Jan 5, 2026 2:43 PM EST WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. took the unprecedented step Monday of dropping the number of vaccines it recommends for every child — leaving other immunizations, such as flu shots, open to families to choose but without clear guidance. Officials said the overhaul to the federal vaccine schedule won’t result… Read More Trump administration cuts number of vaccines it recommends for every child
Anett Fodor tells the story ofBeethoven, Liszt and the Little Broadwood. | The London piano manufacturer, Thomas Broadwood, visited Ludwig van Beethoven when he was staying in Vienna. He realised immediately that the Master was suffering from impaired hearing. Broadwood was a great admirer of Beethoven and a few months later, he gave him a… Read More Exceptional Provenance
Updated. Tucker Carlson liked Moscow’s clean streets and low crime rate. But he did not confront Putin’s abuses of power as alleged by Western powers. “Vladimir Putin is a thug and a murderer and a killer and a KGB agent,” Senator John McCain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Dec. 11, 2016. Putin, who… Read More A Short List of Alleged Crimes of Vladimir Putin
By Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. | ” … dictators are not the creators of the world’s evil; they are its creatures; they are only boils on the surface of the world’s skin; they come to the surface because there is bad blood beneath. It will do no good to puncture the boils, if we leave… Read More The Wars and the Revolution
Updated. The U.S. struck Venezuela primarily to capture President Nicolás Maduro, who has been accused of drug trafficking and leading a corrupt regime. This military action was part of a broader strategy to address the perceived threat posed by Maduro’s government and to support opposition efforts in Venezuela. More via CNA / NCRegister / C-Span.… Read More U.S. Strikes Venezuela. Updated.
Philip Norman in his book SHOUT’ The Beatles in Their Generation, writes, “If we are honest we must accept the extent to which the heady new freedoms of youth in the sixties paved the way for the frightening, ungovernable world we see about us today. From the happy high of pot and pills and the… Read More The Beatles, the Sixties and Us
Note: the objective in presenting this data is not to discourage but so that a good part of the clergy will finally get real and begin helping their people to address these matters from the pulpits and in homes regularly, because adults and children are hurting out here. Otherwise we must all, from Popes to… Read More Chat GPT: Heterosexual Marriages Continue General Decline. The Warning of the Prophets.
“Was Jesus really born in Bethlehem, or did the gospel writers “invent” the story to fit prophecy? Did a Roman census ever force people to travel back to their ancestral towns? And what about Herod’s massacre of the innocents – pure theology, or plausible history? Tom Wright and Mike Bird respond here to challenges raised… Read More N.T. Wright Replies to Historian Tom Holland Regarding N.T. Nativity Accounts
“This memory seems a lifetime ago, and yet I knew him best not in a crowd, but in the classroom. We read his theological works in graduate school, and through them, he opened the horizon of my heart to Jesus. Just this past summer, I revisited his life through his memoirs… best not in a… Read More Reflecting on Pope Benedict XVI: Lessons from His Life and Faith
“Ah, she looks like snow – I want to put her in a broadway show–Ah she’ll dance and dine–Like a lucifer she’ll always shine… I feel like letting go….” —Letting Go, Venus and Mars album. Paul McCartney SH: Were some of The individual Beatles into astrology? If so, which ones and why? Tin Man Grok A.I.… Read More A.I. Hedges on The Beatles and Astrology. A “Conversation” With Tin Man.
Note / SH: Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Harold Laski were prominent members of the Fabian Society, which aimed to promote socialism, abortion and euthanasia through gradual reform rather than revolution. They were influential intellectuals in the early 20th century, contributing significantly to political and cultural discussions of their time. Their legacy impacts us… Read More The Great Liberal Death Wish. Malcolm Muggeridge.
