A sub-category of News.
Above: the Holy Father with participants of the Synod in Rome. October 26, 2024. Photo by EPA-EFE/RICCARDO ANTIMIANI / MaxPPP The Synod on Synodality has just concluded in Rome. As if to end the restless period with a final surprise, it was hours before the Final Document was published when Pope Francis announced that he…
We’re living on borrowed time. Election Day is immovably looming ahead, like the last feature on a roll through Freddy Fear’s House of Scares. We’re clicking toward it, buckled in with the master switch thrown to lock us in our seats. I try to make the most of every day while they still feel “normal,”…
“Render unto Caesar…” may cause some alarm. God Incarnate seems to be lauding Caesar, yet Caesar hardly seems laudable. The Caesars were a rather disreputable bunch, given their depraved lives. Let us recall that after the worthy life of Augustus, there were Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Hardly Catholic role models. All the Roman emperors, whether…
Above: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC). Our epoch of political ideology and activism, in which we tend to view exterior activity in society as the highest form of activity, needs to embrace again the contemplative life. The knowledge and love of God is the highest end of the contemplative life.[1] Political activism…
We’ll start with the blasphemy of the year. There’s nothing quite like relaxing at the opera with abundant female nudity, fresh blood, (real) skin piercings, and actual lesbian sex acts. This used to be called porn, and one did not go to the opera for it. Paul Hindemith’s half-hour one-act opera Sancta Susanna (1922), which…
Three things that are certain in today’s world: death, taxes…and gaslighting. Our Elites lie to us so much that anyone with commonsense knows to doubt the veracity of anything they claim. The gaslighting reaches into most areas of life: medicine, foreign policy, and the role of women in the Church just to name a few….
Above: the Dormition Cathedral of Moscow, built in 1326, was the cathedral of the Catholic Metropolitan Isidore of Kiev and all Rus’ (1385 – 1463). Russian Catholics of the Byzantine rite do not normally interfere much in the affairs of the Roman Rite, except in cases where it is truly necessary to speak or act…
Two recurring motifs of the presidential campaign have given it a surreal atmosphere for me: the lying and the assumption that hardly anyone can doubt the social utility of killing babies in the womb. Recently, billionaire Bill Ackman was defending ex-President Trump to a hostile reporter on a news show. The “journalist” disingenuously praised Ackman…
Hopefully by now you’ve heard that more than 20,000 Palestinian children are confirmed dead in Israel’s defensive Gaza war. That’s just since October of last year, and it’s just the number of confirmed child deaths in Gaza, excluding civilian women and men. The full number of dead children is surely much higher. Their violent deaths…
Crisp air, falling leaves A languid sun retires into a golden sea As the gentle wind begins its course beneath A melancholy moon And all the world withdraws in silence Amidst the richly hued pageantry of violence What worldly hopes and dreams lay piling Under autumn’s somber swoon Another thwarted soul caresses The rigid wood…
