Plato said that God is thought thinking thought. As Father Leonard Feeney wrote, this is about as close as a philosopher can get to the knowledge of the Holy Trinity with his unaided intellect, and it is a loose approximation … Continue reading
Category: Faith and Reason
Science, Technology, and God
One of the two major reasons that people become atheists is that secondary causality is, so they think, sufficient to explain all that exists without any reference to God. This and the existence of evil are the two objections to … Continue reading
Remember Dr. Senior and the Great Books Program at Kansas U? Over 100 Converts!
ChurchPop: FOCUS missionary Ethan Stueve recently tweeted about an amazing story: in the 1970s there used to be a humanities program at the University of Kansas that got shut down because too many of its students were converting to Catholicism. Account is here.
Enough With the Monkey Business
Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared … Continue reading
‘Catholicism is the One True Faith.’ And…?
If anyone can tell me what Elliot Friedland is driving at in his article, ‘Catholicism is the One True Faith,’ I sure would appreciate it. Here is the beginning of the piece: Catholicism is the “one true faith.” You might … Continue reading
The Inanity of Scientism
Catholic Stand, Bob Drury: Moses set before the people Life and Death; from another aspect, Intelligibility and Inanity. He urged them to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). The Transcendentals Life and Intelligibility in this context refer to a single identity. They differ … Continue reading
Plato and Liberal Education
[Note: This article was originally published in From the Housetops in 1946.] I. What is Education Plato conceived education as an art of perfecting man. According to this view, education is possible because man is a perfectible being. Nobody ever … Continue reading
And Now for Something Completely Different: the Islamification of the U.K.
Due to some mystery lurking deep within the algorithms of YouTube, I was recently presented with a recommendation to watch this video, dating from 1984, of Graham Chapman appearing on a British television program called “Opinions.” I was intrigued because of … Continue reading
Lenten Considerations: Sin, Death, and the Resurrection
And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins. (1 Corinthians 15:14). Cardinal Kung emphasized the resurrection in one of his sermons just before his arrest in 1955: If we renounce … Continue reading
‘Latin Mass Magazine’ Book Review Mentions Brothers Francis and André
The Summer, 2015 issue of the traditional Catholic quarterly, The Latin Mass, features a four-page book review authored by Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro-Carámbula. The book reviewed is A Catholic Witness in Our Time: A Festschrift for Dr. Robert Hickson: Essays and Remembrances in His Honor. The … Continue reading
Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber: a Rap Sheet
It is no secret that the German Professor, Hans Joachim “John” Schellnhuber, was one of the three speakers on the occasion of the official presentation of the Pope Francis’ Encyclical, Laudato Si, this past June 18. Numerous Catholic commentators were … Continue reading
Counterrevolutionary Considerations
Saint Benedict Center’s conference will take place very soon (October 10-11). As I prepare my own comments on this year’s theme, I thought I would give both a plug for, and a sneak preview of, what our attendees will be … Continue reading
O Happy Fault!
Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, eighty-six years-old, Archbishop of Bologna from 1984 to 2003, has just had published a series of twenty-two meditations that he composed for Lenten exercises in 1989 for Pope John Paul II and members of the Roman Curia. … Continue reading
Catholic and Patriotic
Patriotism is a great virtue. To be a patriot is to love one’s fatherland. This means that it is to love the land of the people that sired you. Patriotism is a natural overflow of the virtue of piety — … Continue reading
What do Universities Teach?
Several recent occurrences have put me to thinking about universities in particular and education in general. One was marching in the Eucharistic Procession through the streets of Cambridge, MA, in support of the Blessed Sacrament against the planned Black Mass … Continue reading