Anne Bancroft was a convert to Judaism in 1964. She played an unforgettable central role as Mary Magdalen. Rod Steiger, Jewish, the American actor had Jewish ancestry on his father’s side and was connected to Jewish cultural roots. He likewise played an unforgettable central role as Pontius Pilate in the series starring Robert Powell (who… Read More Three Jewish Actors Who Played Prominent Roles in the 1977 Series Jesus of Nazareth
By Father Gabriel of St Mary Magalene, 1953. O Lord, increase my confidence in Your help and grant that in this confidence, I may always find courage to begin again. What most distresses souls of good will who are seriously trying to live a spiritual life, is to find themselves falling so many times, despite… Read More The Courage To Begin Yet Again
Note: To what follows I would add the cruel, ridiculous and vicious use of torture during the Medieval period which in retrospect shockingly contradicted the very essence of the Gospel. Exile was not an option to stop treason in its tracks? Cromwell later made a “good” job of it with the Irish. One can only… Read More The Apologies of Pope John Paul II. The Ordeal.
21 The bread of the needy is the life of the poor; whoever deprives them of it is a man of blood. 22 To take away a neighbor’s living is to murder him; to deprive an employee of his wages is to shed blood. — Sirach 34:21,22, rsv Amazon to Replace 600,000 U.S. Workers With Robots… Read More Artificial Intelligence and The Poor.
“…the most unsettling question raised by [the Incarnation] is not “What if Christ had not come?” but “What if He has come, and we live as though He has not?” Christmas exposes this paradox with uncomfortable precision. We sing the hymns, quote the promises, and decorate our sanctuaries, yet it is possible to live functionally as if Emmanuel were… Read More A Most Unsettling Question
Bishop Robert Barron at Westminster Cathedral, London. 2023. Bishop Robert Barron’s whirlwind missionary journey to London. He spoke to members of Parliament; gave a homily in Westminster Cathedral; spoke with award-winning historian, author, and broadcaster Tom Holland; and more. On February 6, 2023, Bishop Robert Barron gave an address at the Houses of Parliament for… Read More Jesus, the Torah, And Freedom
“We went [to Bethlehem] early in the day, and I sat by myself in the cave underneath the Church of the Nativity where Christ is supposed to have been born… Overhead are numerous silver and bronze lamps, and the stone walls are covered with silk and damask, now mostly threadbare. Seated there in the half-light,… Read More Malcolm Muggeridge in the Holy Land; and “snatching fantasy from the jaws of truth”
“It is vanity to desire a long life, and to have little care for a good life.” — Thomas a Kempis. Tolkien mourned the decline of the Shire* i.e., …the real shire of his youth which he ever remembered and sought to salvage to the extent that he could. The Shire: the simplicity and beauty… Read More Tolkien’s Battle for the Shire. And for Us All.
Did WW1 really come to a halt for one day only, and the soldiers meet for friendly exchanges? How did the authorities react to the truce, and did they try to stop it happening again? And did they really play football? Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland take a close look at the story which involved… Read More Did They Really Play Football?
Updated: “As the DOJ releases the largest batch of files yet on the federal investigation into Epstein, survivors have condemned the Department of Justice for not complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required all files to be released last Friday. “I mean, that was the first indication of the contemptuous, cavalier attitude that… Read More Trump Appears Multiple Times in Epstein Files
by Ron Paul | Dec 22, 2025 Late last week, Congress passed and President Trump signed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The bill marks the first time the US military budget officially passed the one trillion dollar mark. Of course, when you add in other military-related spending such as interest on the debt, veterans’ affairs, and… Read More Opinion. A Christmas Gift to the War Machine. Ron Paul.
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him: or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels: thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast subjected all things under his feet”—Heb 2:5-7… Read More The Image of God vs. the Myths.
In the traditional rite, Christmastide lasts for 40 days to correspond with the 40 days of Lent, and the 40 days from Easter to Ascension Thursday. Christmastide ends on February 2, the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also called Candlemas Day. On this day, the faithful take candles that they will use throughout the… Read More Christmastide: The Christmas Season: Dec 24 to Feb 2
C.S. Lewis on ‘Brutal’ Truths About Family “Isn’t it a pity?Isn’t it a shame?How we break each other’s heartsAnd cause each other pain?How we take each other’s loveWithout thinking anymoreForgetting to give backIsn’t it a pity? Some things take so longBut how do I explainWhen not too many peopleCan see we’re all the same?And because… Read More Christmas In A Time of Unprecedented Family Stresses.
