In a biography of G.K. Chesterton published in 1943, Maisie Ward tells of this remarkable trait of the great convert and Catholic apologist: “(He) liked everybody very much, and everything very much. He liked even the things most of us dislike. He liked to get wet. He liked to be tired. After…[a particular period of]… Read More G. K. Chesterton and The Eternal Thank You
“This powerful investigation into Shia clerics in some of Iraq’s holiest shrines uncovers a dark network of exploitation of young women and girls, trapped into prostitution and pimped out by a religious elite. Unprecedented undercover filming and victim testimony reveal how they procure young women for male clients and are prepared to conduct ‘pleasure marriages’… Read More Iraq’s Secret Sex Trade
Islam & Freedom Sam Harris and Rory Stewart debate whether Islam poses a unique threat to open societies. Rory Stewart is a leading thinker on international affairs and development currently serving as Special Advisor to GiveDirectly, which delivers cash directly to the world’s poorest households. Stewart was a member of the British Parliament for almost… Read More Sam Harris, Rory Stewart and Islam
By Mitch Teemly. Old Myth: When a lady wants to be a mommy, a stork magically appears overhead with a baby in its beak and drops it into the lady’s house! But if the lady doesn’t want it–poof!–the stork takes it away! New Myth: When a lady wants to be a mommy, a lump of… Read More Where Do Babies Come From?
“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”
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.
Updated. President Donald Trump said Monday there is a “reasonable chance of ending the war” if White House talks with Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders pave the way for a trilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin. Key Details: Diving Deeper: President Donald Trump expressed cautious optimism on Monday that a long-awaited breakthrough in Ukraine could be… Read More Gotta love the smell of a Trump peace gathering in the morning
By Dawn LaValle, First Things. To the Wonder follows the relationship of a French woman named Marina (Olga Kurylenko) and an American named Neil (Ben Affleck) who fall in love in Paris and then return to Neil’s American home along with Marina’s young daughter. Their relationship stalls, and another woman, Jane (Rachel McAdams), enters Neil’s life. Alongside… Read More Terrance Malick and the Fecundity of Commitment
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”
Andrew Fox – former British Army officer and an associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society – returns to _The Brendan O’Neill Show_. Andrew and Brendan discuss the real reasons Gazans are going hungry, why Hamas’s casualty figures can’t be trusted and how the rush to recognise a Palestinian state is only prolonging the war.
New Oxford Review | July-August 2025 Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious By Ross Douthat Publisher: Zondervan | Pages: 240 | Price: $29.99 Review Author: Preston R. Simpson Ross Douthat’s Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious is a most unusual work of apologetics. You might assume that because Douthat is a Catholic this would be a work of Catholic apologetics, or… Read More An Invitation to a Spiritual Smorgasbord
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
Jefferson’s pagan longings: “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of… Read More Thomas Jefferson and the American Way
Why is it happening? Why all the talk over many years about the attempt at overcoming biological genetic barriers? How has “Science” itself been transvalued? And how dangerous is it all? Who are the key Internationalist players? Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzeziński, Peter Singer, Bill Gates…and so many others. A new religion called “Science” with all of… Read More Internationalist Power and the “Scientific” “Great Reset”
Better to act practically alone than to associate in any way with the views of newbie (or oldie) publicity-seeking “Catholics” like #CandaceOwens (or her spiritual father[s]). They’re embarrassing. But look at the size of her following. What it says about our times is frightening. SH. The 1566 Catechism of the Council of Trent states: “This guilt… Read More Candace and Her Spiritual Father(s)
Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden [in October 2024] tipped the commentariat over the edge. In his report for MSNBC, Jonathan Capehart described the event as “particularly chilling, because in 1939, more than 20,000 supporters of a different fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, packed the Garden for a so-called pro-America rally”. He neglects to mention… Read More On the Misuse of the Term ‘Fascist’
During a conversation on “Washington Week with the Atlantic,” ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jon Karl, MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire, and The New York Times White House correspondent Tyler Pager were discussing President Donald Trump’s announcement that he and private donors would foot the bill for a new ballroom costing $200 million at the White House. “I mean, he’s planning… Read More NYT Reporter: Trump “Way More Effective” in Second Term
By Robert Coles | New Oxford Review | In our time lust is far from a secret or hidden part of ourselves; rather, it is an everyday and evident companion, ever ready to connect with us — urged on us in advertisements, on talk shows, in the movies and on television: sexuality and sensuality and desire… Read More Lust
Apropos of everything: Because Martin Heidegger forsook his early roots in Thomistic [objective] Christian philosophy, the unapologetic Nazi who enjoyed philosophy was forced to create a new and eccentric philosophical superstructure [undecipherable and irrelevant to most human beings] to dodge the consequent existential void. It was necessary because his system toppled the Holy Trinity in… Read More Being and Bunk.
