Today like never before Evil has let down the nets to tempt us and haul in uncountable numbers of souls. One of the main ways the Adversary is doing this is by juxtaposing the the Good next to Evil. We see this in ‘entertainment’ especially. But not only there. One need go no further than… Read More The Evil One has let down his nets
Dr. Arthur Holmes, History of Philosophy : This is an excellent series, it is very informative and fair to the ancients, to Catholic, Protestant and Enlightenment philosophies from Thales to Sartre and beyond. 81 comprehensive episodes. One can learn something new with every listen, or relisten, of any episode in this History of Philosophy series.… Read More History of Philosophy
“God is Dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we – we still have to vanquish his shadow, too. — Frederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 109. The Forerunners: 2015: For the Neo-modernist or Progressivist Catholic today, the traditional understanding… Read More Progressivist Theology. What it is.
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Christians and non-Christians alike. “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”— 1 Jn.1:10 All we, like sheep, have gone astray,each of us has turned to our own way; — Isaiah 53:6 “For… Read More Truth and “Catholic Guilt”
And today. How Mamdani Won. Who he is and where is he going? See hére
Well, unless you’ve found a good and sound school (and they’re certainly out there), in your first theology courses you may not learn much about the biblical Jesus, but you’re almost guaranteed to come out knowing what these early 20th century theological neologism’s mean: formgeschicte, heilsgeschichte, eschatologiegeschichte, Menschheitsgeschichte, Gottesgeschichte, Heilsgeheimnis… I personally never found them edifying… Read More Going to Seminary?
Updated. What really happened on October 7?. SH Introductory Note: “… blindness in part has happened in Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles should come in…as touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers.” The 1566 Catechism of the Council of Trent states: “This guilt [for the death of Christ]… Read More James Lindsay Goes to Israel
America… “not in any sense Christian” “….she licensed every form of lust with laws to cleanse the stain of scandal she has spread.” — Dante, The Inferno, canto V, 57. Every four years, truths in America can change from one thing to another, even as the center – left’s quest to be the global hegemon… Read More America and Seductive False ‘Liberty’.
by Stephen Hand In Evelyn Waugh’s stunning classic, Brideshead Revisited, there is a scene which presses on my mind these days as I ponder so many forces gathering against a Church weakened greatly by the sins of her own children, both clerical and lay. All of us. It is the time when Sebastian, Lord Alex… Read More Lord Marchmain’s Long Hate
What follows is a critique of Calvinist Apologist James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.. “…that you may know how you ought to behave yourself self in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” — 1 Timothy 3:15 By Stephen Hand The living… Read More White Lies
The Easter cards we see in ordinary stores give no hint of the shock of the disciples at seeing the empty tomb and beholding the risen Christ. And certainly not of the terrible trauma and ignominy which Our Lord had just gone through: the betrayal, the arrest, the torture and brutal execution of the Son… Read More Christ’s Victory Over Death and Postmodern Despair
When I began this website it was after I had debated within myself, video podcasts or the written word? God knows I’m handsome enough to do a podcast (-: But then I thought that since I wanted to confess the faith, despite my frailties and sins, for my grandchildren, the written word is more likely… Read More Podcast Video or the Written Word?
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)
Donald Trump in 2017 said to television news commentator, Bill O’Reilly in regards to Putin being a killer, “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?” O’REILLY retorted, “I don’t know of any government leaders that are killers.” TRUMP: “Well — take a… Read More Donald Trump and the Democrats
I ended a recent dialogue with ChatGPT about heart conditions after it proposed one more avenue of ‘thought’ that might interest me. I wrote, “I would like to stay a little longer and have a heart to heart with you now Tin Man, but I have to run. It’s impossible for me not to anthropomorphize… Read More The Singularity According to Tin Man
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.
by John Daniel Davidson. G. K. Chesterton said, “Some say it is impossible to return to the past; but the truth is that there is now nothing before us but the choice between two paths which both return to the past. We can return to some sort of Catholic fellowship, or we can return to… Read More Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come
Insularity: speaks only to insiders or fans, alienating broader audiences. For example, a critic might say: “The film collapses under its own self-referential weight, obsessed with referencing itself rather than telling a compelling story.” God forbid that we Christians devolve into this kind of self-referential vanity. For all his problems, Pope Francis was correct in… Read More Insularity
“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. — St. Paul, Galatians 6:14. “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent,… Read More Kerygma. Finding Our Way Home Again.
