Earlier today, I put forth a provocative proposition. Candidly, it was so provocative that it deserved large font: The State and God are enemies. That probably upset a few folks excessively devoted to the opinions of Saint Paul: Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power …
Category: Christianity
Apr 16 2024
The Key Historical Animosity
If you bothered to watch the video embedded below, you might have a few questions about this nebulous thing called “Christian nationalism.” I intend to address some of those questions a bit later, when I’m properly awake. For the moment, have a gander at yet another video, this one from the Land Down Under: …
Apr 15 2024
If You Have 8.5 Minutes…
…please watch this video: Pastor Doug Wilson is the Christian nationalist they warned you about. pic.twitter.com/E92V7OMLTS — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 15, 2024 Pastor Doug Wilson articulates an almost satisfactory vision of “Christian nationalism.” The adverb is the most important word in that sentence. For what questions will be asked of his vision …
Apr 14 2024
“Where Is Everybody?”
Have you ever watched one of those end-of-the-world movies, wherein a lone survivor awakens to a world that seems to have been depopulated while he slept? There have been a few, and some of them have been pretty good. I have 28 Days Later and I Am Legend in mind as I write this. …
Apr 07 2024
The Essence Of Divine Mercy
Today is Divine Mercy Sunday in the Catholic calendar. It’s also known as Doubting Thomas’s Sunday, for today at Mass we read the portion of the Gospel of John that recounts the Apostle Thomas’s transition from disbelief to belief. Notably, the risen Christ invited Thomas to satisfy himself with physical evidence: the wounds in …
Mar 31 2024
Promise Kept
In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from …
Mar 29 2024
On Being Alone Far From Home
[After returning to and contemplating this piece, I was moved to repost an old item. It first appeared at the late, lamented Eternity Road in December, 2007. – FWP] He was far from home, alone in a sterile room in a cookie-cutter businessmen’s hotel, a storage warren for men on the road for …
Mar 29 2024
The Beginning Of The End
The materialists say that there is nothing beyond the veil of Time, that the material is all. They say that life begins, and ends, and is over. But then, they say a lot things. They have a lot to say… and one can’t help but get the sense that their aim is mainly to …
Mar 17 2024
The Meek And The Grand
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, Gentle Reader! A summary of the great Irish saint’s life and work: St. Patrick (387-493) was born in Kilpatrick, Scotland, to Roman-British parents. He was kidnapped by Irish raiders at the age of sixteen and sold as a slave to a Druid high priest. He worked as a shepherd …
Mar 15 2024
The Easiest Sin
Happy Ides of March, Gentle Reader! If you enjoyed your Pi Day – we did – then perhaps you’ll also enjoy this commemoration of the day, in 44 B.C., when a group of civic-minded patricians decided to take an aspiring dictator “off the ballot” in a rather final and unappealable way. It’s a recipe …
Mar 07 2024
Inconceivable Yet Real
Writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror – the three main speculative genres – face challenges that don’t trouble mainstream fictioneers. We’re supposed to strive to be original, constantly looking for a new conception, a new scientific or technological development, a new evocation of wonder or terror. The flattest and least refutable of all …
Feb 24 2024
Scare Talk Often Means Only That The Talker Is Scared
Good morning, Gentle Reader. The “Future Columns” folder is bulging, as usual, but of all the subjects addressed therein, only one piques my interest today: From the White House to think tanks, and even mainstream media outlets like CNN, White Christian nationalists have been vilified, being labeled as the greatest threat to national …
Feb 17 2024
Trends In Bigotry
It’s distressing to feel that I must write about such things, but why else would I blog? There are plenty of softer types to handle the easier stuff. Throughout America, there’s a near-overpowering awareness that things are going to Hell. Indeed, the bottom of the national handbasket has started to smolder. The sense …
Feb 04 2024
A Unique Variety Of Solitude
It’s not that long ago that I wrote: “The worst” is the noise. The perpetual din. The endless screaming, wailing, moaning, hectoring, begging, and cursing. The ceaseless demands from politicians. The carping from the unsatisfied. The orations of the world-savers. The unending gimme gimme gimme of those who want something they can’t get …
Jan 21 2024
Poverty In Spirit
[This piece first appeared at Liberty’s Torch V1.0 on November 1, 2015 — FWP] Perhaps the most famous of all Jesus’s words: And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, …
Jan 20 2024
Matter And Spirit
The following passage from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity has me thinking about things most theologians don’t – or perhaps won’t – address: There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread …
Dec 25 2023
December 25, 2023
Ponder this: When God came to Earth, there was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. What lesson is hidden behind the inn and the stable? What is an inn, but the gathering-place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the residence of the …
Nov 24 2023
Thanksgiving Afterthoughts
It’s right there in the name of the holiday: Thanksgiving Day is a day for giving thanks. But to give implies that there’s someone to receive. To whom shall our thanks be offered? Would anyone like a hint? Our supposedly Catholic president appears to need one: Since the first Thanksgiving on Plymouth …
Oct 31 2023
Allhallowtide
If you’re a Gentle Reader who comes for the political tirades but leaves when I start to rant “Catholic stuff,” here’s your heads-up: It’s time to go, hero. Fran’s boiler is lit once again. Not many other commentators are likely to mention this. Hallowe’en, which has become one of the most “celebrated” days …
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