I’ve always loved Camus. But his shadow side must be faced. In his novella, The Fall, the Algerian-French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus stops lamenting social injustice for a moment as well as the “meaninglessness” and “absurdity” of an empty Nietzschean universe in general, and turns instead to biography, specifically to his own cruelty. Camus was a… Read More The Falls of Albert Camus
“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.
“Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream”—John Lennon Perhaps it is one of those curious fearful symmetries that the words of John Lennon quoted above are found in the Beatles’ album titled ‘Revolver’…and that he was finally gunned down, shot multiple times in the back by a “fan”. I grew up reading Kerouac… Read More John Lennon and The Seductions of Beautiful Nothing
Updated / Apostasy is cruel. Not only does it walk “the broad way which leads to eternal destruction” (Matthew 7:13), but increasingly, in an age of bewilderment and despair, it leads straightway to temporal destruction as well, whether from AIDS, Fentanyl, euthanasia, or death by one’s own hand. Apostasy is cruel because, as St. Paul… Read More Of UFOs, Apostasy, and Death
Or, where the Left would take us. by Roger Kimball.The New Criterion. On The Passion of Michel Foucault by James Miller. Michel Foucault’s personal perversions involved him in private tragedy. The celebration of his intellectual perversions by academics continues to be a public scandal. The career of this “representative man” of the twentieth century really represents one of… Read More The Perversions of Michel Foucault
By Solange Hertz. The world is showing all the signs normally associated with old age. If it appears to be going mad, there is every reason to believe its madness is the senile dementia of the superannuated rather than the crazed exuberance of youth. Compared with the children of adamic times and the patriarchal progeny… Read More Life Among the [Moral] Ruins
SH —> A.I. : I am curious what ‘you’ think of and how you might critique the following. I’m not asking you to make or pass any kind of theological or philosophical judgment. I’m primarily curious what you think of the coherence of the thesis.. If you wish, please also discuss how modern philosophy might… Read More A.I. Critiques an Approach to Theism and ‘Man’ (m/f)
“I appeal also to philosophers, and to all teachers of philosophy, asking them to have the courage to recover, in the flow of an enduringly valid philosophical tradition, the range of authentic wisdom and truth — metaphysical truth included — which is proper to philosophical inquiry — John Paul II, Fides et Ratio # 106… Read More John Paul II’s Battle Against Nihilism
Put the news aside for a time. If unhappiness is growing consider it a reset signal to return to philosophy where all education and earthly wisdom began. …This is an excellent series, very informative and very fair to Catholic, Protestant and Enlightenment philosophies. Thales to Sartre and beyond. 81 comprehensive episodes. One can learn something… Read More Dr. Arthur Holmes Lectures. A History of Philosophy.
“God is dead but given the way of men there may be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we will have to vanquish his shadow, too.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, # 109 At the very dawn of the 20th century, on 25 August in the year… Read More “Straying, as through infinite nothingness”: The Collapse of Nietzsche
Pope Leo XIII Apostolici Muneris, December 28, 1878. As the nature of Our Apostolic office required of Us, We have not omitted, from the very outset of Our Pontificate, addressing you, Venerable Brothers, in Encyclical Letters, in order to advert to the deadly plague which is tainting society to its very core and bringing it… Read More Socialism, Communism, Nihilism: Encyclical Letter. Leo XIII. 1878.
Aldous Huxley on the Technocratic Dictatorship seeking to be born. “…democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old… Read More Aldous Huxley on an Emerging ‘Scientific’ Dictatorship…
“The Russian intelligentsia produced a faith based upon a strange syllogism: Man is descended from the apes, therefore we must love one another.” — Vladimir Solovyev — On Lenin’s desk in the Kremlin there stood, for most of the years he worked there, a strange bronze statue of an ape gazing with an expression of… Read More Lenin, the Ape and the Skull
So-called ‘Liberals’ have a philosophical problem in this country and beyond. On the one hand they heartily indulge and enjoy the sexual anarchy granted by the succeeding regimes since the 1950’s and 1960’s; on the other hand they tend to deplore the lawlessness of American foreign policy / imperialism / warmaking. They do not see… Read More When the State is Ultimate
I don’t mean to rain on Patrick Madrid’s (or anyone’s) parade. But consider. He writes in bold letters on ‘X’ that the Beatles are the “Greatest Band in History. Don’t Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Like The Beatles!“. But the Beatles cast both genius and deepest shade. I’m in my 7th decade of life. I’ve loved… Read More The Beatles and Where We Are.
What Fulton J. Sheen saw so clearly that others seek to forget: We are only sojourners here in a strange and foreign land. “Our whole life ought to be one continued penance“. — Frs. Francis Spirago, Richard F. Clarke on Penance. Joel 2:12-13 “Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all of your heart,with… Read More Repentance and / or the American Dialectic
David Starkey tracks the history and influence of the Dada movement of art and its influence in modern culture and life through his experiences with the Royal Academy. BBC: December 3, 2004. An autographed gentleman’s urinal has been named the most influential modern art work of all time. “Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which shocked the… Read More April is the cruellest month
LifeNews: The Biden administration is pressuring Sierra Leone to pass an unpopular pro-abortion bill before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a former senior U.S. government official who has worked in the West African region told The Daily Signal. It is common knowledge among nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, in Sierra Leone that a U.S. foreign aid agency… Read More Biden to Deny African Nation $480 Million in Aid if It Doesn’t Legalize Abortion
While vandalism and arson appear to have been ruled out (at the official level) in the 2019 Notre Dame Cathedral fire, the following reports sketched the context of concerns at the time. Catholic News Agency: “…. According to the most recent figures (as of 2021) from France’s central criminal intelligence unit, 877 attacks on Catholic places of… Read More 2019-2024 Look back: “Why France is losing one religious building every two weeks.”
