“Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal”—Pope John Paul II Fides et Ratio,” meaning “Faith and Reason,” is an encyclical by Pope John Paul II published on September 14, 1998. It emphasizes the essential relationship between faith and… Read More Encyclical Letter ‘Faith and Reason’. Pope John Paul II.
And why our Faith tells us we “cannot do evil that good may come“. Fox News: “From Human to Robot and Everything in Between …a subdermal microchip in one’s hand to a tiny robot learning to imagine itself and its own purpose to a tiny microprocessor implanted directly on one’s brain, the line between man,… Read More “Bio-hacking humans: implanting chips in hands and heads”
“Today the first and perhaps the only duty of the philosopher is to defend man against himself: to defend man against that extraordinary temptation toward inhumanity to which—almost without being aware of it—so many human beings today have yielded.” —- Gabriel Marcel Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan… Read More Thomas Merton on Creation: The Rain is Not for Sale
To be a Roman Catholic one must believe in miracles. This in itself has been a stumbling block to many. And yet the believer knows that one need only find the earth beneath one’s feet and all other genuine miracles become mere footnotes. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, originally a student of the intractable rationalist, Bertrand… Read More Wittgenstein and Existence.
“The word “God” exists. Thus we return to the beginning, to the simple fact that in the universe of words with which we build our world and without which even the so-called facts do not exist for us, the word “God”, too, occurs. Even for the atheists, even for those who say: God is dead,… Read More Karl Rahner* on the Word “God”
By Gary Potter. The subject here is a movie, one I think could be the most important made in my lifetime, at least in terms of cinema’s future. Its importance doesn’t make it a favorite nor even that I have especially enjoyed seeing it. Do we “enjoy” seeing, say, Shakespeare’s Richard III? A particular production… Read More Terrance Malick’s “The Tree of Life”
Understanding the Epistemological Foundations of Scientific Totalitarianism. by Phillip D. Collins. Scientific totalitarianism is certainly not a new topic in the halls of political science and history. Given its bloody legacy of democide (i.e., state-sanctioned genocide, mass murder, and politicide) and its prolific spread throughout the world, scientific totalitarianism remains a preoccupying sociopolitical phenomenon of… Read More The Faustian Face of Modern Science
The famous Thomist Etienne Gilson wrote to Henri de Lubac, “The ravages he wrought, which I have witnessed, are horrifying.” George Sim Johnston writes, “Teilhard concocted from evolutionary theory a kind of process theology that, among other things, implicitly denies the doctrine of original sin. Pope Pius XII once asked the great French thelogican Etienne… Read More The Teilhardian Vapor
Note: Mary Daly died in January 2010. It is good to be tolerant, even of incoherent things, we are told today. The devil himself ought to be given a seat at the table. So the courts have ruled. But that can’t stop us from noticing that Mary Daly represents the meltdown of the dissident transgressive… Read More Mary Daly: The Witch of Boston College
Josef Pieper, the renowned Thomist, in his 1953 study, The Silence of St. Thomas (St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Indiana) reminds theologians and students of St. Thomas Aquinas that while Pope Pius XI in his 1923 Encyclical Studiorum Ducem insisted that the Angelic Doctor is to be esteemed by all Schools of Theology, he also reminded all… Read More St. Thomas Aquinas and the “Life-blood of Catholic Theology”
When Scripture’s creation-based, anthropocentric revelation is rejected, and an evolutionary animal continuum (from amoeba to man) is presupposed as the only reality, then human beings begin taking their cues for behavior from the animal-insect world. This rationalization has reached tragically absurd levels today as witness postmodernist writer Steven Shaviro’s longing for the sexual autonomy of… Read More From Creation and Family to the Petri Dish
Quoting Aquinas, Burke and John Fortescue, former member of Parliament (2010-2024) Jacob Rees-Mog recalls the timeless principles of traditional government versus the horrific footprints of modern internationalism. This speech was given at the London National Conservatism Conference on May 15, 2023. In it he lambasted so-called Conservatives and “Lefties” who advocate anti-family policies and reckless… Read More National vs. International Governance
What is Natural Law? The idea of natural law holds that all people, whatever their ethnicity, culture, or religion, can know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. The idea, for example, of the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—is understood as a principle of moral conduct… Read More The Essential Natural Law. Samuel Gregg.
