I give you two rather different pieces, both sharing a common thread: the full-rein head we have given to all of our adolescent leanings. If the society has been dumbed-down — and it has been — it has also developed a case of arrested development, and both issues appear to stem from a generational and cultural mindset that has embraced the sensibilities and reason of 14 year-olds. Think about being 14, for a moment. When you are 14, you know... Read more
Look at this 103 year-old Catholic Sister, Sr. Cecilia Adorni, as she dances a remarkably spry polka amid the senior citizens whom she still serves. Watch her dance — I know 60 year-olds who can’t move like that — and notice her skin, which is gorgeous and youthful! We concern ourselves with holding on to our youthfulness and “defying age” with all sorts of medicines and foods and goops and ointments, while this sister appears to have found a “fountain... Read more
It’s unusual to be writing much about monks, nuns and friars in February, but for some reason I have a flurry of news and reports, so here goes! The Norbertine Sisters are a very interesting group of women. You know they make fabulous Christmas Wreaths each year (we had ours by the end of November and only just threw it out because it seemed oddball to have a wreath up at Valentine’s Day, but it still looked great, still wasn’t... Read more
If you are not reading historian Pat McNamara’s weekly column In Ages Past, you’re missing great profiles, of American Catholics who impacted this nation in dramatic and often downright exhausting ways. This week, say hello to Father John Markoe, S.J. – football star, soldier, alcoholic, priest, and a civil rights activist a few decades ahead of the rest: Born in 1890 to a blueblood family whose ancestors included Benjamin Franklin, John Prince Markoe was the son of a prominent Minnesota... Read more
My column at First Things this week looks at the story of Father Augustin Escobar, the California priest who recently had his priestly faculties suspended for concelebrating Mass with a Presbyterian minister. As few details had yet emerged as I was writing, I stuck to the question of closed communion There exists an odd double-standard concerning Catholic observances and almost any other ritual. Culturally nuanced and sensitive Americans would never presume to attend a Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim or even... Read more
Read Timothy Dalrymple’s personal and poignant exposition: The tenth of February was the fifteenth anniversary of the day on which I broke my neck in a gymnastics accident. I have always noted the anniversaries inwardly, in a kind of morbid remembrance of that fateful day—that single moment, really, in the early evening—that changed my life decisively and irrevocably. Of the 5,475 days that have passed in those fifteen years, I have felt spinal pain in nearly every one. The pain... Read more
It has always seemed somehow fitting to me that the apostle Jesus called “An Israelite Without Guile” would suffer a martyrdom that involved being skinned alive. Whether one resolves to live without guile or is simply gifted with its absence, going through life without a bit of craftiness suggests walking around with a degree of naked self-revelation that can go beyond skin deep. So, it’s not really surprising that Max Lindenman has chosen to call his new weekly column at... Read more
From now and through Lent Fr. Dwight Longenecker will be providing twice-weekly peeks into the inner-workings of the mind and classrooms of Prof. Slubgrip, as he tries to snap some Luciferian fire into his wormish students . . .over the next few sessions my dear fellows, we will be considering the delightful area of temptation called popular culture. The whole area is expanding exponentially at this time, and while we have some real experts already working in the field, there... Read more
Call it Virtue. Call it Chastity. Call it Continence. Whatever you want to call it, our society loves to tell us that it can’t be lived, is weird to try, and an attraction to it probably means that you’re all neurotic and hung-up, provincial and you know, like, so lame. In an era where city governments are celebrating the creation of iphone apps that can take you to your leader nearest free condom (because when sex is just a bodily... Read more
A pal of mine got very sick and it was time to make a hospital run. Lots of questions – things could be serious. Please keep this young mother of four, Kerri, in your prayers. Read more
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