…God, who always knows what we need, will provide one: The small rural Missouri town of Gower has become an unexpected pilgrimage destination after a nun’s exhumed body showed no visible signs of decomposition — four years after her burial. Hundreds of people have been flocking to the town 40 miles north …
Category: Catholic Church
May 07 2023
Human Institutions
They’re imperfect – all of them. Every now and then, a reminder is useful. The Acts of the Apostles contains a pair of segments that make many things plain – indeed, plainer in some ways than the Church would like us to know. The first of them is in Chapter 2: And …
May 05 2023
A Brief Announcement
Someone who gave the name of “Mike Bizzaro,” along with a strange-looking email address, just wrote to inform me that “[my] soul has been removed from Christianity.” He also provided a link to one of the ugliest web pages I’ve had the dubious pleasure of visiting. It is extremely important that anyone who agrees …
Apr 19 2023
Wrong Turnings
Please don’t misinterpret what follows. I love my Church, despite my handful of disagreements with it. But now and then some of its notables go off the rails so dramatically that I’m compelled to take exception to it. The United States has a shortage of Catholic priests. Parishes from coast to coast find …
Mar 15 2023
Personnel Policies
I’ve known a lot of people who were and are smarter than average. That comes from working in occupations that require that characteristic. Bluntly, if your duties will necessarily require careful thinking, distinguishing among things and ideas according to their inherent properties, you must be able to do so. Why else would your employer …
Mar 02 2023
An Attitudinal Imperative
And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. …
Feb 09 2023
The Deserving Poor
American Catholics tend to vote. (Yes, we have other bad habits as well.) Unfortunately, too many vote for Democrats. Why? The tragically misunderstood “social teaching” of the Church. It’s widely believed among Catholics that we have a moral obligation to provide for “the poor.” Note the lack of qualification. Part of the reason …
Feb 09 2023
This Is Mind-Boggling
How are American Catholics under attack? Let me count the ways: The FBI’s Richmond Division would like to protect Virginians from the threat of “white supremacy,” which it believes has found a home within Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. An intelligence analyst within the Richmond Field Office of the FBI released in …
Feb 06 2023
Had Enough Yet?
I have: Josh Alexander, 16, is not allowed to attend school for the rest of the year after saying he would continue to express his belief that God created only two genders. The school told him his presence would be “detrimental to the physical and mental well-being” of transgender students, Alexander told The …
Jan 08 2023
An Epiphany Story
I’m fairly sure all my Gentle Readers know the story of the Magi and their gifts to the Christ Child. Today – the first Sunday after New Year’s Day – is the day when Catholics celebrate the Epiphany, which includes that momentous visit to the Holy Family from three of the most learned men …
Nov 28 2022
Perspectives
One of my favorite Catholic writers is the late Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: Venerable Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an American bishop (later archbishop) of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. His cause for …
Oct 16 2022
Imagination, Orthodoxy, And Faith
Hm. Perhaps that should be “And The Faith,” but let it stand as it is. Yesterday at The Catholic Thing, there appeared an essay, with embedded interview, on Fostering the Catholic Imagination. Let there be no argument: the subject is an important one. There isn’t enough fiction written from a Catholic perspective, which …
Oct 10 2022
Mysteries, Not Complexities
Just yesterday, I encountered this touching essay at The Catholic Thing. It starts with the mention of a recent wedding. However, its true import is expressed in this segment: I’d converted to Catholicism from atheism in my mid-20s (I’m 39 now). This wasn’t news to anyone, but few expected the faith to take …
Sep 17 2022
The War On The Church
You might not believe it – after all, the mainstream media never report on atrocities committed against Catholic churches in America – but it’s going on nevertheless. You see, the oh-so-tolerant Left considers us intolerable: THERE WAS NO winner in last month’s vote on abortion rights in Kansas. Technically, nothing changed after …
Aug 30 2022
An Institution, Its Functions, And Its Organization
I have said at other times that a church is necessarily a conservative institution. Its first duty is to conserve its theological core, for from that, all its other doctrines and pronouncements must flow. A church that discards or casually alters its core, or permits it to be altered or ignored by those who …
Aug 22 2022
The Church Under Attack
Political matters can go hang for the moment. Just now, my focus is on more permanent things…some of them eternal. *** Surely this piece is not so far in the past that my Gentle Readers will have forgotten it. It may have drawn more giggles than sober ponderings, but the true import of …
Aug 15 2022
“Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition” — ?
If you seek to destroy a community united around a set of ideas, but you can’t effectively refute the ideas or persuade the allegiants to abandon them, the most promising alternative is to attack the community’s icons and its symbols. We’ve already seen quite a lot of this, these past few decades. Note …
Jun 19 2022
For Corpus Christi 2022
The Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ, is a supremely important one throughout Latin America, and in parts of Europe and Africa as well. I wrote an essay about its significance some years ago. The feast strikes me as particularly significant today, owing to the steadily tightening food shortages here: …
May 13 2022
Since No One Else Is Doing So…
…it falls to me to commemorate the 105th Anniversary of the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima: Our Lady of Fátima is a Roman Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary based on the famed Marian apparitions reported in 1917 by three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria, in Fátima, Portugal. …
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June is Fidelity Month!
Fran’s Recent Novels
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