Yes, if we don’t allow it to eclipse our faith & devotions. “…Jesus seems to have directly avoided politics while highlighting that we should “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” All during Jesus’ ministry, the crowds (and even His own disciples) wanted Him to become a political leader and… Read More Is Political Involvement Worth It?
America… “not in any sense Christian” “….she licensed every form of lust with laws to cleanse the stain of scandal she has spread.” — Dante, The Inferno, canto V, 57. Every four years, truths in America can change from one thing to another, even as the center – left’s quest to be the global hegemon… Read More America and Seductive False ‘Liberty’.
“… I discovered a strange coincidence. Among those who survived the carnage of the Great War, two of the 20th century’s greatest religious thinkers had faced one another across exactly the same stretch of the Front on the devastated hillsides to the west of Verdun in June 1916. Both went on to describe their war… Read More Existential Anxiety
by John Daniel Davidson. G. K. Chesterton said, “Some say it is impossible to return to the past; but the truth is that there is now nothing before us but the choice between two paths which both return to the past. We can return to some sort of Catholic fellowship, or we can return to… Read More Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come
Many hope Donald Trump has brought new hope and that he can avoid both anarchy and tyranny. When John Adams wrote, “A republic is a government of laws, not arbitrary rule” he very likely could not even conceive of the constantly evolving laws we know too well today, laws that evolve substantially, essentially, from one… Read More In the West today, there has been no stable law.
Extra Ecclesiam nulla Salus Dear Dr… Thank you very much for the revised version of your article on the theological understanding of the efficacy of the “baptisms” of desire and blood* for salvation [absent water baptism]—in certain circumstances. As you’ll see by the enclosed letter which I wrote to a friend, I am on the… Read More On Fr. Leonard Feeney
“Pope Leo XIII to the Archbishops and Bishops of the United States, and dated Jan. 6, 1895. “For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation(1), protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act… Read More Leo XIII on American Church – State Accomodation
America as true religion, the real, syncretist light of the world, and “city set on a hill” for all peoples, “endlessly reforming,” and to live and die for. The Hillsdale College professor Richard Gamble teaches a class on “civic faith,” and how American nationalism incorporated religious elements and symbolism during the Cold War. Richard M.… Read More American Civil Religion. A C-Span presentation.
From the December 2024 New Oxford Review symposium Catholics and Political Life. 1. It is hard for me to understand how a nation can be an experiment. Such a notion presupposes that the United States is not actually a nation but an idea, something that underlies our many attempts, from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush,… Read More Thomas Storck on the American Experiment
Caveat Emptor. Here are the credentials of the undiscerning, crazed, know-it-alls who tore into our family and doubtless many others, as previously noted, proving again that a little knowledge of essential first principles is a dangerous thing Alex Jones and “Dr.” Rebecca Carley. New York State Revokes Rebecca Carley’s Medical License In 2004, New York… Read More American Exceptionalism. Alex Jones, “Dr.” Rebecca Carley.
First Things Magazine. The last few weeks have offered some encouragement for the pro-life cause. Florida, South Dakota, and Nebraska rejected pro-abortion ballot measures, the first such victories since Dobbs v. Jackson—a watershed moment worth celebrating. Moreover, Kamala Harris’s resounding defeat, after essentially running on abortion, offers considerable hope for pro-life politics. Yet despite this, the… Read More The Most Dangerous Moment For the U.S. Pro-Life Movement
Roberto de Mattei. “In the Gospels, Jesus makes use of many metaphors to describe the Church He founded. One of the most fitting is the image of the boat threatened by the tempest (Matt. 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; Luke 8:22–25). This image was often used by the Church Fathers and saints, who spoke of the Church… Read More The “true reform” that the Church needed in the 20th century
“Sexual expression, whether visual or written,” he speciously says, “can be a legitimate form of artistic expression,” proving he’s no better or more conservative than the rest of them, despite how giddy with pride he makes many conservatives feel, especially those who wrap their egoism in blockbuster podcasts touting American Patriotism and righteousness. Even Catholic… Read More Elon Musk’s X Deploys American “Liberty” for More Sex
“… the political fantasies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau have a great deal to answer for. For two centuries, his sentimentalizing utopian rhetoric has provided despots of all description with a means of pursuing conformity while praising freedom. It is a neat trick. Words like “freedom” and “virtue” were ever on Rousseau’s lips. But freedom for him… Read More Jean-Jacques Rosseau and the Antinomian Principle
81% of Enlightenment Americans approve. Divorce in America Gets a glow Up.Axios. Jan 27, 2024. Divorce has become a major life milestone replete with specialized parties, large support networks and a whole industry ready to capitalize on the big change — just like weddings. Why it matters: Cultural attitudes toward ending a marriage have become… Read More Divorce in America Gets a Glow Up
FBI whistleblowers say pro-life groups, Catholics and others were ‘target of the government‘ “The FBI targeted pro-life groups, Catholics, and parents attending school board meetings with investigations in an effort to “inflate” the sense that they were a domestic terrorism threat, according to new whistleblower reports. “House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, detailed the reports in a… Read More News Conference on FBI Malfeasance. FBI Whistlerblowers Come Forward
David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way” “The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of… Read More Videodrome. When the Seven Deadly Sins of Excess Morphed Into “Progress”
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. April 3. “My heart hath expected reproach and misery: And I looked for one who would grieve together with me, but there was none:And I searched for one who would comfort me, and I found none:And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst, they gave me vinegar… Read More Abp. Viganò: Passion of the Church No Less Serious Than Our Lord’s Passion
In the time of Noah they laughed at him, but in a time when Creation, the Natural Law and gender itself, is being globally attacked as “hate”… Be it Near or Still a Ways Off, the Second Coming of the Lord & the Last Judgment By Fr. Wm. Saunders Will the last judgment occur at… Read More “We must stay awake and keep watch”
Updated. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s new book, To Change The Church: Pope Francis And The Future of Catholicism … is an urgent, compelling work of popular religious journalism. Douthat reads the signs of these anxious times with acute clarity and far-seeing vision. This book is must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of… Read More Revisiting the 2018 Dreher / Douthat Interview: the Great Gamble of Francis.
Jason M. Morgan writes in the October 2022 New Oxford Review (“When the Secular Saints Go Marxing In”) “Fox News is not conservative. It is, in fact, much less conservative than Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), leaders of the Frankfurt School.“ “Alexander Riley, in a review of Mark Levin’s recent bestseller American Marxism, charges… Read More Conservative Foxes?
Opinion. Is International Law True Law?27th Sept. 2021. Lawteacher.net. Western nations drag other nations before International courts but often refuse to be judged there themselves. Is this just? Just what is International Law? And a discussion of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution . International Law. “Despite the fact that international law is the… Read More Is International Law True Law?
Thomas Merton on Moral Chaos, and “the worst insanity” (below). Thomas Merton: Nuclear Weapons and Sanity: “The generals and fighters on both sides, in World War II, the ones who carried out the total destruction of entire cities, these were the sane ones. Those who have invented and developed atomic bombs, thermonuclear bombs, missiles; who… Read More Tucker Carlson and Thomas Merton on the Nuclear Option
Thomas Storck | New Oxford Review A specter is haunting the Catholic world — the specter of integralism. The most opposed groups — both Catholic conservatives and Catholic liberals, as well as some less informed Catholic traditionalists — unite in opposition to and even fear of it. But what, exactly, is integralism, and what can be… Read More What Is Integralism?
Cardinal Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII and John XXIII, wrote in 1947: “The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after. Innocent… Read More “No Conceivable…Justification”. Aerial warfare’s “dreadful weapons”.
Catholic Critique 