Meditations for Holy Week 2021

Last updated on: March 27, 2021 at 11:46 am By Gabriel Blanchard

Palm Sunday Matthew 21.1-11, Mark 11.1-11, Luke 19.28-44, John 12.12-19 Hail Eärendil, of mariners most renowned, the looked for that cometh at unawares, the longed for that cometh beyond hope! Hail Eärendil, bearer of light before the Sun and Moon! Splendor of the Children of Earth, star in the darkness, jewel in the sunset, radiant in the morning! —J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Silmarillion” Fig Monday Matthew 21.12-22, Mark 11.12-26, Luke 19.45-46, John 12.20-26 I taught her, as men teach... Read more

Wolves In the Fold, Pt. 4: Shame, Shame

Last updated on: April 29, 2021 at 10:50 pm By Gabriel Blanchard

Content Warning This post and series deal with various types of abuse, including sexual abuse and abuse perpetrated by clergy. Please read with caution. Go here for Part 1: What Is Spiritual Abuse?, Part 2: Some Things Abuse Is Not, and Part 3: Howls and Hirelings. What Are We Looking For? But what does spiritual abuse look like, or consist in? Most kinds of abuse try to take on the colors of normal behavior, at least in public and other... Read more

A Fisking of Bishop Barron’s “We’re All Becoming Platonists Now”

Last updated on: March 16, 2021 at 11:27 pm By Gabriel Blanchard

Yesterday on Twitter was an incredible shit show for reasons I’m not going into here (though I will recommend Chris Damian’s excellent piece on the subject), and I had a minor emotional breakdown. So, in the name of continuing to avoid the apology I’m pretty sure I owe a priest, I’m now going to be even more critical of an actual bishop. Bishop Robert Barron is an auxiliary in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He’s drawn notice via Word on... Read more

Wolves In the Fold, Pt. 3: Howls and Hirelings

Last updated on: April 29, 2021 at 10:49 pm By Gabriel Blanchard

Content Warning This post and series deal with various types of abuse, including sexual abuse and abuse perpetrated by clergy. Please read with caution. Go here for Part 1: What Is Spiritual Abuse? and Part 2: Some Things Abuse Is Not. The Roots of Abuse Who can be an abuser? We touched briefly last time on the stereotype of the predator—an obviously skeezy stranger trying to lure children with candy. Thanks to Hannibal Lecter, we’ve also developed a second stereotype:... Read more

Wolves In the Fold, Pt. 2: Some Things Abuse Is Not

Last updated on: April 29, 2021 at 10:47 pm By Gabriel Blanchard

Content Warning This series deals with various types of abuse, including sexual abuse and abuse perpetrated by clergy. Please read with caution. Go here for Part 1. Define Your Terms Before we get further into our discussion of abuse, I think it’s important to note a few things that are not abuse. Especially online, words can get thrown around in ways that aren’t really helpful, and can even dilute their power due to overuse—the term “gaslighting” springs to mind.1 Moreover,... Read more

Wolves In the Fold, Pt. 1: What Is Spiritual Abuse?

Last updated on: April 29, 2021 at 10:45 pm By Gabriel Blanchard

Content Warning This post and series deal with various types of abuse, including sexual abuse and abuse perpetrated by clergy. Please read with caution. RZIM Once when I was a teenager, I went to see Ravi Zacharias speak, down at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. If you haven’t heard of him, Zacharias was an evangelist, apologist, author, and minister. He was very popular among evangelicals in the 1990s and 2000s for his arguments defending objective truth and morals. He also... Read more

Five Quick Takes

Last updated on: February 24, 2021 at 1:30 am By Gabriel Blanchard

I. Thanks to a Twitter friend, I’ve been getting into the late Fr. Herbert McCabe lately. I’d heard of him in passing, and she sent along some PDF copies of the early essays in his book God Matters. I was enthralled; he may be the first author I’ve read who intelligently expressed the philosophical meaning of God’s incomprehensibility. Praying has, in a way, been more difficult since then: I think I had less “O God as thou art in thyself”... Read more

Review: “No Longer Strangers” by Gregory Coles

Last updated on: February 16, 2021 at 9:56 pm By Gabriel Blanchard

No Longer Strangers No Longer Strangers: Finding Belonging In a World of Alienation is the second book by Gregory Coles, following up on his debut Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity. InterVarsity Press is the publisher. It’s already available for pre-order, and comes out next Tuesday. The Good Points Although we’re both Side B1 and travel in some of the same circles, I haven’t read Coles’ first book, so I didn’t really know what to expect... Read more

FASH 106: Glitterbomb

Last updated on: February 15, 2021 at 8:50 pm By Gabriel Blanchard

Caution: violent imagery and language. Let’s review. We’ve discussed important misconceptions about fascism, sketched the ideology that drives it, and talked about some ways that fascists appeal to Catholic sensibilities. We’ve also dug into fascist ideas about race, and touched on the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. I hope it’s clear to any Catholic reader that fascism is deeply hostile to human dignity as such and to the gospel. Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.... Read more

FASH 105: “The Great Replacement”

Last updated on: February 13, 2021 at 12:08 pm By Gabriel Blanchard

Previous posts in this series: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fascism, Good Country Volk, Infiltration, Children of the Sun Caution: racist rhetoric. Fourteen Words Fascism is rooted in ultranationalism, but there’s more to it than that. Contemporary fascism (at least in Europe and North America) also relies on a conspiracy theory. Fascists used to call this “white genocide,” until that became too recognizably racist to win people over; the current favorite euphemism is “ethnic replacement.” The idea is: white people... Read more