I Looked, And Behold, a Disk Horse I’ve been thinking for a while about the authorship of the Gospels. The more I think about it, the more it seems like the two-source hypothesis (the current scholarly near-consensus on the topic) is dumb and bad, and that the Augustinian hypothesis (the view that prevailed among the Church Fathers, and which St. Augustine expounded in The Harmony of the Gospels1) is smart and good. I’m therefore going to court scholarly ire by... Read more

CONTENT WARNING This post deals with pastoral and other forms of abuse, and contains some discussion of pedophilia; due to the nature of the topic, it has not been possible to mark out those sections of the post more particularly. Please read and share only with extreme caution. Nothing Fails Like It I said in my last that the Catholic Church in the US has a bad case of corrupted values. Grouchy Catholics love saying this, semper, ubique, et ab... Read more

But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of John. And the Lord said, “Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating... Read more

The Abomination Which Causeth Desolation I’m now concluding my series on Pride month celebrations. It began with my case for why Pride is in reality a pro-life idea, and I rebutted a number of common Catholic objections to Pride in the second installment. I intentionally waited until after June ended to finish this series; I did not care to post any critiques or concessions during Pride month, partly to drive home the point that the critiques and concessions could wait.... Read more

THIS POST DEALS WITH SEXUAL ABUSE. PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION. The Image of Gog The Vatican reached a new low the other day. (Well, a new low to my knowledge.) I speak of a recent pronouncement made on the subject of Slovenian priest Fr. Marko Rupnik. You may have heard of him. In addition to being a Jesuit priest and author of several books, he is also a liturgical artist of considerable repute, whose mosaics grace the shrines of Our... Read more

This continues my discussion of Pride celebrations from last week. Ye Have Heard That It Was Said To review, the objection to Pride celebrations we had next to consider ran along these lines: What about all the sexual immorality? You make such a virtue of accepting Catholic teaching about homosexuality—which is the least you should be doing, and you’ve admitted many times to not actually observing this teaching. Can’t you at least admit that the “identity” Pride festivals celebrate is rooted... Read more

A Summer Festivus How should Catholics respond to Pride festivities? A classic question for the apologist, which we can only assume slipped the minds of the Apostles, else it would surely be addressed in the New Testament. In order to give any sincere, intelligent answer to this question, we need to know what Pride is. Social media abounds in Catholics who are eager to tell us that pride is one of the seven capital sins.1 Luckily, words only ever mean... Read more

CONTENT WARNING: RACIST AND ANTI-SEMITIC TROPES AND LANGUAGE. Hope In Fools Dr. Janet E. Smith recently announced her decision to withdraw from the Hope Is Fuel conference. Hope Is Fuel was put together by Patrick Coffin, a professional apologist formerly associated with Catholic Answers (and, as of the last few years, a public sedevacantist1). Dr. Smith is a respected conservative theologian, with a specialty in bioethical issues, particularly contraception. Other speakers slated for the conference included—and to my knowledge still... Read more

A Sign of Contradiction Christian nationalism has gotten popular in the US over the last decade or so. It isn’t the same thing as Trumpism: Trumpism is a version of Christian nationalism, and a fairly crude one, but there are much more sophisticated types. This is why educated, literate voices like Doug Wilson and Stephen Wolfe can promote Christian nationalism among Protestants as a serious political project; it’s a little like theonomy,1 which Wilson has been preaching for decades. Among... Read more

Low Sunday The first Sunday after Easter is known in the English tradition as “Low Sunday.” It has other names; one of the more famous is “Quasimodo Sunday,” after the first two words of today’s introit1: Quasi modo geniti infantes rationabile sine dolo lac concupiscite (“Like as newborn infants, desire the milk spiritual, without deceit”). It is after this introit that Victor Hugo’s Quasimodo is named. The origin of the English name isn’t certain. One theory is that it’s in... Read more