My article for Imaginative Conservative website this week is a reflection on W.B.Yeats’ famous poem, The Second Coming.  While the world spins forward in what seems an ever-widening spiral of chaos, what conservative cannot lament the loss of all that once seemed stable, certain and secure? W.B. Yeats’ poem The Second Coming, like T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, seems a stark warning not only about the horrors that were to come in the last century, but the horrors we face in the first years of the... Read more

I am blogging from Phoenix, Arizona where I’m speaking at a Marian Conference, and it was my joy last night to spend a couple of hours hearing confessions. There are nearly a thousand people signed up for the conference and all around the room were long lines of ordinary people wanting to make their confession. In seeing this I thought of the sheer practicality, dignity and grace of this beautiful sacrament. Here were probably five or six hundred people who... Read more

Pope St John Paul II said, “Chastity is the work of a lifetime.” With more and more guys dealing with pornography addictions, and with society wallowing more and more in the swamps of unrestrained sex and constant desire, how does a person overcome lust? I guess there must be therapies and techniques out there for self control, but there must be a greater power available than mere self control, and that power is a grace–a gift that is given. I believe... Read more

Some time ago I came across a memorable phrase: “compassion fatigue.” At the time there had been a wave of atrocities, famines and disasters across the world. Television and the internet brought unforgettable images into our living rooms–starving children with vultures standing by, emaciated prisoners behind barbed wire, whole town devastated by tsunamis and bodies of schoolchildren lying in a playground after a massacre. “Compassion fatigue” was the term for realization that a human being has only so much capacity... Read more

  My article for Aleteia this week discusses the difference between genuine doubt and difficulties in the faith. The English Cardinal and theologian, Blessed John Henry Newman wrote, “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.” What he means is that there is a difference between a doubt and a difficulty. We wouldn’t be thinking through our faith with much depth or attention if we didn’t have some difficulties. After all, the things we propose as true in the Catholic faith stretch... Read more

It’s a slow news day, so take time to read this long apologetics article which shows how the Bible and Apostolic Fathers support the ministry of the Pope. In a world where everybody seems to have the questions, but nobody dares to have an answer, Catholics believe they do have a source for some answers. We believe Jesus had authority directly from his Father to teach the truth, and that he gave some of that authority to his apostles. Catholics... Read more

The Center for Medical Progress released their fourth video today. As predicted, this video is worse than the last one. We see Planned Parenthood officials discuss how they alter the abortion process to achieve “better” harvesting results. The most terrible detail: how a former StemExpress employee had to cut open the face of an “intact fetal cadaver” to harvest the brain. Here is the video. I hope you have a strong stomach. Read more

Let’s imagine for a moment that everyone forgot what eating is for. Eating is first and foremost for nutrition. However, eating is also pleasurable. Eating is also for conviviality. We share food with others and so we share life with others. If everyone deliberately rejected the nutritional aspect of eating what would happen? Let’s imagine that people enjoyed a huge meal and simply gorged themselves.They just kept on eating and eating not for the nutrition, but for the comfort. Furthermore,... Read more

My latest article for National Catholic Register considers how the screen revolution should affect our worship With tablets, WiFi, Internet and e-books, learning is portable, visual and immediate. It is possible, therefore, that schools, colleges, libraries and universities as we know them will evolve, grow, change and maybe even disappear altogether, as new modes of learning grow up around the new technologies of learning. What interests me is how the human experience of religion can also change. The Catholic faith... Read more

One of the parts of my job as a parish priest is working with couples whose marriages are going through a crisis. One of the most crucial aspects of most marriage breakdowns is the question of trust. Honesty and trust are vital in any relationship, and once trust is broken it is very difficult to repair. A typical situation will be the husband’s adultery. Once he has broken trust with his wife and she finds out, it takes a very... Read more