Many religious roads lead a convert to Rome, and a frequent guidebook is something written by G.K. Chesterton: often Orthodoxy. In his new collection of convert stories, My Name is Lazarus, Dale Ahlquist, the world’s greatest living Chesterton promoter, claims that he can name a couple of thousand who followed the fat journalist across the … Read more
The political scene is drawing toward the center of our national consciousness (if it ever left) as Democratic presidential debates take place and the 2020 election nears. As this process happens, faithful Catholics need sound ways to think about candidates, policies, and the landscape in general. Josef Pieper, a great twentieth-century philosopher, provides a broad … Read more
“The Vatican’s new document on gender will be used to oppress and harm LGBT people. It perpetuates false stereotypes that encourage hatred, bigotry, and violence.” This statement from New Ways Ministry was tweeted by Fr. James Martin in reaction to an important new Vatican statement by Pope Francis’s Congregation for Catholic Education. Issued during Pride … Read more
“In the end, the only memorable stories, like the only memorable experiences, are religious and moral. They give men the heart to suffer the ordeal of a life that perpetually rends them between its beauty and its terror.” ∼ Whittaker Chambers, Witness Evil loves the spotlight. It is exceedingly easy to perceive the chain reaction … Read more
Most of us have probably wondered why people who clearly do not believe in Catholicism choose to remain within the Church, actively working to undermine its doctrines, structures, and practices. I have thought of more and more such reasons as time has gone on, some of whose validity has recently been confirmed by my reading … Read more
In the wake of ongoing new reporting regarding sex scandals among many clerics, we have witnessed increased calls for the Catholic Church to loosen celibacy restrictions for the priesthood. Even many devout Catholics have begun to believe celibacy represents an unhealthy repression of sexual urges. To stem the tide of clerical abuse, the Church must … Read more
Each of us knows that certain things are wrong—not because we believe they are wrong, but because they really are wrong. And that applies to the moral relativist as well. If you want to see a relativist sink into a sophistic seizure, ask him about the “virtues” of cruelty, rape, bigotry, exploitation, or the Holocaust. … Read more
If the Church invites dialogue about gender ideology and homosexuality, does this signal a possible compromise of Catholic doctrine? This question lies at the heart of the controversy over the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education’s recent document, “Male and Female He Created Them”: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in … Read more
While I write this review, I am going to read the good poem I am reviewing. You come too. “The Pasture” by Robert Frost I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha’n’t be gone long. – … Read more
Centenarians are not as rare as they used to be and one can profit from their memories. In California, I spoke with a woman who had traveled there from Missouri in a covered wagon. I visited another woman in a retirement home who was the first to hear her English professor at Wellesley College, Katherine … Read more
As expected, the U.S. Women’s National Team won the Women’s World Cup. As also expected, members of the women’s team, led by chief spokeswoman Megan Rapinoe, were known as much for their politics as for their play. Rapinoe got it going with her comment that she wouldn’t visit the “f–ing” White House if she was … Read more
Thanks to Pope Francis, the Vatican now joins the growing list of the world’s sanctuary cities. If you’re a clergyman wanted by civil authorities or Church authorities in your native land, the Vatican will offer you a safe haven and, quite possibly, a cushy job. When Monsignor Battista Ricca got in trouble over a string … Read more
Believers won the latest battle concerning the free exercise of religion in these United States. The Supreme Court again proved amicable in its 7-2 decision in American Legion v. American Humanist Association, ruling that the 40-foot Peace Cross standing on a public cemetery for nearly a century can remain, largely because it was erected in … Read more
I provide the following glossary as a service to those unwoke, unhip noctambulants who, like me, find themselves obliviously sleepwalking through the dreamscape of contemporary American culture. I provide for your edification, fellow somnambulists, the following terms taken from the argot of those who place themselves at the vanguard of the current reproductive rights/reproductive justice … Read more
The French people have a lot of experience in rebuilding churches. World War II, World War I, various nineteenth-century governments, the French revolution, the Huguenots and, before that, the barbarian hordes all took a toll on these heavenly palaces—not to mention fires and damage due to the travails of time. This latest fire, watched by … Read more
In his treatise The Rise and Fall of Elites, Vilfredo Pareto proffers the thesis that “the history of man is the history of the continuous replacement of elites: as one ascends, another declines.” Unduly reductive as this contention is, Pareto attunes us to the persistent presence of elites in even the most revolutionary and populist … Read more
In his brilliant Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman writes eloquently of the power of the Catholic Church to assimilate non-Christian, and even heretical, beliefs into her own Tradition. He writes about the Church as being able to stand firm among various philosophies, dogmas, and cultures as one who … Read more
These last few years, my wife and I have been restoring an old Victorian house that once was a rectory on our island in Nova Scotia, where we live in the summer. I would like to draw an analogy between what we have done so far and what should be done in the Church. We … Read more
Last year in this forum, I wrote “Where Should a Catholic Get Married,” responding to the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s accommodationist approach in allowing Catholics to marry outside of churches and chapels. I criticized Baltimore’s policy and urged other bishops to avoid it because it institutionalizes a lax approach to the sacramental meaning of marriage, which … Read more
“Where there’s life there’s hope, as my Gaffer used to say; and need of vittles, as he mostways used to add.” In this weary world, two of the most formidable pitfalls lying in wait for our stumbling feet are the temptations of doubt and despondency. Whether the cause of discouragement lies within or without, it can be … Read more