For Those Considering Leaving the Church

Last updated on: August 23, 2017 at 3:11 pm By Chase Padusniak

People leave the Church for many reasons. In our time, there are some who depart because of their commitment to specific political ideas that soon enough manifest as theological ones. In this camp, I would put traditionalist-leaning Catholics who identify with the American or European Right. Orthodoxy often becomes, at first a reasonable, and before long, an irresistible, alternative to the state of the current Catholic Church. When one is deeply concerned with issues like immigration and the (often nebulous)... Read more

Subsidarity Is Not Libertarianism

Last updated on: August 9, 2017 at 7:16 pm By Chase Padusniak

Subsidiarity is a word that gets thrown around a good deal in Catholic circles. Typically, it’s associated with distributism, and most always with Catholic Social Teaching on the whole. Its emphasis on what some would call “federalism” (to me this colors the concept with Americanism so stark that it becomes unrecognizable) is, however, often perverted such that it no longer makes sense within its great theoretical context (e.g. its association with solidarity). In the United States, many “followers of Catholic... Read more

Catholic Modesty Fetishism

Last updated on: August 8, 2017 at 10:17 pm By Chase Padusniak

This is post is not about modesty as such. To go on about our cultural sexual and other missteps would take an entire other post (or several). My interest is, instead, in how modesty has itself become a commodity to be fetishized within (largely Traditionalist) Catholic circles. This is not surprising; sadly, it’s merely proof of how inescapable the logic of contemporary capitalism is, how charged with power the ways of the world are. Nevertheless, we’ll have to start with... Read more

Distracted Prayer

Last updated on: August 7, 2017 at 8:25 pm By Chase Padusniak

At this point, it’s trite to say that we live in a world of distractions. Trite, but true. As with all such things, the trouble is learning to breathe new life into a truth that has become old and stale, ossified through the pressurized heat of repetition. Indeed, that we carry people with us after we die, that those who live by the sword often die by it, are no less true in spite of their green-hued, once-copper dullness. So... Read more

Catholic Politics in the Age of Francis and Trump

Last updated on: August 2, 2017 at 8:32 pm By Chase Padusniak

As many of you know, an article in La Civilità Cattolica has stirred up a veritable tornado of responses. The piece, on its face, makes a point with which I agree: the alliance between Protestant fundamentalism, American conservatism, and Catholicism has become untenable (which is not to say it was ever meaningfully tenable anyway). The authors’ point, however, is marred by a deficient understanding of why and how this synthesis has broken down. Ross Douthat, himself often associated with the conservative-fusionist... Read more

Dying Before You Die

Last updated on: August 1, 2017 at 6:45 pm By Chase Padusniak

Memento Mori, the Ars Moriendi, the Danse Macabre, even Fish Fridays—the Church has developed many ways of reminding us that, well, we are supposed to die before we die so that we don’t die eternally when we do die. Put more simply, we’re supposed to die to the world so that we may have eternal life, mirroring Christ’s own death for the salvation of all. Angelus Silesius captures the point well: Saints do not die. It is their lot, To... Read more

Depressive Catholicism

Last updated on: July 31, 2017 at 9:46 pm By Chase Padusniak

It would be wrong of me to identify as “depressed.” For one, I’ve never been diagnosed. Frankly, unless things were to get impossibly bad, I’m resistant to the idea of what I see as medicalizing a variable and temporary condition (I wouldn’t describe my “depressiveness” as clinical). In my eyes, and in the eyes of many theorists and poets before me, anxiety as many experience it is a particularly modern quality. This isn’t to say that no one felt sad... Read more

What Is Love?

Last updated on: July 13, 2017 at 1:17 pm By Chase Padusniak

Popular discourse divides the rhetoric of love into two possibilities. Read more

An Interview with Yours Truly on NPR

Last updated on: August 17, 2022 at 6:55 pm By Chase Padusniak

I’ve been off at “theory camp” for the past few weeks, which, unfortunately has slowed down my blogging (not to mention the 150 or so books I have to read for my exams this fall!). While I find more time to get back in touch with you lovely readers, I thought I’d share this—an interview I did recently about Marx and Catholicism on Worldview, hosted on NPR’s WBEZ Chicago (my thanks to Julian Hayda and the whole staff for the... Read more

If the Church Condemns Socialism, She Condemns Modern Conservatism

Last updated on: June 29, 2017 at 2:49 am By Chase Padusniak

Liberalism carries with it specific discourses... Read more