A sub-category of News.
Dan Brown and his attack book The Da Vinci Code turned out to be a real blessing for Opus Dei. It had the immediate effect of greater interest in Opus Dei. Membership increased. It also convinced Opus Dei to do things that had never been considered, like having conferences about what Opus Dei is all…
It’s inevitable that the pagans of our secular culture become wilder as the culture worsens. As our former culture of Christendom recedes further into the distant past, the theologically ignorant show their ignorance in increasingly alarming ways. Those miseducated by our government schools and lousy universities boldly step forth to loudly illustrate their shocking ignorance…
Above: Pope John Paul II in attendance with leaders of various world religions at the interfaith gathering in Assisi on October 27, 1986. Source: CNS/L’Osservatore Romano The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches both that faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation (CCC 161) and that non-Christians can be saved (CCC 846–848). Since non-Christians…
Well, the synod circus has begun. We have been already treated to the hazardous ambiguities of a strange public penitential rite (which simultaneously condemned the evil spirit of the Pharisees): But yesterday some good news broke, which we should take with caution since, as Meloni pointed out a few months back, the St. Gallen Mafia…
It goes without saying that Sen. J.D. Vance won the vice presidential debate on Tuesday. True to form, he responded to his predictably hostile moderators with confidence and grace. All throughout, he showed off his intelligence, empathy, and personal discipline. He even made his opponent feel all warm and fuzzy by the end of it….
A holy and learned confessor once advised a penitent to enter each day into a prayerful reading of the Old Testament. “It’s good,” he would say, “to have Iron Age words in your mouth every day.” Especially these days, he might have added, when so few either read or pray at all. We live in…
Everyone, at least every serious Christian, is intimately familiar with the story of Christ and the apostles while they were journeying through the region of Caesarea Philippi. It is there Christ asked His disciples if they knew who He really was, and it is there that Peter identified Him as the Messiah and the Son…
Above: The Guardian Angel by Marcantonio Franceschini (1648 – 1729) My spiritual background is an example of how much our secular culture and our ailing Church today leave many like me either skeptical of or oblivious to the angels. In my childhood and student years, steeped in the Enlightenment-influenced secular education of California public K-12…
In 1927, Yocundo Durán was on his way home in Chihuahua, Mexico, when he crossed paths with a Federal. The Federal general recognized him as a Knight of Columbus and summarily ordered his execution. Durán’s bullet-torn body was delivered to his family later that day. The prior year, the “Calles Law” had been passed in…
Such were the words of the controversial, and at times provocative, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who warned that in fighting evil one risks becoming the very evil he is fighting. This is something the United States of America stands accused of for its unconditional support for the State of Israel, including the latter’s past human…
