The truth doesn’t have a side. That thought came to me while re-watching To Kill a Mockingbird. To view this 1962 movie is to be taken back to a time and place that was black and white in many senses of that term. The story takes place in the South in the mid-1930s, when movies … Read more
The sexual harassment frenzy of the last few months—and it can only be called a frenzy—is disturbing in many ways, and decent and right-minded people need to speak up about it. It’s only the latest poison from the Sexual Revolution and the regime of moral relativism generally. First, it is troubling that in the minds … Read more
I am not a techy-type and I never thought I would do it, but I did—I took the infernal trouble of customizing my cellular telephone’s ringtone. With tongue in cheek, but not without symbolic intent, I programmed my phone to emit the sound of Darth Vader’s ominous breathing for every incoming call. Though people start … Read more
The story of the rich man and Lazarus is more than a bracing reminder about our duty to the poor; it is a cautionary tale about misjudging our spiritual condition. In Jesus’s day, material wealth and well-being were commonly assumed to be divine blessings for personal righteousness: the rich were rich because of their moral … Read more
The school, Christopher Dawson observed, plays a pivotal role in transmitting culture. Thus every despot since Napoleon has assumed control of national education. We Americans are free and so, we believe, is our educational system. But the fact that education is compulsory and largely administered by the state makes its status as a free institution … Read more
Secularists like to advise Christians that, for the sake of social harmony, they ought to keep their religion to themselves. Religion, they argue, is a private affair between an individual and his designated deity, and ought not to be dragged into the public square. Moreover, they helpfully add, it’s an imposition on others to confront … Read more
“A wind there was, rude and boisterous, that shook the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the … Read more
January 1, 2018, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, falls on a Monday. Because it falls on a Monday it ceases, according to norms the American bishops adopted in 1992, to be a holy day of obligation. The Code of Canon Law contains ten holydays of obligation but allows local conferences of bishops to … Read more
On January 1, 1818, Mary Shelly anonymously published the first edition of Frankenstein. Because her husband, the renowned Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, helped her edit the original manuscript and wrote a preface to the first edition, most critics, reviewers, and readers assumed he had written this Gothic tale that was, arguably, the first science … Read more
Pope Francis was right that the traditional English translation of the Lord’s Prayer is deficient, but his suggested change, and even his identification of which part needs to be changed, is simply wrong, and requires some comment, partly because it is a question so easily answered, partly because others have answered it easily. There is, … Read more
A century on, the Russian Revolution still looms like a shadow from the past. Rather surprisingly, in a way, since the Cold War has been over for nearly three decades. Yet there is something enduringly fascinating and even romantic about the Russian Revolution: the collapse of tsarism, the mass uprising of the Russian people against … Read more
Eight octave days, culminating in a New Year. Twelve days before Epiphany. Forty days until the Presentation. This is how we count the days of Christmas. The octave and forty days are biblical, prescribed by the Mosaic Law for Circumcision and the dedication in the Temple of a male who opens his mother’s womb. Through … Read more
In 2017 the following quotation was reported: What is going to be created will effectively be a god. It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it? These are … Read more
Just in time for Christmas 2017, the Pew Research Center released the results of a survey that found that 56 percent of Americans believe that the “religious parts of Christmas” are emphasized less in the United States today than they were in the past. It’s hard to argue otherwise: Even many of those who have … Read more
Forced by circumstances to get a bite to eat at a “fast food” place, I expected to find that frenetic, machine-like service, centered on maximum efficiency and the worship of speed. Fast food facilities are designed to move people in and out quickly, with little concern for the pondering of anything. They are strictly focused … Read more
On March 25, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation, commemorating the moment when Gabriel brought Mary the divine invitation to bear the Savior. Mary’s fiat allowed the Holy Spirit to overshadow her, and bring about the conception of Jesus. Now, at Christmas, nine months later, the work begun in Mary comes to its … Read more
Nietzsche portentously remarked in Beyond Good and Evil, “when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back.” The German nihilist fully appreciated where a world without God was gamboling. For him, no airbrushing the Brave New World. If only his scions were as brutally frank. Bereft of his Teutonic steel, they soak secularism in … Read more
One of the perpetual complaints against Christianity is that it is a life-denying, puritanical system. In the Victorian era, poet Algernon Swinburne referred to Christ as the “pale Galilean” from whose breath “the world has grown grey.” In our own time, films such as The Handmaid’s Tale portray Christians as robotic control freaks. Meanwhile, elite … Read more
A few weeks ago, I outed the anti-Christian Human Rights Campaign as a “font of evil.” I asserted they are in the business of persecuting Christian believers who may disagree with the homosexual agenda. I explained how they are rich and powerful and want to force their agenda on school children. I also said they … Read more
When I was attending Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas—the precise year and semester, I have forgotten—I met the first opposition to Santa Claus. I had known that there were people who did not believe in the “Christmas Man”; my parents had explained to me that such people did exist in the world. But the opposition … Read more