1. The combox is not your blog. 2. Fred Phelps has gone to his eternal reward. 3. What was Pope Francis thinking of when he quoted Chesterton? 4. Christ also died for Osama bin Laden. 5. Are the über traditionalists so certain that John Paul II, John XXIII, and Paul VI are not in heaven? 6. My prediction on what will happen regarding communion for divorced and remarried Catholics. 7. What if Francis woke up and said, "Today I am going to change all of Church dogma"? Read more
If a Protestant looking into the claims of Catholicism were to ask me, “What one book should I read, where I can find a quick answer to any question I have?” I would tell him to read Devin Rose’s new book The Protestant's Dilemma. I would also recommend this book to Protestant apologists, even those of many years, well-skilled in polemics. It will remind them of the heavy burden of proof they face. The truth may set them free and bring them home. Read more
1. If Francis were truly the sovereign we need, he would do what I say. Who does he think he is? The pope? 2. Quotations from Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on talking in tongues. 3. Idiot combox trolls who think they can attack Mark Shea and Simcha Fisher and slide through moderation. 4. Who writes their posts in the visual editor anymore? 5. I'm the dog's---well, read the post and find out. 6. A hero and his widow: a true marriage story. 7. Answering e-mails. Read more
If bishops are going to exercise discipline against abuses that occur at the Latin Mass, they need to exercise equal discipline against those that occur at the Novus Ordo. Case in point: Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. The parish is under the direction of Deacon Sandy Sites. Deacon Sandy, who put out a video in which he details some of the “unique” Spirit of Vatican II at Good Shepherd, is now on video mocking Pope Benedict's red shoes. Read more
No one ought to have been stunned when it turned out that Fisher More College has had a problem with Latin Mass Onlyists. The Catholic form of Onlyism says that Vatican II and the Novus Ordo are invalid, and those who accept them inferior Catholics, even modernists. (When a Catholic says you’re a “modernist,” that’s roughly the same thing as when a Protestant says you’re “not saved.” To be a Modernist is two steps away from being a Jew.) Read more
What Mardi Gras reminds us is that feasts must be bought with fasts. Rightly understood, Mardi Gras is the day when families use up all eggs, fats, and butter in the home in preparation for Lent. The idea is, one does not want those materials to spoil and go to waste. That’s not really gluttony; that’s thrift. You get fat not for the sake of fatness but to get rid of all that tempts discipline of will. Mardi Gras does not mean, go, and get all the sin out of your system. Read more
Lent is my favorite season of the liturgical year. I never understood why it should be until I became Catholic and acquired Catholic guilt. Guilt is underestimated. The reason is because the world is delusion. Some people tell jokes all the time because it keeps them above the pain. But that doesn’t heal the pain, it just shuts it behind a door so that you can pretend it’s not there. Open that closet overstuffed with wrong and guilt and it will likely crash on your head. Read more
Flannery O’Connor, in a classic baring of the knife, said: “Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” O’Connor spoke with some authority: She did not have to pretend she could write. Once, when asked why she wrote, she did not come up with wind like “to make the world a better place,” or “to inspire people,” or “to change lives.” She said: “Because I’m good at it.” Exactly. I wrote my first negative book review last month. It was not published, and that’s fine. Originally I had suggested to Mr. P that I not write it at all, because I could not think of any positive value the book had, other than to termites. But Mr. P asked me to write it anyway, and at the end of it all, the author compared me to an assassin. [Read more] Read more
So the pope recorded a video on an iPhone for a meeting of Pentecostals led by TV evangelist Kenneth Copeland. His theme was ecumenism and the brotherhood of all Christians. It was an informal, honest, and deeply-felt plea for unity; and it was indeed moving to see a Protestant audience praying for the pope as a fellow Christian. Catholic blogs and social media talked about it all weekend, after Aggie Catholics posted the original story on Thursday. Read more
In 2002, I read The Cloister Walk by American poet Kathleen Norris. The book details a year in her life as a Benedictine oblate of St. John’s monastery. She prays, she reads, she spends time with monks, she contemplates the liturgical year, and finds her secular life deepened and her soul “enlarged beyond measure.” There is no way to describe the beauty of the language or the depth of interior space and encounter with the divine. The book fed and created longings. Read more
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