Truly this is the End of Days! Here’s the exchange: FOX News, of course, leapt on this and immediate started ginning the Persecuted American Christians narrative. But the reality is that the worst thing Christians can do in this moment is complain that people rolling their eyes at “thoughts and prayers” after the latest massacre are somehow attacking or persecuting us. Even if it were true (which it largely is not) we should keep the focus on the people who... Read more
For my fellow pro-life Christians: “We don’t have a Planned Parenthood problem, we have a sin problem. The problem is the culture and the human heart: people aren’t going to change, whether or not we regulate abortion. Regardless, the right to an abortion is constitutional, as ruled in Roe v. Wade, so regulating the businesses that provide it are a violation of our rights. Abortion is just ONE of the things that Planned Parenthood does, it’s not its primary purpose,... Read more
…more than any dog who ever lived. Over on FB, John Matthew Swaim tells the tale of how, trying to get his kids to go to bed, he was confronted with a bright question: Does Chewbacca have a soul? Summoning his Catholic Thomistic powers to their height, he replied: Aquinas says that the soul is, in one sense, “the first principle of life of those things which live.” Beyond that, he would distinguish between vegetative souls (plants, etc), and animal... Read more
We continue looking at Jesus and the Canaanite Woman and some of the issues in textual criticism of the gospels over at : Perhaps the clearest illustration of the fact that the gospels are “living memory” accounts of eyewitnesses is seen in the narrative of the Institution of the Eucharist. Here is the central rite of the entire Christian tradition. The whole life of the Church revolves around it. Unlike the parables or the teachings preserved in the Sermon on... Read more
On November 4, 1983, I saw my Dad for the last time. He had slipped into a coma the day before after checking into Providence Hospital with a bleeding ulcer. His liver could not handle the amount of blood protein his digestive tract was digesting. It created ammonia that went into the blood and sent him comatose. I stood next to his bed. He was breathing rapidly and snoring loudly. Emotions came in waves that evening. Mom, Rick, Mike, Jan... Read more
So this is pretty great: Read more
decided to hold forth on socialism and trick-or-treating last night. It did not go well. St. John Chrysostom, following pretty much every parable Jesus tells about the relationship of rich and poor, says that the rich exist for the sake of the poor and (hold on to your hats) the poor exist for the salvation of the rich. In the world of Fredo and his Dad, being born with inherited wealth is not a gift of God which you did... Read more
Catholic Costume Stores Across Country Reveal Most Popular Halloween Costume Is Slutty Mark Shea I suppose that’s a step up from last year’s Walking Dead Mark Shea. Read more
…but I especially enjoy Rod Bennett when he holds forth on Halloween: Today is Halloween — and, as you may have noticed, many of our Evangelical friends now shun America’s October spook festival altogether. They tell their children that Halloween is “the devil’s holiday” and that trick-or-treating is little better than dabbling with a Ouija board or consulting an astrologer. Contemplating the Idea of Death Though such extremism might seem odd or funny to many of us, it’s really, in one sense,... Read more
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