While every age is a mixture of blessings and hardships, good ideas or actions and bad, the Middle Ages were once depicted as especially dark. But modern scholarship has long known that is a very superficial judgment. + 25 myths about the Middle Ages You Likely Thought Were True (YouTube) For example, Farming has always… Read More Those Awful Middle Ages
“We ought not to ask who is speaking, but mark what is said.”— The Imitation of Christ Bk.1.V. We find truths everywhere when we have ears to hear and eyes to see. Persons of good will abound. And I must be grateful for them, whether Christian or not. No one is so bereft of Truth… Read More Gathering Up Fruits Wherever We Find Them
The chilling idea that seemingly does not die… From an award-winning historian, a new global history of Communism “When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia may no longer be Communist, Communism and sympathy for Communist… Read More The Rise & Fall (& Rise Again) of Communism
Dr. Larry Chapp and Dr. David Deane “Everyone knows there is a “crisis” in the Catholic Church and in the world around us. Some say it is capitalism gone wild. Others say it is the decay of tradition, family, and objective truth. Still others say it is the rise of radical, reactionary conservatism. Though all… Read More Nietzsche and the Crisis in the Church and World
Confessions of an Apostate. By Christopher Derrick. | The New Oxford Review.November 1985. “The world has quite enough chemists, but it hasn’t got nearly enough good Catholic writers. You write well for your age: I want you to continue Chesterton’s work to the best of your ability.” –Christopher Derrick. I have a story to tell you,… Read More A Chestertonian Adrift in an Ideological World
American Idol: On Nietzsche in America. The Nation. Why early twentieth-century Americans—from anarchists to crazed Baptist ministers—fell for the Do It Thyself philosophy of Nietzsche. [Note: What follows here I think is a true enough interpretation of what is, in no small part, the general American philosophical context, which explains our interminable evolution of so-called… Read More American Idol: On Nietzsche in America
… you are almost certainly a literate person with an interest in history. And this man was a lot more than brilliant and merely batschlit crazy (though he was very likely that, since he certifiably popped most of his buttons between the World Wars of the last century). He was also extremely influential, impacting for… Read More If you know who this is…
“…Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their… Read More On the Doctrine of the Modernists. Pope St. Pius X – 1907
The old world had plenty of sins which have been resolved through repentance. Did Candace Owens forget the roles lots of individual Catholics and Protestants and Muslims played in the slave trade? It was a sin in need of repentance, and today that institution no longer exists in the West. This is the tunnel vision… Read More Tunnel Vision Polemics. Candace.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio drops major updates in his year-end press conference on U.S. foreign policy breakthroughs! From progress in Ukraine peace talks and Gaza ceasefire efforts to strengthening Indo-Pacific alliances against China – discover how the Trump administration is asserting American strength globally. Is this the start of real change in these hotspots?… Read More Rubio: Previous Foreign Policy & Institutions Built in a World Which No Longer Exists
An Urgent discussion. “They used Christian churches as target practice” Telegraph UK. “King Charles has spoken out in support of persecuted Christians around the world after attending a service at Westminster Abbey dedicated to those facing violence and discrimination for their faith. The King said his thoughts were with people “in areas where it is… Read More From Nigeria to the Middle East Increasing Persecution of Christians.
I don’t mean to spoil the party but we appear to be living in eschatological times. Let those who wish to laugh do so. But is it not a Sign of the Times, as in the days of Noah, when the forces of Hell are unleashed so totally on the Christian Faith, particularly endless abortion, … Read More A New World Order. Recall…
In Charles Dickens’ famous novel, Bleak House, there is an unforgettable character called Mrs. Jellyby. And if she was not such an archetype for certain real types of persons, she would be almost comical. Mrs. Jellyby is obsessed with what Dickens coined “telescopic philanthropy,” that is an alleged love for humanity but always at long… Read More Love for Humanity. Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby, Social Justice Warrior
“We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power… Read More Thomas Merton on the Apocalypse, the Inn With No Room
“The elusive butterfly of happiness has been chased by humanity since the beginning of time. Sages have said that happiness is indeed like a butterfly —try to catch it and it flees; sit quietly and it will light on your shoulder. . . The good news is that by grace we have the power to… Read More The Elusive Butterfly
Catholic Critique 