Human beings suck. We’ve murdered, raped, belittled, ignored and otherwise objectified each other since we first learned to totter on two feet, and will continue to do so until the whole edifice of earth collapses beneath us. If you nodded, agreed, or agreeably grunted at that statement, then please — go outside, take a knee, punch yourself in the face. Reject despair. Mankind will always face temptation. Evil will always be seductive. But every sin is a free choice made... Read more
I got this from a reader today. It’s awesome. I cannot be held responsible for any deaths that result. The BadCatholic Drinking Game Take a drink: – When a post can be summed up using a Chesterton quote – When you can identify the author he’s been reading – When someone comments thinking Marc’s arguing the exact opposite point – When someone comments expressing disappointment over crude language in the post – When a comment thread is longer than 20... Read more
I would like to vindicate an undeniably stupid experience, and make a largely ridiculous claim. It involves a Buddleja americana. A butterfly bush. My buddleja grows in droop, like a girl’s bangs in the 90’s, right next to the patch of driveway designated for parking my car. The car slides under the droop, and I perform a daily bow when exiting or entering to avoid being punished with a mouthful of over-pollenated purple. I bring all this up only to say that... Read more
This might be the greatest video ever to happen to the Catholic Church. If I had tried to stick my tongue out at the kids who think a female priest isn’t a contradiction in terms, I wouldn’t have been able to muster up the genius required to make a thing quite so demeaning to the cause. Love it or hate it, the Catholic Church is the largest unified religion in the world. She claims 1/6 of humanity as her children.... Read more
Jill Filipovic, in her remarkable piece “The disgrace of papal blessing for Ugandan homophobia” has put out her neck for the chopping. She is willing to speak the unspeakable, to forsake the usual orgy of intellectual self-pleasure, cast aside the shallow paradigm of unexamined vitriol, and say something the Internet has not the wherewithal to whisper: The Pope should — wait for it — modernize Catholic dogma. Oh, how she will be opposed! She’ll have to wade through thousands upon thousands... Read more
The first amendment was the first damn thing we thought of when we decided not to give the American Government unlimited power over the human person. And the first part of the first damn thing we thought of reads as follows: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… It seems apparent — though perhaps I’m romanticizing the entire situation — that the First of Firsts should be upheld, if only for the fact... Read more
1. Jack Kerouac The gentleman we can blame for hipsters and a prolific collection of beautiful, anti-establishment prose was a Catholic. He was no angel, and certainly not a practicing Catholic (he stopped attending Mass at 14), but it has been rightly pointed out that Jack Kerouac never left his Catholicism. The beat revolution — which later seemed to think Kerouac was advocating moral relativism and playing crap music in coffee houses (which led to the hippies, who led to... Read more
If we were decent, self-respecting animals, we would naturally prefer good environments — in which all our needs were met — over bad ones. As it turns out — and as a brief survey of popular culture makes apparent — we are currently thirsting for an environment in which all our needs are threatened by animated corpses seeking to slurp out our brains through crazy straws. I speak, of course, of the Zombie Apocalypse. The Zombie Apocalypse has become such... Read more
We live in a universe in which it is possible, and even probable, that innocents will be murdered. Our home is intolerable. We — inhabitants and products of this universe — cannot be satisfied with the universe, and are thus at odds with reality. We rebel in body and soul against our very mode of being, a mode made maddeningly clear to us in Newtown, Connecticut. We are beings-in-a-universe-where-children-die. Our experience of the shooting expressed this. We were outraged, stunned, disbelieving, numbed, and grieved.... Read more
Evolution is not, contrary to the Internet, an idea spontaneously generated from the cranium of Dear Darwin. It has existed since the Greeks, and was well phrased by Capital Kant, who stated: “an orang-outang or a chimpanzee may develop the organs which serve for walking, grasping objects, and speaking-in short, that lie may evolve the structure of man, with an organ for the use of reason, which shall gradually develop itself by social culture.” The Christian who denies the reality of evolution... Read more
Bad Catholic
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In