Forgive Big Brother Seventy Times Seven Times?
What should be the Christian response to pleas for a “pandemic amnesty”?
“The Truest Ghost Story Ever Told”
Nestled in West Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, the town of Middleway boasts a ghost story that rivals the most famous haunted tales. What makes this haunting stand out is that it is a Catholic story.
Mothers of Men
One of the key places where modernity went wrong was in its belief that education is a gender-neutral activity. Boys in particular suffer from this error.
That Hideous Strength: A Prophecy for Our Times
For those of us attempting to weather the unsettling global upheavals in the 21st century, “That Hideous Strength” is vital reading to understand the network of connections in the cosmic battle in which we find ourselves.
Perelandra: Dreadful Good and Reasonable Evil
Good and evil, it turns out, are not so clichéd as we like to comfortably think; for good can be deeply unpleasant, while evil can seem both unstoppable and even reasonable.
Out of the Silent Planet: A Guidebook Against the “New Normal”
The relevance of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy has grown more, not less, as the twenty-first century ushers in the “New Normal” and the “Great Reset.”
Pillaging the Monasteries: The Vatican’s Hidden Financial Scandal
New Vatican regulations have led to forcibly-shuttered monasteries’ assets being claimed by a bureaucratic monastic federation, the diocese, and the Vatican, raising questions on how decisions are made.
Boycott Disney to Save Your Child’s Soul
Boycotting Disney can revolutionize a family’s entire approach to children’s entertainment. It can become an opportunity to introduce our children to a greater wealth of stories.
Disney Has Been Corrupting Kids for Decades
Disney has been quietly and steadily paving the way for the new normal of identity politics for almost forty years now
Recovering the Betrothal Ceremony and the Churching of Women
As part of our push to save traditional forms of Catholic life, why don’t we begin asking that our priests perform for us the old and beloved rites and customs that have been forgotten in the course of the twentieth century?
The Beauty of Austerity
Faithfulness to the austere beauty of Teresa’s rule was the cause for canonization for a little-known modern saint, Mother Maravillas de Jesus (1891-1974).
Why is the Vatican Assailing Contemplative Life?
The future of contemplative orders in the Catholic Church is under siege, not by the oft-bemoaned vocations crisis, but by Archbishop Josè Rodrìguez Carballo, the secretary for the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. In 2018, Carballo released Cor Orans, a series of regulations on women’s monastic orders. Cor Orans … Read more
The Power of Poetry in The Hobbit
This year, if you want to make your Thanksgiving meal as awkward as can be, stand up from the table in front of your extended family, clear your throat, and recite a nice long poem. Your in-laws will visibly blanch, and the chattering toddlers will grow silent. This will be no mere political argument or … Read more
Alone Among Mine Enemies
The saddest line in all of Western literature is at the end of Thomas Malory’s Le Mort d’Arthur. The divinely blessed Round Table has been destroyed, betrayed and sabotaged by the very knights who had been charged with its protection. King Arthur has been utterly defeated by jealous, power hungry hordes whipped into fury by … Read more
What is the Role of Women in the Church?
I think we were all heartened by the news of new sanctions on “women’s ordination” in the Vatican’s newly revised canon law. We have no way of knowing whether Pope Francis shares our revulsion for those posing as liturgical ladies, but it’s comforting to know that “going to the peripheries” has its limits. Of course, … Read more
Tending the Garden
This morning, I looked out the dining room window at my rows of tiny carrots in the garden. The parable of the weeds and the crops jumped to mind. Remember how it goes? At night, the landowner’s enemy sowed weeds among the newly planted wheat. When the landowner’s servants discover this, they ask their master … Read more
When Scandal Hits a Newman Guide College
Last week, Rene Rasmussen wrote an excellent piece alerting us to the unfortunate situation involving Abby Johnson’s planned speech at the Catholic University of America. For those who missed it, the CUA student pro-life group had invited Johnson and then, facing pressure from various students and, unfortunately, the university chaplain, cancelled the event. (Fortunately, the … Read more
A New Carmel
“Praised be Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, His most holy Mother! Come to prayer, Sisters, come to praise the Lord!” It is 4:00 a.m. and fifteen Carmelite sisters arise to this call, dating back to the days of their foundress, Saint Terese of Avila. They make their way to the stone chapel, where they … Read more
‘Believe Science’? You First
No matter the results of this election, one thing is clear: half of America has announced through its vote that it does not implicitly trust the public health experts. As both Donald Trump and Joe Biden made clear time and again, part of this election was a referendum on the pandemic and its management. Mr. … Read more
There Is No Vocation to the ‘Single Life’
The word “vocation” has been diluted. Before the sixteenth century, “vocation” had an exclusively sacramental sense. But, as Max Weber points out in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the Lutheran and Calvinist dissolution of monastic and priestly orders gave rise to its modern sense of “occupation” or “profession.” What is the difference … Read more