http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5847170&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 Liturgy Reflection: Sunday, August 2, 2009 from JP Catholic University on Vimeo. These are nifty. Read more

I was having a discussion recently with friends and relatives about my changing feelings and thoughts about the liturgy. I asked how we can deepen people’s appreciation of the sacred, and in particular, the mass. My aunt commented that liturgy is very much a right-brained (meaning non-analytical, more emotional than intellectual) activity and that more often art is a better way to educate people about ritual and liturgy than talking analytically about it. So I’m wondering if you could ask... Read more

I find it incredible that anybody would think this blog inspiring. Still, I’m honored to be on the list. My only complaint: Fr. Philip is at 26 and I’m at 41. Curse you, my Nemesis! Soon my plans will be ripe and your impudence will meet with the furious vengeance of my Legions of Terror! Read more

The Amnerican people can stand a lot. But a President who drinks Bud Lite is more than any free people should have to bear. Read more

Evolution can explain love, empathy, friendship, honor, and all the things you accuse my narrative of lacking. Does it matter how those mechanisms came to be? We only need to know that they exist to use them achieve happiness and reduce suffering. The 19th century is not dead. There still walk and breathe among us people who seriously believe that their pet theory can “explain” love, empathy, friendship, honor, and all the other mysteries of human existence that have have... Read more

In another effort to get at what I mean by the “hierarchy of goods” and what I believe to be primary (the good of persons and families) and what I believe to be secondary (everything else), I offer the dangerously un-American conclusion of Chesterton’s What’s Wrong with the World, which really does run through my mind as I behold the spectacle of allegedly “conservative” attempts to say “Health Care is not a Right“. Now the whole parable and purpose of... Read more

For Aggies and the people of Bryan, TX fighting a hazmat fire. For a reader who writes: My wife is pregnant with our 6th child (4 by birth, 1 by adoption). We were just informed that he is “transverse” and will need to turn or we are faced with the real possibility of a c-section tomorrow (Friday afternoon). Please pray that Baby Tayan would turn into the right position and be birthed naturally. Please pray that we would walk in... Read more

…between people who get their teaching from the Tribal Pieties of the Right and, you know, the Catholic Church is this: People who parrot the talking points of the right say stupid parrot talk like “Health Care Is Not a Right“. People who actually bother to have their thinking influenced by the Church, on the other hand, can’t help but notice that the Catechism says things like: 2211 The political community has a duty to honor the family, to assist... Read more

In the thread I mention below, my “Might Makes Right” theorizer says, “The fact that morality feels compulsory does not necessitate that morality is compulsory, beyond the punishments society sets for violating its moral code.” Note the extremely impoverished understanding of what “morality” is supposed to be about. It’s classic Minimum Daily Adult Requirement thinking. We are atomized individuals doing exactly as we please for as long as we like without any regard for others and the only thing to... Read more

and fails. All such attempts are doomed. You either wind up borrowing some Transcendental Ought from supernaturalism, or else you wind up (as this poor fellow does) frankly saying “Might Makes Right”. Hand-waving about the obvious differences in sundry human moral systems is just that: hand-waving. Talking about it like it’s a stunning new discovery that never occurred to dumb Christians is, well, much of a piece with the provincialism that unfortunately tends to reign in New Atheist circles. Oh,... Read more