The Libyan affair — one does not know what to call it; not a war precisely, more an “experimental bombing” — is one in which both Canada and the United States are participating. We have a general election going on up here in the Great White North (where it is still snowing as I write, … Read more
It is about this time in Lent, around halfway through, that one begins to wonder what the point is. Of anything, really. One purpose of the season is just that: to bring us up against impossibilities. Today, I’m thinking particularly of impossibilities in the realm I am compelled to stare into in my daily life … Read more
“To assert no falsehood, and hide no truth,” was the motto of many journalists and papers when modern journalism was first setting up. The line is paraphrased from Cicero, though I am copying from the Mercurius Caledonius of Edinburgh, launched in 1661. Not untypically, this journal was conducted by a comic playwright — the errant … Read more
As a person who makes his living in the media (and I wouldn’t if I had any marketable skill), I often wonder what is wrong with us. For when I stop looking for events in the media and instead squint my eyes — so that I am looking not through the mirror of the media … Read more
My Christmas present to readers of this electronic journal this year will be to tell you to go read the Church Fathers. I should mention that you are getting this advice already “used,” or at least secondhand. I already wrote a column saying the same thing in a different way in my (very) secular newspaper … Read more
Lest there be any confusion, let me begin by admitting I am no liturgical expert. I have gone to some length to avoid becoming one, trying to shut controversies over the wording of the Mass out of my head while at prayer. As a convert from Anglicanism — and very High Anglicanism at that, with … Read more
Though he was no friend of the Catholic Church, Erich Heller was the enemy of our enemies, and under current circumstances, that should be good enough for us. The man has been dead for 20 years, and my paperback copy of his most famous book, The Disinherited Mind, has been yellowing for half a century, … Read more
There may be 30 million “recovering Catholics” (as they often call themselves) out there, across America, north of the Rio Grande — this according to a study cited by the Boston archdiocese. Perhaps 10 percent of the adult population of the United States count among our own lost sheep. It was part of their “market … Read more
Normally, I would not question the wisdom of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, especially when backed by the general disposition of the Church and specific, solid papal bulls. I do not doubt that the founders of the universities at Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, and so forth meant well. But in light of the experience of … Read more
One wonders, did the Romans (the old pagan Romans) know that they were done for? I am thinking of the third and fourth centuries, when the markers of civilizational decline were all around them, and yet life went on. That famous Goth Alaric had not yet trashed the Eternal City, nor Attila shaken it with … Read more
I took the year off from Father’s Day yesterday. For several years I’d been making a point, in my secular newspaper column, of writing something quite opposite to “feel-good” on the subject for the Sunday corresponding to this secular occasion. But glancing through the last couple of them, I thought, “That’s enough now: People are … Read more
I am writing this on the Sunday still called Pentecost, on the very eve of “Ordinary Time.” It is the great gift of post-Vatican II — the desert that howls before us. I have been a Catholic now for six years, four months, and 23 days, and am still fumbling through what used to be … Read more
The Mind of God is not an open book to us — the finite cannot comprehend the infinite — yet I have noticed that people (including this correspondent) sometimes speak as if it were. Having thoughtlessly omitted from our intentions the rather crucial “nevertheless, according to Thy will,” we presume to know precisely what God … Read more
It is an honor, of sorts, to have one’s Lenten penances externally imposed, and the whole Church has shared in this honor this year. Led by an ignorant and malicious attack in the New York Times, the liberal media internationally have been doing everything in their power to pin something — anything — on Pope … Read more
Roasted artichokes in oil; garlic-pickled mushrooms; cipolline onions in balsamic; exquisite antipasti and exotic pastas; squid in ink — I am doing well out of Lent so far, thanks largely to an after-Christmas sell-off in a local supermarket. The proprietor is an Italian immigrant of some taste, who got it into his head that if … Read more
It is not always easy to live under Islamic rule, or even under Islamic “influence.” Yet we share a planet, and with no other habitable planets within easy journey, we must find ways to get along. Consider for a moment: There are more than a million Arab Muslims in Israel. There are zero Jews in … Read more
As my readers are probably aware that Christmas Day is approaching, I will flag another religious event that is indirectly related. This is not outwardly a Christian event, nor alternatively “multicultural” either; nor really “upcoming,” since it is already here. Nor is it an “event” in the sense of a holiday, holy day, or anniversary, … Read more
Decades ago — nearly four of them, I think: around 1971 — I was reading an account of the problem of homelessness in Boston. It was a study done by clinical psychologists, and it contained one interesting factoid that remains in memory to this day. The investigators found that 95 percent of the street people … Read more
The last time I can remember big media taking an interest in the ecclesiastical affairs of Atlantic Canada was 20 years ago. There had been little interest before that, either, but the degree of attention that was suddenly granted compensated for many years of neglect. The issue was allegations of physical and sexual abuse against … Read more
In Jerusalem, on the Dome of the Rock — situated on top of what is almost certainly the Holy of Holies, within the ancient Temple precincts — is an inscription, in their earliest angular Kufic script, on what was also the earliest monument the Arabs caused to be erected in a conquered land. It reads, … Read more