It’s called a “sin that cries to heaven for vengeance”. Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud,... Read more
is up at The Catholic Weekly: For the first Christians, Jews one and all, the encounter with God took place through their entire culture. They were a people steeped in the thought and imagery of the Law and the Prophets: what Christians call the “Old Testament”. God, before he was revealed as God the Father by Jesus, was known to them from their mother’s breast as the God of our fathers. They knew him in the feasts and fasts of the Jewish calendar,... Read more
Ross Douthat argues that the Church needs to create a mechanism to hold bishops accountable as it has done for pervy priests: One of the best things that the bishops of the American Catholic Church did during the great wave of sex abuse revelations 16 years ago — and yes, there’s a low bar for “best” — was to establish a National Review Board, staffed by prominent layman, with the authority to commission an independent report on what exactly had... Read more
About a month and a half ago, a reader wrote me, but I’ve only had a chance to plow through my mail this week. He’s a good egg and he wrote: As I’ve mentioned to you before I really do see Pope Francis as a spiritual father, and I see what he’s doing from a missionary perspective, that’s why I’m very careful never to say anything bad against him, because people’s faith in the Church is so shaken that I... Read more
Just last week, Eric Sammons was announcing on CatholicVote that he was actually rejecting the very idea of being “prolife” so he could allegedly focus on being merely “anti-abortion”. I then pointed out that the last thing the bulk supposed “anti-abortion only” Christianists do is actually focus on being “anti-abortion only”. Instead, huge amounts of the time and energy goes to either cheerleading for what lie or evil Trump is selling or to making war on the Church. And now,... Read more
Recently, in this space, I remarked on the distinction between the claim of being “pro-choice” and the charge of “pro-abortion” and noted, in part: Very few people are “pro-abortion”. Most people don’t want the state making anybody get an abortion (except for those who supported the One Child Policy in China). What they want is to not be involved in whether a private citizen decides to avail herself of an abortion. Roughly 20% want that on demand and without apology. ... Read more
She writes: I read your noodling the cake article this morning and thought it was one of the best pieces you’ve recently written. Your gift of teaching was out in full bloom. Thanks! I am still confused about one point. Touring an empty frame in Poland is one thing, but if someone orders a cake, I thought you had to sell what the customer wants written on it. How is the baker supposed to either leave it blank or write... Read more
…on the first line of the Creed: I Believe in One God the Father Almighty I Believe There are two interesting things to notice about these words of the Creed. The first is that the Creed makes not the slightest attempt at argument for the existence of one God. The Creed assumes that the person professing it has already done their homework or has, at the very least, made the choice to say, “I believe in order that I may... Read more
In the providential wisdom of God we are punished by, not for, our sins. The core sin of American conservatives–and above all American conservative, “prolife” Christianists–is Pride. They cannot accept the fact that they were simply flat-out wrong. They have told themselves for twenty years that they are the *Real* Christians, the *Real* Americans, the *Real* Heroes. They are better than all their neighbors, better than the Pope, better, above all, than the Most Horrible Human Being in America, Hillary... Read more
Long ago, the Commies used to speak of suckers in the west as “useful idiots”. In the 20s, there was Anna Louise Strong, who was well described by Malcolm Muggeridge as “an enormous woman with a very red face, a lot of white hair, and an expression of stupidity so overwhelming that it amounted to a kind of strange beauty”. In the 30s, there was Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty. And so on, right up till the fall of the Iron... Read more
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