John Boehner, the Orange Man, the Speaker in waiting, has been very vocal about his top priorities. Let’s list them: (1) Extending tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 a year. This would benefit, well… the rich. (2) Repealing the Affordable Care Act, because it will “ruin the best health care system in the world and bankrupt our country”. Well, the US healthcare system might indeed be the best in the world…if you are rich. But for everybody else,... Read more
Ok, I’m not a fan of shows like The View and The Talk. Sometimes, when I have free time, I watch them to find out what is being said on them. Often it is crazy talk. The View has some of the wost anti-Catholic rants found in the modern age. It’s bad when Whoopi Goldberg appears to be the most rational host on the show. She tries to keep it balanced, though of course, her biases still come out, and... Read more
I was resisting writing something about this, because I have nothing truly original to add. Does the world really need another wannabe blogger explaining the electoral motivations of millions of people? And then I saw one of the liberal Catholic bloggers on the American Catholic had highlighted a quote I had made some time back about the Republican party. Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote that the Republican party was “a rump party of the south and the plains, mired... Read more
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The headline could just as easily read, “Execution of 1/3 of all left-handed people could be free under health care law”. That’s kind of the problem of passing gigantic expensive laws that nobody understands. – Mark Shea Yes, I’m sure he will claim he is being hyperbolic. The problem is that the claim “nobody understands” is simply fallacious and just reflection of his own deficiency. Given that he has been offering commentary on the health care bill for over 6... Read more
Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV. Part V. Love, pure and true, directs us to beatitude; Perverted, love leads us to perdition. We are called to love that which is good, In a way appropriate to its ontological condition. When we invert the hierarchy of creation, Seeking what is lower instead what is higher, Love continues to be our major affiliation, Leading us, however, to hell’s damnable fire. Created Sophia follows her exemplar Divine Sophia as she guides... Read more
I know All Saints Day has passed and tomorrow we intercede for all those in Purgatory, but I want to write a quick reflection on what these beautiful people who have gone before us mean to me. My five year old told me, “Mommy, I want to be a Saint. What must I do?” I responded, “Honey, you have to love God and live His love on Earth.” That, of course, led us to the question of what that type... Read more
Perhaps some Platonist will come up with the following conjecture. If God created minds for the sake of the first light, and if they are made ready to acquire that light both by knowledge of the divine goodness but most of all by love of it – given that knowledge forms them thence with splendor (lumen) and love re-forms them hence and thither with light (lux) – it is probable that justice divine wishes absolutely none of the minds to... Read more
One of the frustrations of writing one’s doctoral dissertation on the Eucharist is the voluminous literature on the subject. In the footnotes of every book one reads, one finds five more books one must read. This list cannot, therefore, be considered complete. There are far too many books on my to-read list for me to pretend to speak authoritatively. What follows, then, is more like a progress report. I have spent three years reading about the Eucharist and, so far,... Read more
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