Has Vance betrayed his his Pro-Life Principles? I certainly don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but obviously this is no small matter for Catholics. One cannot play Pontius Pilate to the crowds and hedge ones bets when it comes to the unborn, not if one wishes to have clean hands. J.D. Vance needs to… Read More J.D. Vance, the RNC, and the Abortion Pill
On overcoming. St. Augustine teaches, “When the unlawful pleasure of concupiscence tempts you, fight, resist, do not consent; and the saying is fulfilled, Go not after thy desires.” Still further, he says elsewhere that of two persons who have the same temptation to impurity, it sometimes happens that one consents to it and the other… Read More Predominant Sin of Our Times
Attacking the prevenient natural order, finitude itself, gender theory is ground zero. Dr. Margaret McCarthy, interviewed by Dr. Larry Chapp here, “received her doctoral degree in theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute at the Lateran University in Rome (1994), with a dissertation on the contemporary theology of predestination. Since then, her teaching and writing… Read More Gender Theory: “The Atomic Bomb of Nihilism”
Be it near or still a ways off, Jesus the Lord said regarding the last times, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there… Read More Does God send wars as a punishment for sin?
Though they take the credit, feminists, radical or otherwise, actually had little to do with the progress of women in the latter half of this century. The trends that would of themselves produce today’s results were in place at least by the early 1960s. Once such things as the right to vote and the right… Read More Remaking Human Beings. Robert Bork.
Truth does not change with the changes in political parties, current philosophies or trends. ” 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… Read More Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange on Reason and The Law of Non-Contradiction.
Also, Dr Ralph Martin on the same. 1255 For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents’ help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized. As Pope St. John Paul II beautifully put it in his theology of the body, “the body… Read More National Catholic Register on Recent Vatican Statements on Baptism
It was Aldous Huxley who, very early, saw sexual decadence combining commercial interests with political manipulation in the emerging media. And he knew what that would mean for a culture. “Aldous Huxley in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World depicts a culture in which pleasure is compulsory and engineered to eliminate intellectual challenge and to… Read More Aldous Huxley, Sex, and Corporate Psychological Manipulation
As a Christian I’ll eagerly go as far “Left” as seeking to meet the needs of a person’s physical hunger, injury or homelessness; but never so far “Left” as approving absolute “equality” (so-called “equity” today!) in wages; or approving promiscuous immigration, or the supposedly “equitable” availability of abortion, automobiles, personal video games, pornography, sex changes,… Read More Going Left
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” — Bhagavad Gita, Robert Oppenheimer “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.” — JFK, American University, 1963 “The dropping of the… Read More Oppenheimer and The End of Time.
“The question of gender—who we are as men and women—has never been more pressing, or more misunderstood. Weaving personal experience with expert knowledge, Dr. Abigail Favale provides an in-depth yet accessible account of the gender paradigm: a framework for understanding reality and identity that has recently risen to prominence. Favale traces the genealogy of gender to its… Read More Abigail Favale on the Genesis of Gender
Updated. Nancy Pelosi vowed to reverse the end of Roe v. Wade ‘one way or another’ By Anders Hagstrom | Fox News Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urged her fellow Democrats to put the abortion issue front and center in their 2024 campaigns, arguing Republicans will lose big on the issue across the country. Pelosi appeared… Read More Pelosi says abortion is Democrats’ ticket to victory in 2024, accuses Republicans of ‘disrespect for women’
Human Beings have certain rights, moral values, and responsibilities that are inherent in human nature. Natural law teaching is based on the idea that natural laws are universal concepts and are not based on any culture or customs. Still, it is a way society acts naturally and inherently as human beings. “Few ideas have been… Read More The Essential Natural Law. Dr. Samuel Gregg.
