In our days, we are seeing an intensification of the spiritual battle as the situation within the Catholic Church continues to deteriorate. Battles have casualties, and some of those casualties are Catholics who have lost their faith or are tempted to leave the Church because of the outrageous corruption, infidelity, and cowardice of its leaders … Read more
If revenge, as the proverbial saying has it, is a dish best served cold, then the story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis provides all the ingredients for a perfect meal. Sold into slavery by the treachery of his brothers, Joseph is carried off into Egypt where, after years of exile and loss, he … Read more
The author of the late-medieval Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is unknown. He was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, which means that he was writing in the late fourteenth century, and he is probably the author of three other works, including the long allegorical poem Pearl. Although the Gawain Poet was living … Read more
The bomb has been dropped. Today Pope Francis issued his motu proprio Traditionis custodes severely restricting the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass. In effect, it wipes out Pope Benedict’s 14-year-old motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which was issued in order to help those faithful who “continued to be attached with such love and affection to … Read more
On Monday, June 7, 2021, a human body was discovered in a black plastic garbage bag buried deep inside a trash container located in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The foot had been severed from the left leg, the left leg severed from the lower torso, the right hand severed from the right arm—and the rest of … Read more
Homosexual advocates like Eve Tushnet, Fr. James Martin, and Kirsten Powers do not like what they derisively call “conversion therapy.” They use the phrase to conjure up such horrors as boys strapped to tables being shown gay porn and getting electrical shocks. They use it to conjure up what they call “praying away the gay,” … Read more
In J.F. Powers’ 1963 National Book Award winner Morte D’ Urban, the acceptance of lavish gifts sets the protagonist, Fr. Urban Roche, into a spiral of spiritual conflict. In this comic masterpiece, Fr. Urban, a priest in a fictitious religious order that is noted in history “for nothing at all,” is an ecclesiastical hot shot … Read more
A considerable part of education is merely restating the obvious. No one would answer the question, “Is the Church a hotel?” in the affirmative when the question is stated this bluntly. Nonetheless, the heresy of identifying her with a hotel sneaks in through the back door. In this way, what should be obvious is obscured … Read more
Does the world need yet another article about wayward Catholic politicians and the Eucharistic scandal they and complicit bishops are providing? That depends. Persistence is optional if salvation is optional. One does not stop banging the pan with a spoon while the bear is still in the kitchen. We walk among saints and monsters. Such … Read more
Of all the civilizations of the world, the West is the most beleaguered and under attack. Making matters worse, it is often the children of the West—the descendants of those heroes, martyrs, and patriots who labored and died for faith, family, and fatherland—that are leading the desecration of Western Civilization. What, exactly, happened? The enemy … Read more
“This is my body!” “My body, my choice!” Those are the mantras, of course, of the pro-choice lobby. And they didn’t start in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. In my unfortunate life as an authority on the communist movement, which means reading a lot of dark stuff, I found communists using similar slogans in the … Read more
I have been thinking lately about the three sons of Noah. Some people have had monsters for parents, and they should tell their admonitory stories, as dispassionately but as accurately as they can, lest others fall into the same patterns of wickedness. Yet most people have for parents just the ordinary stuff of human sinners … Read more
I’ve noticed a fear pervading many Catholic discussions about the problems in the Church today. Whether the topic is something Pope Francis said, or the role of Vatican II, or the latest bureaucratic blatherings of the USCCB, there’s a fear that something will happen that will falsify the Catholic religion—that the Catholic Church is a … Read more
The U.S. Supreme Court, on the last day of the 2020-2021 session, in a 7-3 vote—the dissenters were Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas—declined to hear the case in which floral artist Barronelle Stutzman was sued by Washington State Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the American Civil Liberties Union after she refused … Read more
When your country, society, and culture are turned upside down by ravenous forces of Godless philosophies, you must respond. Saint Benedict knew he had to do something to safeguard the Faith and cultivate his personal holiness, so he went to the desert and changed the Catholic landscape for centuries. If we want democracy rather than … Read more
It’s fitting that the battle for our persecuted priests is raging in the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois. It was here, one hundred years ago, that the diocese’s first bishop, the Reverend Peter J. Muldoon, issued letters to his priests calling them to form what he called “parish councils.” Muldoon had come of age in the … Read more
Depending on where one receives the news, there are conflicting reasons given as to why employers are having a hard time filling vacancies. I had a shuttle driver share with me his belief that there are too many people “taking a long vacation on Uncle Sam’s dime.” Whether or not one agrees with this belief, … Read more
It is no secret that birth rates have been plummeting in developed countries worldwide for the past several decades. Even a BBC headline referred to this global baby crash as “jaw dropping.” The United States is no exception. After rebounding a bit between 1997 and 2007, the birth rate has dropped steadily—4 percent just between … Read more
Someone asked me the other day which saint to turn to when one is struck by a migraine. Since I’ve never had one, I didn’t know. So, I suggested we do a Google search so that we’d both know. Turns out there are two intercessory experts, Gemma Galgani and Teresa of Avila, both of whom … Read more
As we come to know more and more about the doctrinal and moral corruption of the Church’s hierarchy today, which rivals Renaissance records, it seems to border on the miraculous that Summorum Pontificum—the motu proprio issued by Pope Benedict XVI liberalizing the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass—was ever issued at all. It was a … Read more