Recent news reports reveal that communist authorities are demolishing Catholic churches and shrines in China. All this is happening despite communist propaganda assuring outsiders that religion can be freely practiced in China. Western observers thought that if they could just wish hard enough and offer concessions, the Chinese leadership would change for the better. Red … Read more
“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly, “’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy; The way into my parlour is up a winding stair, And I’ve a many curious things to show when you are there.” Mary Howitt wrote 180 books with her husband, and was a … Read more
That every five hundred years the Church passes through a crisis is not a novel insight. It may be something of a contrived schematic, since there have been other crises as well, but each of those periods of crisis has influenced the Church to an extraordinary and radical degree: The Fall of the Roman Empire, … Read more
In the dark of an August night in 1961, the Russians threw up a barrier between East and West Berlin which came to be known as the Berlin Wall. On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood at a podium in Berlin and delivered his famous speech, in which he said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this … Read more
On July 17, 1918, an event occurred that clarified the meaning of the subsequent century of Communist revolutions. Czar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their five comely children, and a few steadfast friends were shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned to death in a basement in the Ural Mountains. The purge was executed by a vanguard of the … Read more
Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty was a hero of the Cold War, persecuted by communists and ultimately abandoned by his Church. Beginning in 1956, after Red Army tanks rolled into Hungary, Mindszenty spent 15 years in voluntary confinement at the U.S. embassy in Budapest. He spurned repeated requests to leave Hungary and his flock. In 1971, he … Read more
Even one who is as maladroit as I when it comes to the Internet, profits from “YouTube” with its cavalcade of some of the great people and events of more than a century. Would that it could go back farther, but there are many moving scenes to which we have access. One shows Father Georges … Read more
Can one really unravel the mystery of China? Perhaps not, but the country has risen to global superpower status. Accordingly, the Western world should learn more about the Chinese economy, diplomacy and culture. A better understanding of the Catholic Church in China could bear fruit as well. As a native Texan and cradle Catholic, who … Read more