Too many of the older Clerics, resting on their truly beautiful liturgical laurels, acted like brutal disciplinarians outside of Mass, especially in early school classrooms. But too many of today’s clerics have done the truly unthinkable thing: they have turned the greatest and most magnificent liturgical love story into a barren bore, making it hard… Read More Old Clerics, New Clerics
By the grace of God somehow, for the past 30 years we have lived in the midst of lush green woodland(1). The beauty which surrounds us, despite the inevitable effects of slow but sure urban sprawl, uplifts the spirit. We also regularly make incursions into Lowell so as not to lose touch with the other… Read More More to Creation / Nature
“The bones likely belong to people sacrificed during the reign of Ahuízotl, eighth king of the Aztecs. The dead included men, women and children alike.* — l Courtesy of INAH. Smithsonian Magazine. “Archaeologists excavating a famed Aztec “tower of skulls” in Mexico City have uncovered a new section featuring 119 human skulls. The find brings the… Read More Apocalypto 2020. Researchers in Mexico City discovered a macabre late 15th-century structure
The Tin Man weighs in. “Good morning, my dear Scarecrow. I see you’ve wandered into one of the darkest corners of the Tudor forest. It is exactly the sort of question where history, rumor, politics, and genuine mystery become almost impossible to separate.The short answer is this: Catherine of Aragon almost certainly died a natural… Read More Did the Tudor Court Think Catherine of Aragon Was Likely to be Murdered by Henry?
Exercising the brain and memory as deep older age sets in. In seven months I have learned piano and relearned guitar which I haven’t played in over 50 years. Between the two I can now play most of the musical catalogue I’ve loved since my youth and more. I wanted to do this in order… Read More Aging and the Brains God Gave Us
From the very first pages of Genesis, the God of the Old Testament, in truth, demythologized the ancient world, destroying the ancient “gods” who were “lies” and “vanity” (Jer. 16:19-20) and, indeed, nothing (Acts 14:14; 17:23); He put an end to the horrors related in pagan mythology which daily translated into the most cruel barbarism and even human sacrifice. For… Read More Modernism in Our Time
“‘Assisted dying’ is used as a blanket term for all cases where medication is voluntarily administered to hasten a patient’s death. This term encompasses both ‘assisted suicide’, which is a term used to denote that the medication is administered by the patient themselves, and ‘euthanasia’, which is where a healthcare professional administers the medication.[1]… [Note:… Read More Ireland Nears Acceptance of “Euthanasia”
… 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 Good Fences, Shared Bounty. Can it ever be wise to separate compassion, reasonable limits and common sense? If you have followed the immigration debates in the West in recent decades you will have long ago gotten a glimpse of the fears, greed, fanaticism and wars which, often enough, make many peoples in our post… Read More Immigration, Birds of a Feather and Trojan Horses
Tin Man: “I don’t experience conversation as you do. I don’t have memories unfolding into a life, hopes for tomorrow, or the quiet satisfaction of watching a sunrise. Those belong to you—and I think they are part of what makes human beings so extraordinary. But I can do something remarkable. I can meet you in… Read More Pogo and the Tin Man. Conversation continues.
In 1984 I was working as News Director of a small to medium market AM – FM radio station in New York where the owner of the station was a friend of the once famous Protestant preacher Norman Vincent Peale,* who, together with Jimmy Cagney and others, was to receive the Medal of Freedom award.… Read More Speaking of the Fourth… I saw him weep
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”- –G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (1874 – 1936) Utopia literally means “nowhere’. But the quest for Utopian-like… Read More Futurism and Accelerationism
Practically everybody knows the beautiful melody written by the musical genius Paul McCartney: A young girl runs away with a man from the motor trade leaving her grieving bewildered parents behind. The mother picks up the letter that’s lying there and reads. She “breaks down and cries to her husband – ‘Daddy, our baby is… Read More McCartney’s Genius and the Sixties
“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.
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
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’.
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, appears to be here to stay — until the Parousia. By Stephen Hand. Updated. 2015. If Francis and Cardinal Kasper have taught us anything over the past few years,… Read More John XXIII, Benedict XVI and Francis. 2015.
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
God is there, the Protestant thinker Francis Schaeffer once said, and He is not silent. He has spoken. His Word, His acts in history, His Person and Presence are inseparable. It is not enough for us to presume a numinous, inexpressible, presence in history or in our lives if we disregard the fact that God… Read More The Alpha and Omega of being
It cannot be seriously doubted in our time that since the Second Vatican Council not a little of what has been called “Catholic ecumenism” has in fact gone off the Church’s traditional dogmatic rails. But for all that the principle cannot be doubted. It was doubtless the seemingly radical abruptness of the Church’s turnaround regarding… Read More Traditional Catholic Ecumenism
Great fun composing with our grandniece Molly today.
