It was at about 3:30 a.m. when, in the middle of a dream, I awoke to a noise. Since the noise appeared to be that of a rifle being discharged from somewhere about the house, the line between dream and reality was a trifle blurred. Grabbing my 12-gauge and donning my brown leather slippers, I … Read more
Events over the last eight or nine years at my old place of work, Providence College, as well as events that have recently broken out in a new rash of the disease, have caused me to try to understand what makes someone a sneak, and what that might have to do with mob politics—with losing … Read more
Nothing facilitates jihad like ignorance of Islam. And since there is so much ignorance, jihad has been spreading rapidly. But we don’t seem to notice. We hear scattered reports about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran. We know or should know about the daily knife and vehicle attacks in Europe. Yet … Read more
Ten years ago this month, I called my grandmother, a devout Catholic living in the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia, to declare my intention to return to the Catholic Church of my youth, which I had left along with my evangelically-inclined parents after my First Communion. She was arrestingly unsurprised. “Oh, I knew you would, … Read more
Looking at social media recently, I saw someone asking for people to explain why they were Christians in five words or less. I was tempted to write three words: “It is true.” Then I remembered the words of the novelist and Catholic convert Walker Percy. When asked why he had converted to Catholicism he answered, … Read more
I am an individual. That is to say, I am the sum of all my idiosyncratic traits, inclinations, and unique accomplishments. I am also a person, which includes all my relationships with others, including the long-gone members of my family tree. When I say that I am an American, I contain the contributions of all … Read more
The noise this summer atop Art Hill in Forest Park, St. Louis, clamoring that something be done about the bronze cast of Charles Henry Niehaus’s “The Apotheosis of Saint Louis” should be remembered on this feast day of the sainted King of France. The ignorant anger that has taken the nation in its grip, toppling … Read more
There have been countless reforms proposed for the Catholic Church. There seems to be a disenchantment with God, Church, and worship that can only be described as an attack on the divine. Those inside and outside the Church attempt to expound on the elephant in the room or the enemy that is tearing her apart. … Read more
I rounded the corner at the grocery store not long ago and came across a woman who froze stock still. Her whole body became rigid, as if she had seen a fearful specter ready to drag her down to hell. She plastered herself along the opposite side of the aisle and stepped ever so gingerly … Read more
The word “vocation” has been diluted. Before the sixteenth century, “vocation” had an exclusively sacramental sense. But, as Max Weber points out in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the Lutheran and Calvinist dissolution of monastic and priestly orders gave rise to its modern sense of “occupation” or “profession.” What is the difference … Read more
The response to Covid-19 has resulted in a flood of restrictions on our behavior and activities, including within the Church. Initially, the bishops in the United States suspended the public celebration of Mass. If you weren’t a cleric, then it’s unlikely you could go to Mass anywhere in America from mid-March to mid-May. Then dioceses … Read more
The following is from Alessandro Manzoni’s Observations on Catholic Moral Teaching (1819). The translation is my own. If we followed its wisdom, our politicians would have more freedom to attend to their business, social media might become social, and our churches might become hotbeds of charity. What is the main and common motive that makes … Read more
It is hard to write about the victims of gender ideology, radical feminism, and the sexual revolution. After all, they are victims. But sometimes these victims take public positions that will lead others into the same type of tragic victimhood. And so today I write about two victims. It is also challenging to write about … Read more
I know what you’re thinking. It’s not that at all. Black Power is, of course, priests in their cassocks. Can there be any greater power than that? They present the great drama of the Holy Gospel. A priest merely in a black suit is prosaic; in the cassock, he is poetry. Perhaps this is why … Read more
Progressives eagerly remind America of its past of slavery and racism. So much so that The New York Times’ 1619 Project literally dates America that way, defining the country’s start by the year 1619 (rather than 1620 or 1776), with the arrival of the first Africans to Virginia that year. Mobs target statues of everyone … Read more
Over the last few years, some unjust blue-on-black killings have led to a growing consensus that racism is systemic, pervading every institution and social structure of shared life in America. It is a conclusion unmoored from fact. I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, during the Rosa Parks era, when signs reading “Colored” and “White” hung … Read more
“The use of Fashions in thought,” says Uncle Screwtape the astute, “is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers.” So, for example: We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which … Read more
Never in the world’s history have economic problems played such a large part in human life or had such a direct influence on human thought as at present. Economics have come to overshadow politics, to absorb into their sphere the entire social question. Even the man in the street has learnt that his personal welfare … Read more
Considering a title for this essay, I rather facetiously suggested to my friend, Father Edward Tomlinson, who assisted me with many of the facts for the piece, that I should call it either “Newman’s bums” or “Sacred bottoms.” Father Tomlinson, a priest of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, as am I, is the … Read more
Before nine o’clock on July 6, 1535, the Lord Chancellor of England was conducted to Tower Hill, London, where he lost his head for the crime of keeping his head. As Joseph Addison said, “He did not look upon the severing of his head from his body as a circumstance that ought to produce any … Read more