It shall come as a surprise to no one that I am a great fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. Having discovered The Lord of the Rings in Junior High (thanks in no small part to having been introduced to C.S. … Continue reading
Category: Polemics
Voting
A couple of weeks ago President Trump formally launched his campaign for reelection and the crowded field of Democrats seeking their party’s presidential nomination have had their first television debate. Election year 2020 is upon us. That makes this a … Continue reading
Catholic Action League Raps Injunction against Title X Compliance
The following is a Catholic Action League Press Release: The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today is criticizing a lower court judge for blocking the Trump Administration from restoring Ronald Reagan era reforms in the disbursement of Title X family planning dollars. U. S. … Continue reading
Deus Vult!
In 1095 Pope Urban II journeyed to his native France and to an assembly of Church dignitaries and Frankish knights gathered in a field outside the town of Clermont. There, he preached the First Crusade to liberate the Holy Land … Continue reading
A Boston Catholic Irishman on Saint Patrick and His Enemies
Perhaps nowhere else in Christendom can an entire nation and its vast diaspora of descendants trace their Catholic Faith and culture — and their prospects for eternal salvation — to a single saint. Our debt of gratitude to Saint Patrick … Continue reading
‘St. Augustine, Genesis, and Theistic Evolution’: My Interview with Joseph Gedney
My bright and learned interlocutor in this interview is a 17-year-old homeschooled young man who knows more about this subject than many older folk who pompously pontificate on it. Far from advocating, favoring, or providing useful arguments for theistic evolution, … Continue reading
Irreconcilable Doctrines on Justification
An article I came across recently quoted a very high-ranking churchman saying, not in so many words, that Martin Luther was right about the doctrine of Justification. It was alarming to see, though not entirely surprising in these days when … Continue reading
Up From the Bottom (Part Two)
“Those who have not lived before the Revolution do not know the sweetness of life.” So said, with great irony, Charles Maurice de Tallyrand, the renegade bishop who did as much as any individual to empower the French Revolution of … Continue reading
The Truth About Padre Pio
“Did You Know That Padre Pio’s Stigmata Was Self-Inflicted? My ‘Pastor’ Friend Says It Was.” I have a friend who left the Church many years ago and is now a pastor of a small Pentecostal community in my home town. … Continue reading
The Civilizationists
There is a new word I’ve come across lately: civilizationist. I don’t know who coined it and it’s an awkward word but communicates well enough I may take to using it. Those who do signify by it someone who is … Continue reading
Viganò, the Homoheresy, and Spiritual Blindness
Not long ago, I was in an online controversy with a young woman who objected to something I wrote. We went back and forth a bit, but the discussion went nowhere fast. She was defending positions diametrically opposed to the … Continue reading
Lessons to Learn from Clerical Scandals
It is not my custom to write about the latest scandal. There are good reasons for this. The world is fallen and scandals abound, even in the best of times. To dwell on them risks losing sight of the good … Continue reading
Saint John Eudes on the Necessity of the Catholic Church for Salvation
From Saint John Eudes’ book, Baptism: Man’s Contract with God: That you may have a true faith in those things which God has revealed, it is necessary that you should believe in the Catholic Church, in which alone you can … Continue reading
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
A Remedy for Young Turks and Old Fools
There is an excellent fourteen-minute sermon called “The Error of Juvenilism” available online for the hearing. It is much worth a careful listen. The observations of the preacher, and the questions that arise in his wake, provide us with a … Continue reading
