A celibate, faithful man with SSA tells his story. Such valiant acts of discipleship deserve the praises of his brothers and sisters and will, I am confident, be met with cheers at the Gates of Heaven. Read more

You can help here. Read more

I’m still swamped with work, so I’ve missed out on all the fast-paced Jewish/Catholic hubbub surrounding the SSPX business. No sooner had I heard the Israeli Rabbinate was majorly ticked with Rome because of Williamson than I get this from a reader: Well, since every other Catholic blogger in the Northern hemisphere, besides yourself, is reporting this, allow me to pass along the bigger story. Every other Catholic blogger in the Northern hemisphere, besides yourself, is reporting that the Chief... Read more

Now you know! Read more

Spiritual reflections from the Kawfee Tawk crowd. They’re not bad people. They’re just sheep without a shepherd, regurgitating all the fluff they’ve been eating from a diet of TV and the spiritual equivalent of Twinkies. Standard Catholic apologetics (which is overwhelmingly masculine and combative) is a non-starter for reaching such people, who are not looking to what they call “spirituality” for intellectual rigor, but for love, acceptance, and community. No small part of what is wrong with a lot of... Read more

Cool story on a nun in the military. Read more

Down below, I posted a little poem from a reader. Most people were polite and made intelligent remarks about the poem. One reader logged on just to snark about it for no purpose other than to be nasty. I don’t need mindless nasty darts in my combox, so I deleted it. Now the reader writes, “What are you, a Mao Communist? What’s with the censorship?” thus demonstrating one of Shea’s Iron Laws: “The ruder and more adolescent you are, the... Read more

After years and years of incredible nuance on behalf of Bush Administration torture policies (“Golly, what *is* torture anyway! It’s all so confusing!”), after years of warm and sympathetic hearings for any and all arguments that, however tendentious, explain away the obvious teaching of the Church in a cloud of sophistry, after playing empathetic host all the usual suspect from the Ladies’ Gossip Sewing Circle–shazam! All of a sudden, Against the Grain has had a born again experience and is... Read more

One “Jay Donovan” writes: As a Roman Catholic I find your ultra-liberal ideology on torture upsetting to say the least. Torture is acceptable, extremely useful and has it’s place when it’s a last resort to getting critical information. YOU don’t know crap. Leave it up to the Military. Your not qualified to even write on the subject. A pseudo – intellectual at best. Sorry to hear you reject the teaching of Mother Church in Veritatis Splendor, Lumen Gentium and Evangelium... Read more

It was beautiful and moving (and a mob scene). One testimony to a live well lived is the number of people who turn up at your funeral, especially poor people. Dignitaries always draw a crowd because other dignitaries have to be there to keep up appearances. The throng that was there last night *wanted* to be there because everybody loved Fr. Tom. Today will be his funeral at 10 AM and I expect another huge crowd (though mitigated by the... Read more