The fresh-faced American priest stood there like Ichabod Crane: startled and fence-post skinny inside a wind-whipped cassock, his sharp, dominant nose seemingly pointing out to the ruination before him. Squatters with blank stares picked through hills of garbage, beggars huddled in cardboard boxes, and lunatics muttered into the long-traveling winds coming from the plains of [...]

A few months ago, I received a threat letter from a lawyer representing Dawn Eden telling me that I was henceforth forbidden from mentioning her in print. This cease-and-desist threat said if I mentioned Dawn in print again, she would bring charges against me for criminal stalking. So, of course, my response almost immediately was [...]

A video went viral this month of a tough New York mother taking a stand against her local school board in fiery protest over the woke, anti-police, LGBTQIA+ agenda she perceived being foisted on children by teachers in the classroom. While some criticism may be leveled against such heated displays, it nevertheless serves as a [...]

The present crisis in the Catholic Church might be seen as the last hurrah of the spirit of Vatican II. If rumors are to be believed, Pope Francis is preparing new restrictions on the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. This combined with the dissent being fomented by the German Catholics and widespread modernism and [...]

Recently I ran into an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in a few years. Although we live in the same city, we originally “met” 20 years ago in a formerly-prominent Catholic blogger’s combox. Seeing him reminded me how long I’ve been active in the online Catholic world, and it also reminded me how toxic [...]

Now that parishes are opening up again, I’ve been disheartened to see row upon row of empty pews. I also read a post on social media recently that made me especially sad: “Once the pandemic is over, can’t we please still stay at home and watch Mass on TV? I really like the ease of [...]

There's no doubt we're living in a time marked by extreme divisions. Whether it be political candidates and parties, economics and foreign policy, marriage and abortion, gender and race—we are a divided nation and a divided people. Religion is not exempt from the plague of division. Today, Catholics are extremely divided on a host of [...]

The Dauphin had heard of this girl from Domrémy who wished to see him. Rumor had it she won over the commandant of Vaucouleurs by predicting the outcome of the Battle of Rouvray. How intriguing. The rough soldiers who were bringing her apparently called her la Pucelle, “the Maid.” How amusing. The frivolous Dauphin, Charles [...]

We live in a humorless world overrun by political distemper, with growing divisions forming between a camp endorsing wholesale collective reengineering along fault lines of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, and those who favor the preservation of the civic order and institutions and the inherent dignity of the individual. The result of this discord is [...]

Upon entering St. Peter’s Basilica, facing the visitor, like some sunburst, is the Great Altar. It is spaced majestically beneath Bernini’s massive baldachin, held up by four thick, twisted columns, identical to the ones in Solomon’s Temple—clearly a sign that the typological figures of the Old Testament had come to fulfillment in the immolation of [...]

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 [...]

A serious, even existential, threat to Catholicism looms on the horizon, and it’s hidden all around us. It could very well decimate the ranks of the Church, and perhaps is already doing so. It is insidiously dangerous because it upends the very foundations of Catholicism. I’m not talking about the abuse crisis, or the lack [...]

An error regarding vocations has become common among Catholics. Specifically, people have begun claiming there exists a call to the single life apart from a religious vocation. While there is no evidence of this “new” vocation in the Magisterium of the Church, it has persisted in its growth and usage due to the increasing number [...]

In his classic Aphorisms, Hippocrates once declared, “For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.” Today, we say, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” But do desperate measures justify perceived desperate times?  Last year, we saw firsthand how “extreme methods of cure” were unnecessarily imposed on our world and Church, [...]

We're all familiar with the term “conspiracy theory.” For some, it's used as a pejorative—a way to discredit information or something useful to calumniate someone who is not like-minded. For others, it's an annoying word that they're sick of hearing from those who never give them the benefit of the doubt. However you have heard [...]

Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one on intellectual amputation. If thy head offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, [...]

Let’s admit it: the Solemnity of the Ascension is a practically marginal feast for Western Catholics. In many Western countries and much of the United States, it’s even been rendered ahistorical, shunted off from the fortieth day of Easter to the nearest Sunday. The dirty little secret is that the feast is so irrelevant to [...]

Which is better for your own sake, to think that most people will treat you well, even if that is not quite true, or to think that most people will treat you badly? If it is the former, then people who discourage you do not have your best interest in mind. Why would they do [...]

Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option advocates a simple response to modernity: retreat, re-arm, and renew. Basing his battle plan on that of the sixth century founder of Western monasticism, Dreher argued that, just as St. Benedict abandoned the decadence of a declining Roman Empire, so Christians today should respond to a society crumbling into [...]

Let me begin with a plain fact: the sacred liturgy is where most Catholics most of the time encounter the Church and her teaching.  “The Church” and “the Magisterium” might well seem like abstractions until they take on concrete form in the liturgical rites—the texts, music, ceremonies, and other elements of worship—by which the Faith [...]