He is a fairly common fixture around St. Blog’s, a passionate Traditionalist and a sometime critic of the Holy Father. As you may guess, we often conflict. However, he seems to me to be an honest man. One evidence of this is his refusal to bow to the Right Wing Lie Machine’s Panic du Jour over Our Lady of the Amazon. I link his piece on this ridiculous hysteria in the hope that those readers who have decided I am... Read more
Here’s a new book from Maggie Green: In the fourth century, a young man named Augustine turned his back on the Church, plunging into a frenzied life of lust and dissipation. His renunciation left Monica, his pious Catholic mother, weeping and praying for his salvation . . . for more than a decade! Like so many Catholics today – even perhaps like you – Monica wrestled daily with the pain of having a loved one fall away from the Faith. Like us,... Read more
…is reviewed by reader Laura Freeburn over at her blog. It’s called The Black Spider. Here is a taste of the review: And why not do evil that good may come? – as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just. (Romans 3:8) Die schwarze Spinne is an unsettling tale that dramatizes the terrible consequences of moral cowardice. The author, Swiss pastor Albert Bitzius (1797-1854), wrote under the pious pen name of Jeremias Gotthelf. I’d been meaning to... Read more
I closed yesterday by noting of the people having hysterics over Our Lady of the Amazon that just an ounce of charity would have prevented this whole ridiculous Panic du Jour. A reader replies: You make a lot of good points. But why can’t you (among others) admit that the problem here is not all because of wackos with tinfoil hats. If the Synod was to help appreciate the Amazon culture, then why didn’t the Holy See Press Office have... Read more
People ask me if I believe in organized religion. I always reply: “No. I am a Catholic.” I subscribe heartily to Hilaire Belloc’s remark: The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight. I regard the casual relationship the Vatican has with efficiency, organization, and clear communication... Read more
Quick question: What is this?: The answer depends far more on the way that you see than on what your eyes register. Here are just some of the perfectly true answers to that question. It is photons hitting your eye. It is a jpg file. It is silicates. It is a big stone building. It is a semitic temple. It is the Temple in Jerusalem. It is a model of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is a photo of the... Read more
He’s a Hollywood writer, director, and producer who is most notably known for his work on major television network series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Grimm. He is also a convert to Catholicism and is featured in the new Evangelization & Culture Journal. Here he is on the writing process, good story-telling, and his conversion to Catholicism: https://wordonfire.institute/journal-david-greenwalt Read more
Yesterday, I gave some background on the Amazon Synod and the bizarre spectacle of vigilante Catholics throwing a statue called “Our Lady of the Amazon” in the Tiber. You can learn the basic purpose of the synod there. Some, who suckle solely at the teat of Right Wing Lie Machine media, immediately declared that “nobody” calls the figure Our Lady of the Amazon that but me. Me… and the woman who presented it to the Holy Father: I stand corrected.... Read more
Now that the Amazon Synod is breaking on the consciousness of people who are not total Catholics nerds, due to the vigilante violence of goons cosplaying as destroyers of idols, I thought I should give a little background to Outsiders as to what is going on with the synod–and with the strange little sect of Catholic Know Nothings who have appointed themselves the Angels of God’s Wrath against the Holy Father and their brother and sister Catholics in the Amazon... Read more
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