, failures or psychological stresses on “Catholic guilt” in the last 40+ years. It is as though the Church is the great rain cloud ever shadowing the grand Mardi Gras that so many expect life to be. All that… Read More Truth and “Catholic Guilt”
… every worker-bee stuffed into housing pods … Permanent capital is buying up single family housing stock.
“In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as ‘we include… Read More Socialism in Dreams. Updated.
By John Waters 3 . 23 . 20 /First Things Magazine. Recently [2020], while speaking in the Italian city of Bari, Pope Francis mentioned contemporary “populist” politicians—specifically, those who describe recent waves of migrants traveling from Africa to Europe as an “invasion.” “I grow fearful when I hear certain speeches by some leaders of the new… Read More ON LOVING THY NEIGHBOR
by Hilton Kramer A reprinting of Mr. Kramer’s 1976 article published in The New York Times. I. Introduction. “Few among the intellectuals in the Party realized at the time that their mentality was a caricature of the revolutionary spirit; that within the short span of three generations the Communist movement had travelled from the era of… Read More The Blacklist & the Cold War Revisited
Why Were Authorities so Quick to Rule out Arson in the Notre Dame Conflagration? BY Roger Kimball, Apr. 17, 2019 I feel I must hand it to those stalwart souls investigating the devastating conflagration at the Cathedral of Notre Dame… The flames were not quenched at the 12th-century masterpiece of Gothic architecture when the authorities… Read More An Old Flame We Do Not Forget. Notre Dame.
Originally published as (curiously enough) In Defense of Cigarettes. by Matt Labash, National Correspondent | The Weekly Standard, August 08, 2017 Dear Matt, I had this thought that America was more civil when everyone smoked. You learned from an early age that people will do something you don’t like but there wasn’t much you could… Read More A Pipe Dream
John E. Fagan “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart the desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that by knowing and loving God, men and women can come… Read More John Paul II on Faith, Reason and Nihilism
Catholic Critique 