What No Graduates Will Hear
Will we tell our young people what they need most to hear? If not, nothing else we say or do will stop our suicidal collapse.
Some Economic Realities
When Catholic hierarchs speak about economic issues, I beg them to keep in mind that very tax, every economic restriction, every plan to redistribute money, every establishment of a welfare entitlement, comes with consequences.
And in This Corner, No One
If you hate or despise American ways, if when you think of American history you think first and second and third of its evils, you cannot have any strong interest in the assimilation of immigrants to those ways.
Preaching to the Post-Literate
Learned ignorance of the truth may just be that impenetrable final state of the reprobate mind spoken of in Scripture.
Back to the Caves
The world has become a hollowed-out set of institutions wearing the skinsuit of the now-dead body of Western Civilization. What ought we do as Catholics living in the ruins?
The Worst Sins in the World
Social media is the best tool in human history for unearthing everyone else’s sins.
Caught by Contagion
You are the company you keep. And here, the more agreeable you are, the more susceptible you are to the infection.
Eating Toadstools
How can you discuss the morality of acts when the person you’re speaking with is a moral relativist?
Uncharted Waters
Evangelizing in a world that lacks the spiritual, cultural, and intellectual foundations of pre-20th century missionaries is a challenge that forces us to focus on our one immutable trait – humanity.
Only in Destroying
At its core, evil in humans manifests as a deliberate desire to transgress, taking pleasure in defying what is good, often reflecting an inner rejection of or hostility toward God.
No Wedding Garment
I want to look at how we celebrate Mass, not in its total form, as others have done well, but in some of the actions and gestures that accompany it.
Premises Have Conclusions
To say that the Church’s social teaching is separate from her teachings regarding sex is to get each one of them wrong—and to fail to recognize the sociality of the truths themselves.
Let the Seventies Die
There are many things the Church in the 60’s and 70’s smashed and painted over that are easy to identify, but it has been the less obvious shifts in language that did more damage.
Liturgical Stooges
The project of “modernizing” ancient hymns turned into a search for rhyming words, at the cost of original meaning.
The Field Hospital Needs Doctors
To be called merciful an act must be oriented to the ultimate good of the person, namely, their eternal salvation.
The Death of a Father
I long for a father who will give me some encouragement in the thankless and often unpleasant task of building up something like a human culture, one whose springs well up from the Faith.
You Suffer, We Get the Credit
The American Church in my lifetime, as an institution rather than as individual priests or bishops here and there, has done nothing to keep the working class in the fold.
A Plea to Good Bishops
The wickedness of a previous generation of bishops, not wholly leached away, has robbed good bishops of the honor they deserve.
See No Evil
The newly appointed archbishop of Washington, D.C. sadly shares the assumption prevalent among liberal theological and exegetes, that the Scripture contains, as Hans Kung put it, a lot of “trash.”
Tradition and Treachery
Kneeling is good for the soul. It lifts you up by making you, in stature, no more than a child.