Today’s Mass reading from the Gospel of St. John told of the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes: After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased. …
Category: Christianity
Jul 22 2021
Something Catholic And Beautiful
If you haven’t yet made the acquaintance of Loreena McKennitt, it’s high time. Listen to what she does with the stanzas from Saint John of the Cross’s classic tome Dark Night of the Soul: Upon a darkened night The flame of love was burning in my breast And by a lantern bright I fled …
Jul 08 2021
The Petty And Mealymouthed We Will Always Have With Us
First, please read this article: Hobby Lobby is embroiled in another controversy after running a full-page advertisement in numerous newspapers throughout the United States on July 4 that appeared to advocate for a Christian-run government. The arts and crafts giant’s ad, which ran in newspapers on Independence Day included the Bible verse …
Jul 08 2021
The “1000 Words” Edition
There are days when a single graphic expresses my sentiments better than any essay I could write. Here’s one, courtesy of our favorite Bookworm: Militant anti-theists tend to preen themselves as brighter than believers. Yet all their arguments are patterned after the “argument” in Bookworm’s graphic. There’s a moral in there, somewhere. …
Jun 29 2021
An Inherently Un-Titleable Piece
Full Disclosure: There are people who think I’m crazy. They’re not a majority…yet. But I would be remiss were I not to mention their existence. “But why?” I hear you ask. Well, mostly because I’m a libertarian-conservative Catholic patriot, with emphasis on Catholic. “How,” they ask, “could anyone so devoted to freedom simultaneously embrace …
Jun 25 2021
Lost…And Found
[The following essay first appeared at the old Liberty’s Torch site on September 22, 2014. Consider it a companion piece to the Everything Put Together essay – FWP] *** James Pinkerton has a seven-year-old essay at The American Conservative that I blush to have overlooked before this: In one of the great epics …
Jun 13 2021
Christian Courage
This has already been a “big day” for me. I’m just back from Mass, which I attended in person for the first time in a year. I wasn’t absent from the pews out of fear, or laziness, but because my parish was enforcing a mask rule and was not distributing the Eucharist. But the …
Jun 06 2021
Corpus Christi
Today is Corpus Christi Sunday, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. It’s a day most significant to me, for reasons I delineated in this baseline essay. If you haven’t read it before this, I urge it upon you. And please, reflect upon the goodness of a God who, in contrast to …
May 23 2021
A Call To Action
And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it …
May 21 2021
Professionalization Versus Vocation
I’ve been in something of a state recently: a creeping sense of desperation, a desire to reject the evidence of my senses that’s almost strong enough to overwhelm my reason. Perhaps the best short characterization of that state is “Make it all go away!” Nevertheless, I remain committed to reality, and to the best, …
May 02 2021
Three Lives, Three Deaths
She was young. Far too young, by most reckonings, to be equipped to cope with tragedy. She’d been married only a short time when she discovered that she was pregnant…and only a short time later discovered that her baby daughter was anencephalic, incapable of living outside the womb. Against medical advice and …
Apr 28 2021
Faith And Fiction: A Rumination
The more you look, the more you see. — Robert M. Pirsig It’s amazing the way the realm of the mind expands, providing ever more room to prowl, and hopefully to grow, to him who is willing to look at significant subjects synthetically as well as analytically. Consider this observation from the great …
Apr 12 2021
A Couple Of Catholic Conundrums
An old tickler from many years ago is about the day a gaggle of theologians were confronted by a layman with a simple question: “Did Adam and Eve have navels?” The initial consensus answer was no. But, the layman objected, that doesn’t square with the notion that the first man and woman were the …
Apr 03 2021
“It Is Finished”
The coverage is extensive and multiply confirmed: Yet even today, two millennia after the event which transformed all of existence both natural and supernatural, men ask what He meant by that. Perhaps it’s simpler than we think. Perhaps it means only that, as He told His Apostles at the Last Supper, He …
Mar 21 2021
Deciding To Believe
Many Christians never face a moment when they must decide: “Can I accept this set of propositions called Christianity as credible…plausible…true, and worth committing my life to them?” In part, that’s because many of us who were “raised in the Faith” never get an opportunity to question its soundness. In equal part, it’s because …
Mar 17 2021
Faith Gives You Power…
…and power is required to do this: Bravo, young Americans. We need more of you.
Mar 10 2021
I Thought I Was Beyond Being Stunned
I was wrong: Milo Yiannopoulos, the gay man whose conservative messaging and willingness to speak the truth sparked riots on university campuses may well trigger more outrage now that he describes himself as “Ex-Gay” and “sodomy free,” and is leading a daily consecration to St. Joseph online. Two years ago, when Church …
Feb 28 2021
A Price Willingly Paid: A Lenten Reflection
In his defense of Christianity as a mystery religion, C. S. Lewis has told us that we must deal with the facts, and as John Adams has said, facts are stubborn things. Among the facts at hand, we have the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth and His subsequent Resurrection. The Passion …
Feb 02 2021
Lessons from Fantasy- the wisdom of J.R.R. Tolkien
Many people know of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit;” younger folk are more likely to know his work through the film adaptations of his work, while old fogeys like me read and loved his stories in printed form first, then enjoyed the movies, too. Young or old, however, Tolkien’s …
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