Moses said to the LORD, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” — Exodus 4:10 I know the feeling. Someone said, writing is easy, It is the editing that is hard. I hope visitors… Read More Slow of Speech and Tongue
“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
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
Existentialist philosophy and analysis, to the extent that it measures “the predicament of man and his world in the state of estrangement” (Paul Tillich) corroborates what Christian theology has always referred to as Original Sin. As a school of philosophy it seems pretty well dead now, but important insights of the original existentialists remain valid,… Read More Existence and the Word
… and the New Pseudo Praxis. Perhaps the most critical and classical difference between all forms of Protestantism and Catholicism lay in their respective understandings of the relationship between faith and good works. For Catholics, God’s saving work in Jesus Christ – the fruit of unmerited grace – issues in a changed heart and a… Read More Loving Theology More Than God
See also, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and a New World Order. Our complex theological predicament, which only the hierarchical Church may, in time, formally adjudicate. By Stephen Hand. 2015. If Francis and Cardinal Kasper have taught us anything over the past few years, it’s that without resurrecting that final “checkmate,” which popes from the… Read More John XXIII, Benedict XVI and Francis. 2015.
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
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
On February 26, 1950, a couple of years before I was born, Leonard Bernstein premiered his second symphony, The Age of Anxiety, in New York City. It was based on W. H. Auden’s 1948 Pulitzer Prize winning poem which had used the metaphor to describe the spiritual, psychological, and political milieu after World War II.… Read More The Age of Anxiety
“Our peace in this life is found in humbly enduring suffering rather than in being free from it. He who knows best how to suffer will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven.”— Thomas a Kempis, Imitation… Read More The Cross of Jesus Christ and Suffering Love.
Provocateur extraordinaire By Stephen Hand, editor, Catholic Critique. The 1566 Catechism of the Council of Trent states: “This guilt [for the death of Christ] seems more enormous in us than in the Jews, since according to the testimony of the same Apostle: ‘If they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory’;… Read More Towards A Critique of E. Michael Jones
Bad and evil ideas have been far more virulent in history than silver, gold, or geopolitical schemes. Our modern errors arose out of the weeds of bad Christian soil, fueled by concupiscence and backed by diverse and mighty powers. King Henry VIII’s ecclesial revolution in England, born in lust and ending in the vast dissolution of the… Read More Philosophers of the New Light
We who are alive today have lived in extraordinary times. Never in history were so many ordinary people lured off the narrow way by so many lying signs, technological wonders and temptations. Few of us have walked through it unwounded. There is little romanticism in not being a hero. Many of us men and women… Read More Our Saving Wounds
Larry Chapp seems to express a kind of anxiety or apprehension in this video discussion about the obvious problem of the traditional magisterium as he comes “out of the closet” and reveals himself to be, of all things, an eschatological “universalist” wherein, in the end, we can all hope that Scripture and Tradition will be… Read More A Note on Dr. Larry Chapp — at the edge of Hell. Nothing to lose.
First, the Problem. The famous Thomist philosopher Etienne Gilson writes, surely accurately, in his Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, “… at the very place where the Summa of Alexander and the Commentary of St. Bonaventure undertake to show that the existence of God is evident, St. Thomas devotes an article to proving that it… Read More Gilson, Saint Thomas and The Self-Attesting God
You haven’t liveduntil you’ve fallen intocoma. Between eternity and earth. It happened to meabout five weeks ago. It was otherwise an ordinary day.I went to work, came home,had dinner with my beloved. Then a few hours laterI began to feel uncomfortablystrange — sick, pins and needlesascended my entire body. I told my wife I must… Read More Coma
Modern or post-modern man (i.e., the human person, m/f) is characterized by and attached to ambiguity and relativity. Truth, the very notion of it, is suspect. As a human being, I am obliged to truly encounter my world, my times. It has engaged me. I am now 70 years old. I have tried to engage… Read More The Light and Life of Being
And the Deep Truths in Fritz Eichenberg’s ‘The Lord’s Supper‘. The other side of the Eucharist is friendship. It often happens that week after week, year after year, Christians sit and kneel next to practical strangers in church on Sundays. They leave Mass as they entered, nodding and saying hello to people they do not… Read More Strangers in the Pews
If it is true that John XXIII controversially determined it was neither opportune nor wise to conclude the Council with the anathemas which usually follow Church councils, it is also true that the Councils of Trent and Vatican I (the latter had been interrupted in the last century and needed completion) were specifically cited and… Read More The Hermeneutical Firewall Protecting Vatican II
… in your pocket. I don’t want money or offerings. Keep it for your family, your neighbors, and Christ’s poor. I only want to share content that will possibly edify, inform, and console in this time of global and ecclesial destabilization. Here at this website I mostly share the invaluable work of others, past and… Read More Catholic Critique. If there is any value in this website, please keep your money…
“You don’t get many views!” he laughed. Tell me something I don’t know. I don’t post for numbers of visitors or views. I post to tell the truth as best I understand it, for as many, or as few, persons God sends here, and for my grandchildren. We don’t live forever. So hoping for truth… Read More Visitors and Views. The Guy Laughed…
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