Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register wrote, “The former cardinal-archbishop of Milan [Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini], a favorite of those pushing for heterodox reforms in the Church, had envisioned a permanent synodal Church in which the idea of collegial governance introduced at the Second Vatican Council could be better realized. The Jesuit biblical… Read More Martini’s Endless Dream
G. K. Chesterton: “In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon… Read More Man could do no more… Pilate “washed his hands of the world”
by Dietrich von Hildebrand. “Although the dethronement of truth manifests itself in the most drastic and radical way in Nazism and Bolshevism, unfortunately many symptoms of this spiritual disease are also to be found in democratic countries. In discussions we sometimes hear the following argument: “Why should your opinion be more valid than mine? We… Read More The Dethronement of Truth
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!
How do we experience life? What is it to be human? How do we see? What is the relationship between reading and history, reading and science, metaphysics…empathy, philosophy, religion and art? …More. — How to Mark a Book by Mortimer Adler — The social disaster: Children who frequently check social media face significant brain changes
A stoneis not an individual.You can make little onesout of big ones. A treeis an individual.It comesfrom a germ.“Only Godcan make a tree,”says the poet. A horseis an individual.The horse is notan individualthe way the treeis an individual.It has animal life. Man is an individualand has animal lifelike the horse.Man has also reason.which the horse… Read More On Personalism. Peter Maurin.
There are many people who will cite the West as something which is under threat and something for which we should be prepared to fight to defend. Depending on which defender of the West is pontificating, the threat comes from Russia, or from Islam, or from China, or from some enemy within the West itself.… Read More Is the West Worth Defending? By Joseph Pearce.
Linking antiwar, anti racism and abortion. Opinion. Bill Ayers and His Media Groupies by Cliff Kincaid. And brought up to date— especially regarding “the Catholic movement” and the abortion connection— in a Spotify podcast below (August 2022). Bill Ayers’ claim that the Weather Underground bombed property, not people, in order to protest the Vietnam War, is two lies… Read More What’s been happening?
The following conversation took place in 2018 and it appears we remain essentially stuck where we were then. Many, of course, argue that it’s much worse today since the issues discussed here seem to have been eclipsed and complicated by bizarre psycho-sexual agendas from coast to coast. Others say not really since both the legacy… Read More Stuck ‘Twixt Him and Him
“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
“The Unspeakable. What is that? Surely, an eschatological image. It is the void that we encounter, you and I, underlying the announced programs, the good intentions, the unexampled and universal aspirations for the best of all possible worlds. It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the… Read More Merton on The Unspeakable
I personally think that Catholic education, combining the teaching of traditional theology, philosophy, the great books and intensive practical skills necessary to build a home, ought to be returned to holy men and women in small orthodox monastic or other communities at comparatively little cost. — Why colleges are becoming cults — Trent Horn reviews… Read More The Quicksands of “Catholic” Education and the Future.
I admire much that Jordan Peterson has done and said. Very much. But I cannot accept his thought entirely regarding the question of Meaning in our lives and times, which he and others have publicly discussed, and which many admire. To the contrary, it is Jesus Christ, “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8),… Read More Jordan Peterson on Meaning
John E. Fagan “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart the desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that by knowing and loving God, men and women can come… Read More John Paul II on Faith, Reason and Nihilism
Rocco Buttiglione is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Pius V University in Rome, and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. “… we reach the heart of the question which interests us. To appreciate its full scope, let us take G. W. F. Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of History’ as a point of… Read More John Paul II, Poland, and the Hegelian Menace
“One of the great Catholic philosophers of our day reflects on the way language has been abused so that, instead of being a means of communicating the truth and entering more deeply into it, and of the acquisition of wisdom, it is being used to control people and manipulate them to achieve practical ends. Reality… Read More Catholic Philosopher Josef Pieper: Abuse of Language — Abuse of Power
Foucault’s Child-Sex Allegations Should Shock But Not Surprise us. He elevated common criminality into a virtue. Dr. Matt Treacy. The allegations that the French philosopher Michel Foucault – who has been long admired and oft-quoted by the liberal left in Ireland [and of course everywhere] – repeatedly “raped” pre-pubescent boys in Tunisia during his time as a… Read More Where the Radical Left Would Take Us
By John A. Perricone | New Oxford Review, January-February 2021 The Deleterious Effects of a Subtle Inversion One of Hollywood’s more sybaritic starlets solemnly announced the other day that she was embarking on a 30-day “spiritual cleanse” in India. Since neither ecumenism nor eco-enthusiasm is my métier, I was bewildered. Could it be some novel… Read More “New Spirituality” & the Ghost of Catholicism
Karol Wojtyla (JPII) wrote, “A non-Catholic philosopher once said to me: ‘You know, I just can’t stop myself reading and rereading and thinking over the first three chapters of Genesis.’ And indeed it seems to me that unless one does so reflect upon that fundamental Ensemble of facts and situations it becomes extremely difficult if… Read More John Paul II on the Most Decisive Confrontation —and History’s ‘Last Lap’
Timothy P. Fortin, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophical Theology, earned an M.A. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, and an M.S. in Clinical Psychology from the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Arlington, VA. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Italy. His doctoral… Read More Whose ‘Reality’?
By Gary Potter “The Enlightenment” is the name by which are known both an intellectual movement and an historical period usually considered as having begun in the 17th century and reaching their height in the 18th. However, insofar as ideas spawned by the movement — ideas about God, authority, order and freedom — are ones… Read More The Enlightenment Is Not Over
By Timothy Matthews, Catholic InsightIssue: March 2009 “Western civilization at the present day is passing through a crisis which is essentially different from anything that has been previously experienced. Other societies in the past have changed their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal… Read More The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to corrupt
Plato paints the picture of a Charioteer (Greek: ἡνίοχος) driving a chariot pulled by two winged horses: “First the charioteer of the human soul drives the pair. “The Charioteer represents intellect, reason, or the part of the soul that must guide the soul to truth; one horse represents the rational or moral impulse, the positive… Read More Avoiding the Crash. Plato’s Chariot & the Passions
With respect to ideas, thoughts, and sanity, “…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 truths, thoughts, and even opinions, all desires and acts. We could no longer… Read More Reason’s First Principle
“I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.” Malcolm Muggeridge, The End… Read More Malcolm Muggeridge on Darwinism — Evolution
Catholic Critique 