Young supposedly privileged women are being taught in school to retool their own desires. They are told they need to be instructed by “experts” on how to be socialized, whereas most often young men learn to socialize themselves, on route to innovating and building the world. Retooled privileged Women seem to aspire to and do best… Read More The Corporatization of Women
By Arjun Badola, January 5, 2020. The novel, Crime and punishment, is written by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky who shows us the plight of an ordinary person and the effect on his psyche after he commits a murder. The protagonist in the novel, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, is a former student and is currently living… Read More Raskolnikov, Napoleon & Übermensch
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
Before there was Gloria Steinem or Michel Foucault, there was Dada. And it was deadly serious. Kickoff, Demolition time. “Dada thrives on contradictions. It is creative and destructive. Dada denounces the world and wishes to save it.” So says one narrator of journalist-filmmaker Mick Gold’s Europe After the Rain, a 1978 Arts Council of Great Britain documentary… Read More 1914. Europe After the Rain.
After the horrors of World War II, it is little wonder that Pope John Paul II during his long pontificate placed such great emphasis on the “dignity of the human person” who is made in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26,27) For this sacred dignity that he spoke of was utterly rejected by… Read More John Paul II, Benedict XVI and a New World Order
Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Muneris, December 28, 1878. As the nature of Our Apostolic office required of Us, We have not omitted, from the very outset of Our Pontificate, addressing you, Venerable Brothers, in Encyclical Letters, in order to advert to the deadly plague which is tainting society to its very core and… Read More Socialism, Communism, Nihilism
A self-identified socialist priest, Helder Pessoa Câmara (1909 – 1999) was an advocate of liberation theology. He did social and political work for “human rights and democracy”. Câmara preached for a church closer to the disfavoured people . But that’s only part of his lies story…(more in the video). Get the film Benedict XVI and Liberation Theology National… Read More You May Know This Man
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
Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 men between the late ‘70s and early ‘90s, killing them in the most horrendous ways. His killing spree involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia, and cannibalism. Few crimes in modern history are seen as disgusting and evil as Dahmers’. Police discovered mutilated bodies, refrigerated skulls, a shrine and a barrel with headless torsos,… Read More Jeffrey Dahmer’s Confession
The Real Mao and China. Steven W. Mosher knows Maoism well. “As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.” This is certainly true of the leaders of… Read More An Interview on Mao’s Evil. Steven W. Mosher.
“A perfect emblem for modern Ireland” — tho the real pagans of old [my ancestors – SH], whom she admires, would have sacrificed this one in a heartbeat “to make the crop grows”. “Bambie Ray Robinson (born 6 March 1993), known by their[a] stage name Bambie Thug, is an Irish singer-songwriter. They are known to mix numerous genres… Read More They appear to be Legion. Fr. Brendan Kilkoyne on Ireland’s Bambie Thug
“Whittaker Chambers is best known today as the veteran Soviet spy who became, in William F. Buckley Jr.’s words, “the most important American defector from Communism” when he testified against members of his underground Communist cell in the 1930s. Yet Chambers did more than reject Communism: He revealed a key problem with modern liberalism. In… Read More Mark Groubert On the Whittaker Chamber – Alger Hiss Case
Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War Independent, UK. 1995 For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works… Read More Independent, UK: Modern art was Government ‘weapon’.
Jason Whitlock. Jason Lee Whitlock (born April 27, 1967) is an American sports columnist, podcaster, and former football player. He hosts a program for the conservative media company Blaze Media titled Fearless with Jason Whitlock. Whitlock is a former columnist at The Kansas City Star, AOL Sports, Foxsports.com, and ESPN. He was a radio personality for WHB and KCSP sports stations in the Kansas City area. Whitlock played Division… Read More Evangelical Sports Columnist and Activist Call Out “Catholic” President
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”
For some reason I thought it was another book about our frivolous TV shows and general culture (Seinfeld, Larry David’s vicious Curb Your Enthusiasm —pick your nonsense— and I already knew this about the culture. But then things got darker. Very recently I somehow bumped into this reading. I listened. I couldn’t have been more… Read More I’ve had the book for decades. But I never read it. “Shows About Nothing.”
By Dietrich von Hildebrand. “Enamored of our present epoch, blind to all its characteristic dangers, intoxicated with everything modern, there are many Catholics who no longer ask whether something is true, or whether it is good and beautiful, or whether it has an intrinsic value: they ask only whether it is up-to-date, suitable to “modern… Read More Truth: conformity of an idea or proposition to reality.
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
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.
Charles Lewis. Review of The Priest Barracks: Dachau 1938-1945 by By Guillaume Zeller. National Catholic Register . Updated. “On July 20, 1933, six months after Hitler rose to power, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, and the German vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, signed a concordat — a sort of peace treaty between the… Read More Enduring Faith Amid Horror: The Priests of Dachau
Why “faith and culture”? Do they go together? Can they be separated? Can faith exist without culture? Can culture exist without faith? In the broadest sense of the word, faith and culture are inextricably connected because a culture is always an expression of the faith which informs it. If a culture is animated by a… Read More Faith and Culture by Joseph Pearce
Catholic Critique 