Sometimes in the midst of my incredibly busy life the door opens and I have a glimpse of what it is really all about. Quite often this happens on a Wednesday. On Wednesday evening I hear confessions and then say Mass. I celebrate the Mass ad orientem. It is the only time in the week I do so. I celebrate facing the same way as the people because I actually feel closer to them that way. I also feel closer to God.... Read more

My apologetics article about the Blessed Virgin Mary for Columbia magazine has got a huge readership. The Knights have now published it online here. The editor set a tough goal for me: explain in simple terms the main Marian dogmas in simple language in the length of a short article. Phew! It helped focus my thoughts and you might find the article helpful as a summary of Catholic teachings about Mary, and readers who are not Catholic may find the... Read more

We had some fun with the eighth grade class this week. I was asked to teach some basic Catholic apologetics. I began with explaining where Baptist and Bible Christians originated, why they believe in sola Scriptura and the best way to counter their most common challenges. So often the secularists mock Christianity by pointing out that Christians don’t actually obey the Bible. They dig up verses from Leviticus banning pork and shellfish and calling for adulterers and witches to be stoned... Read more

Media coverage of Catholic events inevitably brings up some howlers. I remember one commentator who wrote solemnly about the Pope’s “crow’s ear”–the staff with the crook at the top that he carries everywhere. This weekend’s visit to the Holy Land had me gasping when someone on NPR said about the church of the Holy Sepulchre, “This is the site where many Christians believe Jesus Christ is buried.” All the more moving then, to see the picture of the Holy Father... Read more

After the Canonization of Pope St John XXIII and Pope St John Paul II are there more popes in the canonization queue? News is that Paul VI will be beatified in the fall and on the plane on the way back from the Holy Lands reporters asked about Pius XII. The wartime pope’s cause has “stalled” said Pope Francis. The UK’s Catholic Herald reports here. Francis was asked whether he might declare Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who some... Read more

Have you ever been tempted to be an Catholic Wyatt Earp? You know, to be a Catholic gunslinger, a quick draw McGraw of the apologetics scene? Soon after I became a Catholic I would sometimes get myself involved with a Protestant in what I later termed a “Bible Gunfight”. Like a couple of desperadoes my Protestant friend and I would take cover behind our respective church theologies and fire pot shots at each other–gun slinging Bible verses back and forth... Read more

My friend Stratford Caldecott writes eloquently here on death and dying. Strat is the English writer and scholar who is nearing the end of his life. Last week his family organized for him to see the latest movie based on Marvel comics–which he has admired since childhood. The actors who play the superheroes all teamed up to wish Strat well with self portraits and a note to him. Quoting Bede Jarrett, Strat writes: Everybody comes to death eventually, either by... Read more

Over at Brandon Vogt’s fantastic website Strange Notions is this excellent, but brainy article be Fr Robert Spitzer on how contemporary physics points to a Creator. We should begin by clarifying what science can really tell us about a beginning of the universe and supernatural causation. First, unlike philosophy and metaphysics, science cannot deductively prove a creation or God. This is because natural science deals with the physical universe and with the regularities which we call “laws of nature” that... Read more

Deacon Fournier weighs here in on the latest attack on democracy by our unelected judges. On Tuesday, May 20, 2014, Federal US District Judge John E Jones III of Pennsylvania discarded marriage to “the ash heap of history.”  Those were his very words!  Of course he hid them in the judicial sophistry which now accompanies these frequent acts of judicial imperialism. He maintains he is opening the door to the oxymoron called “gay marriage” and claimed to be somehow liberating... Read more