Saturday, December 24. I went to Keene, N.H. to run errands. On the way, I said a chaplet of the Rosary. While carrying out my errands and on the trip back, I clicked on the local NPR affiliate to see if there was any news worth hearing. It would have been better had I prayed more chaplets of the Rosary. Read More »

The words are not mine, but the Pope’s. In his bull condemning the errors of Martin Luther, Exurge Domine, Pope Leo X described his subject as “one whose faith is notoriously suspect and in fact a true heretic.” Yet Catholics are not ashamed to speak well of this heresiarch who wrought such havoc in Christendom. Those interested in Catholic-Lutheran exchanges can read a little back-and-forth between a Protestant pastor and me that appears at the bottom of my article, The Epistle of Straw. The pastor sought to defend Luther from the things I had said against him.  Read More »

The moral teachings of the Church are of a piece with her teachings on faith. Christ’s supernatural revelation to the Church, along with the natural law also entrusted to her, constitute a “seamless garment”¹ of truth about God, man, and the destiny of man in God. To abstract one or another of the constituent truths out of this totality, and reduce the rest to a status of lesser importance, is very dangerous. Doubtless, there is a hierarchy of truth, with some doctrines being higher in rank than others, the Trinity and the Incarnation taking the uppermost places. Read More »

Some months back, I received a telephone call from a sedevacantist madman who challenged me to a debate on whether Pope Benedict XVI is the pope. This individual should know that debates are not the way we do our apostolate. I have nothing against debating, but we engage in other apostolates that take up our time, I believe, more profitably: publishing, street evangelism, our school, night classes here at the Center, putting on conferences, various youth apostolates, public outreach to spread the traditional Mass, and giving talks on a Catholic America. Read More »

The eerie headline — “Are Mental Health Professionals Working to Normalize Pedophilia?” — provides me an unwelcome opportunity to revisit the theme I sounded recently in Normalcy as Evangelism. A group of academic pedophile lobbyists — i.e., “scientific” activists who think child molestation is OK — are trying to redefine perversion as normalcy. Read More »

Catholic Culture: Over 300 of Austria’s 4,200 priests have pledged to take part in Aufruf zum Ungehorsam (Call to Disobedience), an initiative launched in June. The Call to Disobedience document cites “the Roman refusal of a long-overdue Church reform and the inaction of bishops.” Priests who support the document pledge . . . Read the rest here.

Ruth Davis Konigsberg of Time: The Church of Scientology is a notoriously difficult subject for journalists. The press has long been considered an enemy of the church, which was founded half a century ago by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. (To give but one example, in the 1950s, Hubbard wrote that TIME’s purpose was to “cause riots and disaffection.”) In a new book, Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, author Janet Reitman tells the fascinating history of the mysterious organization and its members. “I have sought to understand Scientology: not to judge, but simply to absorb,” she writes. “What I have found defies expectation, and even definition.” TIME spoke with Reitman about what she learned. Read the full report here.

Finally, at Medjugorje (which the Vatican is still studying, and has not yet approved), seers, like near-deathers, say on the other side we find out that God is the God of everyone and that it is man who makes divisions. “[The Blessed Virgin Mary] also emphasized the failings of religious people, especially in small villages — for example, here in Medjugorje, where there is separation from Serbian Orthodox and Muslims,” said seer Mirjana Dragicevic Soldo. “This separation is not good. The Madonna always stressed that there is but One God, and that people have enforced unnatural separation. One cannot truly believe, be a true Christian, if he does not respect other religions as well.”

Spirit Daily Website’s Michael Brown: Near-deathers have repeatedly said that to God, religiosity counts for little if it has not led to love. The precise same was stated at the Church-approved site of Kibeho, Rwanda — which began the same year as Medjugorje.

She came to reconcile people, said the Blessed Virgin — yet, she also suggested to four of the seers that they enter a convent or the priesthood. And while profoundly ecumenical — saying God judges on love, not legalism — she added, according to Father Svetozar Kraljevic, in The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje, “It is not equally efficacious to belong to or pray in any church or community, because the Holy Spirit grants His Power differently among the churches and ministers. All believers do not pray the same way. It is intentional that all apparitions are under the auspices of the Catholic Church.”

Reading in the Book of Acts about the events of Pentecost, three physical things accentuate the spiritual. In fact, without them, the coming of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles would be impossible to imagine, being, as we are, creatures of sense: mighty wind, tongues of fire, and speaking miraculously in foreign languages. Read More »

The teaser line for the article summarizes it nicely: “When the Massachusetts legislature voted in 1966 to end the last all-out ban on contraceptives in the nation, it was with the approval and assistance of the Boston Archdiocese.”

Catholic World News gave a short writeup of this in December of 2003, but Boston College Magazine — by no means a traditionalist think-tank — gives the pre-history of what amounts to a Catholic conspiracy to undermine Catholic teaching and public morals.  (By “Catholic” in the first instance of the last sentence, I mean, “official,” or “bureaucratic,” or “institutional” Catholicism.) Read More »