An atheist who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jack Chick theorizes on What Rome Is Up To when a couple of Catholic sources remark that the discovery of life on other planets poses no particular threat to the Catholic Faith. This piece is a classic example of how sin makes you stupid. Our Bright knows … Read more
Ever attended a clown Mass? Me neither. To be sure, I’ve seen lovingly photographed liturgical bizarrenesses from time to time chronicled on the Internet. And I’ve seen some enthusiasts for the Latin Mass often talk as though such stupid liturgical antics are happening everywhere all the time and that they alone stand between the Church … Read more
Some time ago, a friend of mine introduced me to a wonderful bit of parody that begins: Awake from your slumber! Arise from your sleep! The homily’s over! It wasn’t too deep! It brings to mind the old joke that the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist is that you can reason with a … Read more
Christopher Hitchens, in a fairly typical misreading of the Judeo-Christian tradition, is fond of pointing out that “the Jewish people did not get all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder and theft and perjury were okay.” Oblivious to the Church’s entire tradition of the natural law, he fancies he’s scored a … Read more
For those who may have missed it, P. Z. Myers, a washed-up academic at a third-tier school who takes out his bitterness on Christians and calls it "science blogging," claimed that some human toothache named Webster Cook had received death threats for stealing a Eucharist and threatening to desecrate it. Reader John Farrell repeatedly tried … Read more
Archaeologists find a pre-Christian stone that describes a savior who will die and rise in three days. Has Christianity been debunked? Mark Shea takes a look. In a story that has "Academic Seeks Publicity Gig" written all over it, the New York Times breathlessly revealed the other day that some professor had found a stone … Read more
In my travels around cyberspace, I happened to run across the Web site of James Franklin, a professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of New South Wales. He has a fun page titled “Myths About the Middle Ages,” which explodes various mythoids — such as: The alleged fragments of the True Cross would … Read more
Scott Hahn once remarked to me that the biblical pattern seems to be that what pride is to an individual person, nationalism is to a people. Sooner or later, every people seems to hit the point where they want to feel as though they occupy a special and privileged place in the Divine Plan. Now, … Read more
Somebody (I’ll say Chesterton, just to start another meme falsely attributing great quotes to him) once remarked that "the man who declares ‘The modern intellect can no longer accept the primitive doctrines of the Resurrection of the Dead, Transubstantiation, and a Trinitarian Godhead’ typically means ‘I’m sleeping with my neighbor’s wife.’" These days, … Read more
Do "Godspammers" who write converts to the Catholic faith honestly believe that they are the first people in the universe to ever suggest reading the Bible? If not, then what are they thinking? Almost every other day, it seems, I will open my e-mail and find something like this specimen (culled from my "deleted" file): … Read more
And it came to pass that Obama called his delegates to himself. And going up on an exceeding high mountain, he opened his mouth and spake, saying: I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began … Read more
My line of work as a writer and speaker on things Catholic has, thanks be to God, taken me to some wonderful places, both in the States and abroad. Last November, I was given the wonderful opportunity to visit England. Through the miracle of the Internet, I had gotten to know a delightful young … Read more
At the altar, the priest presides. In the world, the laity preside. This is the basic principle that ought to govern all our thinking about the roles of the ordained and the laity in the mission of the Church. Unfortunately, a huge number of Catholics don’t think this way, because clericalism continues to … Read more
Item: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. For the utterly confused atheist in your life, here’s another testament to the fact that atheism can’t stand to be in the same room with itself for too long. Here, the author tries to crib a little bit of consolation from the theistic tradition while hoping nobody … Read more
Evangelicals, like all orthodox Christians, vigorously affirm the Doctrine of the Incarnation — the faith of all Christians that God the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and became man. Evangelicals, like Catholics, believe this doctrine with every fiber of … Read more
Why does the mainstream media insist on describing any Catholic — no matter his or her level of faith — as "devout"? Is it a simple confusion, or is something more troubling going on? Everybody loves a riddle. See if you can guess what ties these people together based on the MSM coverage: Brought up … Read more
Last week, a new wrinkle seemed to appear in the conduct of Pope Benedict XVI vis-à-vis the sex abuse scandal. Down in Paraguay, Bishop Fernando Lugo got himself elected president of the country in direct defiance of canon law. What is more, he is earnestly seeking to be relieved not merely of his office but … Read more
Now that Benedict has come and gone we are in the thick of media analysis of the meaning of it all. Many folk (Rod Dreher is a notable example) were (as I expected) disappointed because the pope didn’t “do something” about bishops who have, to say the least, not particularly distinguished themselves in the Scandal. … Read more
One of my deepest hopes for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to America is that it will have something of the same tectonic effects that John Paul II’s visit to Poland had in 1979. We are, like the Poles at that time, a people living “under the ice,” in the memorable phrase of Timothy Garton … Read more
As we know, Chesterton famously observed that the mark of madness is not the loss of reason, but the loss of everything except reason. Periodically, something in our culture will show me the brilliance of that insight with great force. Long ago, I remember watching some film about human evolution narrated by Richard Leakey Jr. … Read more