“Don’t immanentize the eschaton!” was William F. Buckley’s popularized version of an idea taken from the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. Buckley later made it a political slogan: “Don’t let them immanentize the eschaton!” With apologies to Voegelin scholars, what Buckley meant was:“Don’t let ideologues try to create heaven on earth, because they’ll deprive us of … Read more
One might wonder why an almost 800-page book written 67 years ago (1952) by an author who died in 1961 would still have any relevance today. The book is Witness by Whittaker Chambers. It is both an autobiography and a “tell-all” book of a complicated life, of espionage, of a notorious court case, and, finally, … Read more
Many commentators have perceived that the New York State law that legalizes infanticide when a child has survived a late-term abortion is a watershed. This was certainly buttressed by both the State’s celebratory lighting up of the Freedom Tower building after its passage and the subsequent public justification of infanticide by Virginia’s governor (a pediatrician, … Read more
Aristotle says that sight is the most philosophical sense. Of the five senses, it most resembles our capacity to know. We naturally desire both to see and to know. Indeed, knowing is an intellectual seeing. Of course, “I see” can mean “I understand.” Plato calls the highest kind of knowing noesis, typically translated into English … Read more
Like any complex functional system, human society involves distinctions, hierarchies, and lasting connections. The Internet, and electronic media generally, disrupt all that. They make everything equally present to everything else, and put all things on the same footing. Relationships become fluid, and sounds and images can be chopped up and reassembled, so that anything can … Read more
The teaching of the Catholic Church with regards to the priesthood is that the priest is ontologically superior to the lay person. This superiority occurs at the moment of ordination. Ordination, like baptism, confers an indelible mark upon the soul of the priest, and it is this mark that causes the superiority. There are a … Read more
Full disclosure: I have been scarred by vampiric literature. It happened when I was a boy. My mother learned of an isolated Catholic family living in the woods outside town who had a lonely son of my age. As happens in childhood, I was enlisted upon a mission of charity. Having received my marching orders, … Read more
An informative, comprehensive, well-written, and persuasive book, The Splendor of Marriage was published by Angelico Press to mark the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968). In a culminating chapter, Richard Spinello lays out the argument of Humanae Vitae and makes it clear why the document is so central to Catholic doctrine … Read more
Often when the topic of the East-West schism between the Orthodox and Catholics comes up, the discussion often includes the Crusades, and particularly the Fourth Crusade, which culminated in a Latin army conquering not any Muslim territory, but the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 1204. The Orthodox have a long memory in reference to this … Read more
Catholics in Colorado were recipients of a recent bombshell in the form of an agreement between our three Catholic dioceses and the State Attorney General’s office. According to the agreement there is to be a new “independent review” in the state of every priest’s file going back seven decades to 1950. The argument for this unprecedented … Read more
Early in his pontificate the Catholic Left gushed about the Francis Effect, which mainly reflected their hopes and dreams that the new Holy See leadership would advance their “progressive” agenda. Progressive is usually code for departing from the teachings of Scripture and Tradition. And they predicted this would attract new converts and reverts who had … Read more
Like a voice calling out from the wilderness, there are times when some of the strongest and wisest words from a bishop arise not out of the cultural centers of the world, like Rome or New York, but rather from unexpected places. This should not really be a surprise, as bishops designated for the major … Read more
“It’s not going to be long now,” says the doctor, as you stand beside the bed of your loved one. “Shall I send for the head of the Liturgy Committee?” Some years ago, on the island where we live during the summer, the bishop assigned a new priest and told him that his job was … Read more
On February 22, 2019, The Irish Times reported that “a four-year-old child, who was found to have been injured at 20 weeks’ gestation, is to receive €45,000 damages for personal injury arising from an accident in a [supermarket] store.” The Irish Times went on to report that the judge declared that the injury of an … Read more
On March 3, 2013, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor—an alumnus of the St. Gallen mafia—met with then-Cardinal Bergoglio over risotto and wine. It was the evening before the pre-conclave general congregations—as Murphy-O’Connor recalls in his memoirs—and the old friends were discussing “the sort of person we felt the cardinals should elect.” A day earlier, an anonymous cardinal … Read more
“They count rosaries…. Please don’t laugh.” ∼ Pope Francis Thomas De Quincy’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, by turns glamorizing and ruing his dependence, was first printed anonymously in 1821. Its succès de scandale emboldened the father of addiction literature to acknowledge paternity in an official edition the following year. Literary cachet notwithstanding, quotidian journals didn’t approve. … Read more
Good friends came over the other night with their six kids to watch School of Rock, the story of never-was rocker Dewey Finn who pretends to be a substitute teacher at a swank middle school. Rather than teach the usual curriculum, he teaches them rock ‘n’ roll so they can win a Battle of the … Read more
There is a major problem with books written solely from an economic prism. Consider the fact that the American economy is booming by all major indicators. Unemployment is down to record lows. Inflation is minimal. Consumer confidence is up. We have not seen times like this for decades. Admittedly, wages are still low, and debt … Read more
The New York Times has spent this past week in a less than subtle attack on clerical celibacy, insinuating it as the cause of the current crisis in the Church. On the eve of the Vatican summit on The Protection of Minors in the Church, the Times, in a panic that homosexuality will be blamed … Read more
In its recent Sunday edition, America’s newspaper of record ran a front-page article on the challenges facing gay Catholic priests titled “A Silent Crisis for Gay Priests.” It is the most recent specimen of the journalistic genre of suffering-gay-Catholic-priests-in-an-unwelcoming-Church. The narrative is well-known by now: a Church which fails to welcome gay priests, whose leaders … Read more