Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on Reasons for Vatican II

Even if it may have caused more problems than it solved, Vatican II for the future Pope was in no small part about reintegrating loose and undisciplined elements of immutable Catholic doctrine with Christological and Eucharistic teaching. George Weigel writes, “In the years immediately after the Council, Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI), who… Read More Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on Reasons for Vatican II

Tucker Carlson and Thomas Merton on the Nuclear Option

Ominous Nuclear Aggression. Thomas Merton on Moral Chaos, and “the worst insanity”. 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,… Read More Tucker Carlson and Thomas Merton on the Nuclear Option

Bishop Sheen, Rosie the Riveter, and the War’s Greatest Casualty

Thomas Reeves, the author of “America’s Bishop,” a biography of Fulton J. Sheen, tells of Sheen’s concerns regarding what he saw as the accelerated secularization occuring during WWII. Reeves mentions in particular the bishop’s 1944 book Seven Pillars of Peace where the subject is treated. This secularization involved the breakdown of the family which Sheen… Read More Bishop Sheen, Rosie the Riveter, and the War’s Greatest Casualty

George Weigel on The Last Laugh of Alfredo Ottaviani

First Things. Despite his humble origins as a baker’s son from Trastevere, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, longtime curial head of the Holy Office (“successor to the Inquisition,” in journalese) and scourge of the nouvelle théologie of the 1950s, was a formidable figure in pre-conciliar Catholicism. Ottaviani’s approach to theology was neatly summarized in the Latin motto of his… Read More George Weigel on The Last Laugh of Alfredo Ottaviani

Reason and The Law of Non-Contradiction.

” a thing cannot be and not be at the same time”— St. Thomas (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, chap. 84) “…reason’s first principle is the principle of contradiction. He who denies this principle affirms a self-destructive sentence. To deny this principle is to annihilate language, is to destroy all substance, all distinction between things, all… Read More Reason and The Law of Non-Contradiction.