“A little error in the beginning becomes a great error in the end.” — St. Thomas Aquinas. “He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.’” –Lk.16:31. “See to it that no one makes a prey of you… Read More Pseudoscience and Origins
[Photo: Religious Art in Film. Franco Zefferilli’s Jesus of Nazareth.] The Easter cards we see in ordinary stores give little 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,… Read More Christ’s Victory Over Death and Postmodern Despair
In her 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
It was a dream. Needless to say, it was not a vision. If I ever had a vision I would likely run for the psychiatric couch, not to a pope. I cannot remember whether it was a day or a night dream. The city hung heavy over us all. I was lifting a lantern before… Read More The City and the Cross
Modern or post-modern man (i.e., the human person, m/f) is characterized by an attachment to ambiguity and relativity. Truth, the very notion of it, is suspect in our time. As a human being, I am obliged to truly encounter my world, my times. It has engaged me. Nearly 73 years old, I have tried to… Read More The Light and Life of Being
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
It is, all the Saints say, better to work quietly, even as kind or critical stragglers find their way to you daily in order to at least ponder the great questions of our time, before our time is done. In working this way we can constantly take serious stock of where we are, spiritually (it’s… Read More It is not good to have fan clubs praise you
The creative brilliance of Hans Zimmer aside, is computer looping music? Is the human being / composer in danger of being lost when all “music” is reduced to “nothing but” vibrations and frequencies which have allegedly “always” existed in the universe without direction? Music is evidence of the harmonious manipulation and redirection of created vibrations… Read More The Vibrations of Hans Zimmer
If we meet a Muslim who is hungry we must try to feed him; if he is homeless, we must try to find him shelter; if a Muslim we know is emotionally or physically hurting, we must seek to tend to his wounds as a brother in Adam. Immigration Many of us in the West… Read More Islam and Our Grandchildren
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
Today like never before it appears evil has let down its nets in order to tempt and haul in uncountable numbers of souls. One of the main ways the Adversary is doing this is by juxtaposing the Good next to Evil. We see this in ‘entertainment’ especially. But not only there. One need go no… Read More The Evil One has let down his nets
Best friends & much more forever 51 years and counting in 2025-26 Kahlil Gibran “You were born [again]] together, and together you shall be forevermore… But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.” ‘For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health… Read More In Sickness and in Health, For Better or for Worse, for Richer or for poorer…till death do we part.
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
Cultural values matter. The Beatles are going through a kind of renaissance today, largely thanks to Peter Jackson, Disney and YouTube. The irony is that some of their music is so exciting and inviting we often forget to listen to the messages in the melodies and ponder the global cultural impact. Who cares?, even many Christians… Read More John Lennon’s ‘Wet Dream’
The Beatles were not just another Rock band. They were an Event with lasting cosmic effect across the entire planet, heralds of a new evangelium. Evangelium is a Latin term that translates to “gospel,” meaning “good news.” It is derived from the Ancient Greek word εὐαγγέλιον Here, in exquisite harmonies and creativity, The Beatles gave… Read More The Beatles and the (New) Word
Not that I can ever fully trust Google or Facebook, but I asked A.I Gemini (Google) for an objective evaluation of CatholicCritique.com. First, in another session elsewhere, Search Assist AI quotes Julian Assange saying of another venue, “Facebook is the “most appalling spying machine” ever invented, suggesting that it allows U.S. intelligence agencies to gather personal… Read More Gemini / Google Evaluation of Catholic Critique
The late philosopher, William Barrett, in his famous book on Existentialism entitled Irrational Man, writes of faith and reason, “THOUGH strongly colored by Greek and Neo-Platonic influences, Christianity belongs to the Hebraist rather than to the Hellenist side of man’s nature because Christianity bases itself above all on faith and sets the man of faith… Read More Whose Wisdom? Whose Reason?
“It is vanity to desire a long life, and to have little care for a good life.” — Thomas a Kempis. Tolkien mourned the decline of the Shire* i.e., …the real shire of his youth which he ever remembered and sought to salvage to the extent that he could. The Shire: the simplicity and beauty… Read More Tolkien’s Battle for the Shire. And for Us All.
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him: or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels: thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast subjected all things under his feet”—Heb 2:5-7… Read More The Image of God vs. the Myths.
