Oedipus Rex by Sophocles is more than merely a tragedy. It is a profound meditation on the relationship between fate and free will and on the consequences of that relationship with respect to the mystery and meaning of human suffering. Its plot is convoluted and provocative. Oedipus becomes King of Thebes after answering the riddle … Read more
Experienced exorcist Fr. Vincent Lampert provides pastoral, theological, spiritual, and biblical insights into the nature and purpose of the Rite of Exorcism. He bases the discussion on his own experience and on the biblical witness, mostly from the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel depicts the reality of evil during the New Testament era and how … Read more
I see that Ousseynou Sy’s sentence for attempted murder has just been reduced to 19 years on appeal. Ousseynou Sy? Perhaps the name doesn’t ring a bell. He’s the bus driver who set his bus full of children on fire two years ago. It happened on a highway near Milan, Italy. Sy hijacked his school … Read more
The decline of the Catholic Church in America was happening rapidly before COVID-19. Returning to the methods that produced the radical decline in Sunday Mass attendance along with the low numbers of marriages, baptisms, catechumens, and overall members practicing their faith would be both ignorant and fatal. What we need now is a shift that … Read more
When the abortion-tainted COVID-19 vaccines were first introduced, the initial question rightly raised by Catholics was, “Can I receive this vaccine?”; i.e., is it morally permissible? However, too few Catholics bothered to ask the second important moral question, “Should I receive this vaccine?” After all, we are not called to live a minimal life of … Read more
I’ll never forget the look in that engineer’s eyes when he interrupted the professor. “Wow,” he exclaimed, “I get it, I get it!” I know what he was feeling because I felt it too. It was as if the final nail in a bridge between islands in my mind had been hammered home. The class … Read more
It seems like rioting (or the threat thereof) has become a form of participatory democracy. Nothing reveals the disintegration of authority and the common good so much in our society as the more and more frequent resort to violence. That this is particularly connected to police and the use of force, undue or otherwise, is … Read more
After a long absence, bestselling author Jordan Peterson has climbed back from a brutal medication dependency triggered by a family health crisis. He returns to the stage by launching another book. His last book delivered twelve rules to order one’s life. His new work is titled Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. Those who … Read more
The Church of England is crumbling so quickly it may barely reach its 500th birthday, in 2034. This is not just my opinion—it’s the opinion of the church itself, which in the United States is known as the Episcopal Church and in Canada and elsewhere is typically known as the Anglican Church. Here in the … Read more
There was once a thriving little town in Central Europe where almost everyone was Jewish and they all had a job. The single exception, it seems, was the Village Idiot who, when offered work, refused to take it. What was the job? It was to wait at the outskirts of the village for the arrival … Read more
The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement during the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, brought increased scrutiny into the movement’s leadership. Formed in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting back in 2013, Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization that uses race as a weapon against communities across the United States—that much … Read more
“The early church was a socialist church.” So said Rev. Raphael Warnock in 2016, four years before the citizens of Georgia elected him a U.S. senator. It’s a strange statement, least of all because the description “socialist church” is an oxymoron. Not only would the Church fathers be puzzled by it, but so would socialism’s … Read more
The topic of “discerning a vocation” is a commonplace yet difficult one with young Catholics. In order to make a generous choice of a state in life (usually, in the Roman Rite, between marriage and consecrated religious life and/or priesthood), young men and women in the Church must listen to and grapple with every aspect … Read more
Spare a thought for progressives. Life hasn’t been all sunshine and roses lately for those who would sing a new church into being. Or so Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., reports in his latest column on the future of Catholic liturgical reform for Religion News Service. There’s a long way to go—his concerns center around eight … Read more
Alfred Kinsey was one of the great prophets of our time. Alfred Kinsey was one of the great devils of our time. Between those two assertions lies a fantastic tale that pitted a determined little woman named Judith Reisman against the sexual researcher Alfred Kinsey. In his time, Alfred Kinsey bestrode the world like a … Read more
Several decades ago, in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff contended that, in the West, the religious worldview that was concerned with personal salvation in God had been eclipsed by the therapeutic culture. The primary goal of this new, dominant culture is for the individual to feel good because there is “nothing at stake … Read more
It is impossible these days to be a university professor and not be accused of offending someone. Offensiveness is now regarded as a synonym for disagreement. I recall presenting to my class a distinction that psychologist Abraham Maslow made concerning two types of cognition. “Deficiency cognition” (D-cognition) occurs when an object is experienced partially or … Read more
Like most fairy tales, the story of Rumpelstiltskin has an undercurrent of horror. If it’s been awhile, here’s a refresher: an arrogant father, seeking esteem in the eyes of the king, boasts that his daughter can spin straw into gold. With this lie, the unnamed daughter is discarded from one pair of arms to another, neither … Read more
Last week, Leila Lawler and Leila Miller co-authored an article for Crisis Magazine entitled Catholic Men, Rise Up and Fight. This exhortation is a Cri de Coeur from women who are sick of what’s going on in their Church, and they are begging men to address the problem. Here is one man’s response. Mesdames Lawler … Read more
Last week, Hans Küng, the king of the dissident German Catholic theologians, met his maker. At the time, I tweeted, “King Küng meets God-zilla.” In doing so, I had no intention of comparing either Hans Küng to a giant gorilla nor the Almighty to a giant lizard. It just seemed too juicy a dad-joke to … Read more