Do you know why the prairies have grown rare? My daughter knows. Rosie has been watching quite a few nature shows, lately. She loves the irritating Kratt brothers best of all, and has been devouring every program they hosted in the past few decades thanks to our Amazon Prime subscription. She likes to chatter about them, and tell me the fun facts she’s learned. “Do you know the difference between the African and Indian elephants? Did you know that pikas... Read more
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew: “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand,... Read more
I feel that it’s time to remind my audience what a Christian is supposed to do. As Christians, we are supposed to conform ourselves to Christ. That’s our main job. In one way, Christ is doing that for us and we can’t control it, but in another it’s our job to cooperate. We were made in the image of God in the first place, but now God is doing us one better and making us one flesh with Christ– not... Read more
I’m a little too young to understand how Dave Armstrong got famous in the first place. He’s just one of those people who’s always been there in the Catholic Apologetics field, like Patrick Madrid. I don’t really think about him very often. Once he appeared on my blog’s facebook page to accuse me of “writing a hit piece on apologetics” because I had written a piece explaining that no amount of logical reasoning kept me in the Catholic Church... Read more
I am in a bad state, lately. Healing goes in long, slow cycles, and it’s extremely difficult to heal in the place you’ve been wounded, and here we are spending another summer in Steubenville. Every year I pray it’s our last. I insist on healing in public, and writing about it. People tell me this is scandal, but I feel it’s absolutely necessary. Because here in my work at Patheos, I have met scores of people wounded as badly... Read more
I have just finished reading a thought-provoking book by my friend Adam A. J. DeVille. The book is entitled Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power. It provides some intriguing ideas on how to reform and heal the Church from the horrendous culture of abuse that we’ve seen revealed in the news again and again for a year now. Deville is an Eastern Catholic pointing out ways in which the Latin church could benefit from... Read more
Some of you may recall that I recently wrote an article about a tweet by Kevin M. Cusick, LCDR. Cusick famously tweeted “Ladies, a priest I know was forced on Sunday to ask a woman at Mass to cover her shoulders. Please help the priest to protect the purity of the men at holy Mass by choosing to dress modestly. The alternative is awkward for all involved. Thank you.” Here is a screengrab of that tweet, just so we’re... Read more
Today is the Latin Catholic feast of Corpus Christi. A certain percentage of my fans like to tell me I should just make art and write about the Eucharist and feast days like Corpus Christi; they don’t like it when I “get political” as they find it off topic. Personally, I think this represents a gross theological error. Christ told us specifically where He would be found and where we were to worship Him as Christians until He came in... Read more
Let’s say that there are no concentration camps in our country right now. Let’s say that’s not where we’re keeping the migrants who keep stubbornly showing up on the Southern border. Let’s go ahead and grant that that word is totally inappropriate, despite what some actual Shoah historians say. Some say it is, after all. Let’s say that these internment camps are another sort of outdoor prison wherein huge numbers of a certain type of human being are concentrated together... Read more
I was downtown again, with an hour to kill. Rosie was at her martial arts class, so I had nothing to do but walk around and amuse myself alone until she finished. Oftentimes, when I’m downtown, I’ll drop in to see Christ at the Adoration Chapel, but it was after six o’clock so the doors were locked. On the one hand I’d hoped to pray there for a minute. I had been too sick to go to Mass on Trinity... Read more
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