Mary Harrington: “The era began in the mid-twentieth century, with a biomedical innovation that radically changed what it is to be a human, in the human social order: reproductive technology. The Pill was the first transhumanist technology: it set out not to fix something that was wrong with ‘normal’ human physiology — in the ameliorative… Read More The Pill was the first transhumanist technology.
“One of the most famous and most evil techniques of Maoist Marxism is the “struggle session” (dòuzhēng, 鬥爭; or pīpàn dòuzhēng, 批判鬥爭, “critical struggle”; or sometimes just pīdòu, 批鬥; also called “denunciation” sessions). “They were made famous during Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but they were utilized in the Chinese thought-reform (xǐnǎo, 洗脑, lit. “wash brain”… Read More Surviving A Modern “Struggle Session”. James Lindsay.
From the Imaginative Conservative In acknowledgement of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I wish to raise the question, based on Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” as to when, if ever, as well as to what extent, it is appropriate to defy the rule of law. On The Imaginative Conservative Winston Elliott raised the question “When is a… Read More Martin Luther King and the Rule of Law
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”
You are creating a new world, soldier!Isn’t that what you signed up to do,to kill and die for, soldier? You will…ridicule enemy cultureswreck economiesmock traditionsterrorize their“moral absolutes” You willcut off their ballsthrow their titsinto cold tin basinsturn boys into girlsgirls into boysmothers into MILFSfathers into jokeschurches into effeminate echoschildren into pin-ups! You will teach themthat… Read More You Will Bring Liberation, Soldier!
“… A year earlier, Jeffries called pro-life Texans a “bunch of yahoos” for passing a ban on abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable. Various state and national polls have shown about half of all Americans support heartbeat laws. And new research indicates the law has saved as many as 10,000 unborn babies’ lives so far. Democrat leaders like Jeffries want to… Read More House Democrats Elect Abortion Activist Hakeem Jeffries as New Leader, Replacing Nancy Pelosi
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.
And why our Faith tells us we “cannot do evil that good may come“. Fox News: “From Human to Robot and Everything in Between …a subdermal microchip in one’s hand to a tiny robot learning to imagine itself and its own purpose to a tiny microprocessor implanted directly on one’s brain, the line between man… Read More “Bio-hacking humans: implanting chips in hands and heads”
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?
…. Human Compost Served to “Earth Mother Gaia”. Human remains can legally be used as compost from 2027 thanks to new California law aimed at tackling climate change “… AB 351 will provide an additional option for California residents that is more environmentally-friendly and gives them another choice for burial,’ Democratic Assembly member Cristina Garcia,… Read More Nothing Sacred
By Mallory Millet. Front Page Magazine. Feminist icon Kate Millett passed away recently in Paris at the age of 82. Her 1970 book Sexual Politics, called “the Bible of Women’s Liberation” by the New York Times, had a seismic effect on feminist thought and launched Millett as what the Times called “a defining architect of… Read More My Sister Kate: The Destructive Feminist Legacy of Kate Millett
National Catholic Register.: “At Fatima 100 years ago, “God chose to conclude the Message in Fatima, in October 1917, with three further apparitions which I regard as three more calls placed before us,” wrote Sister Lucia in her book, “CALLS” From the Message of Fatima. She and her two saintly cousins saw them as “significant apparitions.” “Focusing… Read More Sr. Lucia and the Ground Zero War Against Family
“Only the God of Jesus Christ is the living God [Jn. 14:16]. As has also been stated in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum (no. 3), the first God mentioned above—the God of the philosophers—is the fruit of human thought, of human speculation, and capable of saying something valid about God . In… Read More John Paul II on the Only Name Under Heaven
No Conceivable…Justification” for aerial warfare, “dreadful weapons”. Cardinal Alfredo 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… Read More What Could These Men Possibly Have Had in Common?
Catholic Critique 