My article for Aleteia this week focusses on the positive message of Pope Francis. To spend all one’s time, therefore lamenting and lambasting evil is not actually the best way to overcome evil. The best way to overcome evil is to build up all that is beautiful, good and true. This is the positive way forward, and it is exactly what we see in the ministry and message of Pope Francis. Rather than blast the breakdown of marriage and heap... Read more

I love the enthusiasm some of my friends have for the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. They take time and go to great expense and effort to make sure the worship of God is reverent, traditional, beautiful and transcendent. I’m giving them a thumbs up, straight A’s, a shout out and genuine appreciation. Unfortunately, some of the enthusiasts for the Latin Mass are their own worst enemies. Sometimes they defend the Latin Mass in a tone of snobbish superiority, self... Read more

  My blog post for National Catholic Register this week points out the heresy of Arianism and how it is not just a fourth century issue. Arianism, simply defined, is the belief that Jesus Christ was not equal with God the Father, but was a created being. In the fourth century the Cappadocian fathers, St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzus (along with Basil’s brother Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom), fought against Arianism. Their friend Athanasius was an especially... Read more

On the now customary plane home press conference Pope Francis once again firmly closed the door to the possibility of women priests saying, “Women priests. That cannot be done.” Go here for my short debate on the Catholic understanding of priesthood and why women cannot be ordained. Go here for a more in depth discussion. Read more

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed a seemingly profound, but ultimately silly discussion which is prevalent within popular culture. It’s called the Fermi Paradox and it goes like this: “There are billions of stars out there like the sun. Therefore, statistically there must be billions of planets like earth where intelligent life has developed. Given the vast amount of time and the vast number of possible “other earths” there must be other intelligent life forms who have invented space travel.... Read more

St Michael and All Angels. Today’s feast day reminds me of that section in C.S.Lewis’ science fiction books where his hero Ransom discusses the reality of the angel-like beings the Eldils. It’s a cool argument. He suggests that the Eldils (angels) are invisible to humans not because they are less real, but more real. What does that mean? To understand we have to look again at the way we normally perceive the world. We see the physical world as solid and... Read more

My article for Imaginative Conservative this week explores the delightfully weird world of wandering bishops or episcopi vagantes.  One area of eccentricity that never ceases to interest and delight are the “episcopi vagantes” or wandering bishops. These schismatics are often quaintly bizarre. On the fringes of lunacy, they set themselves up as bishops, archbishops, popes, patriarchs, eparchs, and abbots. The first wandering bishop I met was the late Right Rev. James Parker Dees. A former Episcopal priest, Dees established the Anglican... Read more

This picture of Madison Square Garden last night reminded me of the pictures you sometimes see of Joel Osteen’s church and other mega churches. Permit us a bit of triumphalism, but the Catholic Church is the original mega church. We are full of faults and flaws because we are full of sinners, but a papal visit reminds the world that there are more people who care about religion than those who don’t and even in decline, the Catholic Church is... Read more

In a brilliantly titled essay my friend Joseph Pearce dismantles the current idiocy that William Shakespeare was gay. Contrary to Friedlander’s own glib acceptance of the myth of Shakespeare’s homosexuality, isn’t it unlikely that Shakespeare would have escaped punishment in a culture in which homosexual practice was punishable by death if the sonnets were so transparently “queer” as “queer theorists” proclaim them to be? Isn’t it more likely that Shakespeare’s love for the person to whom the sonnets is addressed... Read more