Faculty said to be “demoralized,” students “totally perplexed”. Dr. Janet Smith explains the implications. Dr. Smith, former Professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, on the recent dismissals of several distinguished professors there. Dr. Ralph Martin speaks…
Norman Geisler, the Evangelical scholar who studied at Loyola University, Chicago, reflects on Jean Paul Sartre’s atheism: “It should be noted … that Sartre’s attempt to eliminate God is seriously flawed. First of all, he constructs a straw God by defining him as “self-caused.” Most theists do not believe God is a self-caused being; they… Read More Sartre’s Humanism
You are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. “… Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in… Read More Blessed is the One Whose Sins Are Forgiven
Stock on the related American jurisprudence: “it is bizarre to treat pornography as speech. It is a legal fiction“. “Philosopher and UnHerd writer Kathleen Stock joins Freddie Sayers to discuss one of the strangest and most revealing cultural moments of the year: the rise of ‘Bonnie Blue,’ the OnlyFans “pornstar” at the heart of a… Read More Kathleen Stock on Wall to Wall Decadence and Roger Scruton
… he’s the most consequential President since FDR. @realDonaldTrump: “I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World. Likewise, Russia and the USA do almost… Read More Like him or not…
To deflect from his own long involvement with Ghislaine Maxwell, Alastair Campbell has gone on the offense by intensifying his aim of targeting Donald Trump and ensuring that J.D. Vance does not become President in 2028. Campbell’s own confession is clear. “I knew Ghislaine pretty well and also socialized with her a bit…which is why… Read More Damage Control Time For Alastair Campbell?
A Light, Too Bright For Our Eyes. Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalene Teach me to believe, O Lord, even in darkness and obscurity; teach me to believe by relying only on Your word. Through its own efforts, the human mind is able to attain to a knowledge of God the Creator by considering created… Read More The Sacred Darkness
Digital media analyst Hito Steyerl in another context has stumbled onto important, undeniable truths. She writes, In this new age of artificial stupidity, technological disruption has turned destructive. Its greatest victim is reality itself. “This rise of artificial stupidity is the antithesis of, or rather the millions of shabby little cousins to, artificial intelligence. Just… Read More The rise of artificial stupidity
As Witness: Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bob Dylan. Antisemites (even Christian ones) and Jihadists both call him a fraud. After all, he is not always on their side. And God knows he can’t think for himself! Opinion Courtesy of Electronic Intifadah 2016: Controversially, musical genius Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize for literature last week.… Read More When Times Change Many Change.
Recent events among some significant numbers of so-called “Progressive” Catholics, gleefully talking about the “devolution” of Church authority in our time, especially since Francis, has reminded me several times of something I was told by an Oblate priest while I was making a personal retreat in the late 1980’s. It was at the Oblate Fathers… Read More No More Traditional Priesthood, a Goal for ‘Progressives’?
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…
Updated. What is the political Left hiding? “The French Revolution is the model”. In this long-overdue episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host Dr. James Lindsay takes you through the main body of the Manifesto of the Communist Party: preface, chapter one, and chapter two. In a subsequent episodes (Volume Two in this mini-series) he will… Read More There is a Spectre Haunting Europe and the UK Again
Proportionality in all conflicts is to be desired as I have stated many times over many years. War is hell. Hamas knew what it was doing. It was deliberately trying to provoke a war by a vicious sneak attack in a period of relative stability. Proportionality is the ideal, but history shows it is seldom… Read More The Consequences of Hamas’ War
James Lindsay writes, “The United Nations is a religious organization, and the religion behind it is a cult. More specifically, it is a theosophical cult based on an “evolutionary” vision for mankind that it wants to control. This fact is revealed in a strange book by late UN big-wig and creator of the World Core… Read More Huxleys Internationalist UN
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lengthy and emotional response to Sir 2016 John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq War, a war opposed by Pope John Paul II and millions of people across the world: “The intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong, the aftermath turned out to… Read More Iraq. The Geat Internationalist Tragedy in Context And Retrospect.
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’
“Everything which comes to pass has been foreseen by God from all eternity, and has been willed or at least permitted by Him“. ”Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” (Prov. 19:21) Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange “Nothing comes to pass either in the material or in the spiritual… Read More Garrigou-Lagrange: Everything Which Comes to Pass Foreseen…
“LORD JESUS CHRIST, Who revealed the infinite mercy of Thy SACRED HEART in saying, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (Matt. 5:44), and again, Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you (Luke 6:28): Give me, I beseech Thee, grace to obey these commandments of Thine and to… Read More Beginning Again. A Prayer of Forgiveness, Reparation, and Penitential Love.
“The natural man does not understand the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” — 1 Corinthians 2:14 Tim Staples, a Catholic writer, says, “…from a philosophical perspective, the soul is pure spirit and is the form of… Read More The Natural Man Does Not Understand
Are the hegemonic fields of politics and sex destroying us? “English Literature no longer makes the top ten of A-level subject choices. English departments at universities are regularly closing. Studies show dramatic drops in literacy and reading, particularly amongst teenagers. A book and a discussion. Stefan Collini’s new book explores why such a prestigious academic discipline… Read More English literature’s last stand
DNI Tulsi Gabbard has accused Obama Deep State officials John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice and James Comey of organizing a COUP against President Trump. * “Proof” Former President Obama knew of “manufactured conspiracy” from the beginning
Catholic Critique 