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 …
Category: Catholic Church
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. …
May 07 2022
One More Before I Stir My Stumps
In Weird Dave’s Friday Night ONT, he cites this tweet: Is further comment really necessary? Verbum sat sapienti.
Jan 28 2022
Humility And Confidence
Do those two qualities sound mutually exclusive to you? They’re not, though quite a lot of people think they are. In fact, they complement one another to an extent that only experience can adequately illuminate. No, no political blather today. This is more important. *** I’d bet that most of my Gentle …
Jan 20 2022
Conversations
Ours is a “mixed” household: One (1) Catholic husband (me); One (1) agnostic-Jewish wife (Beth, a.k.a. the C. S. O.); Three dogs (Sophie, Precious, and Joy); Four cats (Uriel, Fluffy, Chloe, and Zoe). (The cats sacrifice to Bastet. I have no idea whom the dogs worship. Possibly Dick Van Patten.) The consequences …
Nov 21 2021
For The Feast Of Christ The King
[Today is the Feast of Christ The King, which falls on the last Sunday before Advent. It’s a unique holy day for several reasons, and one that I find particularly personally significant. The essay below first appeared at Eternity Road on January 6, 2008. I find that I cannot improve upon it, for which …
Oct 22 2021
A Great Man
There are people who don’t believe in great men. That is, they don’t believe that a man can be “great” in any sense that would command the attention and respect of others. Such a person, upon hearing a man called “great,” immediately takes exception. He tends to regard it as a personal insult. …
Jun 16 2021
A Harbinger No One Should Miss
In truth, it’s hard to believe that anyone who pays even modest attention to the news could miss it: The highest honor a lay Catholic could possibly hope for is to go to Mass with the head of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Mind you, in truth Joe Biden is about …
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 …
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