A sub-category of News.
My redoubt in Swampland, Mississippi, often feels like the Alamo. Out there beyond the mission walls, or beyond the borders of Mississippi, lie Satan’s forces, vast and snarling. Openly repellent, they nevertheless swarm through our institutions and, to an extraordinary degree, capture the allegiance of our young. Like Colonel Travis, I have drawn my sword,…
People often say that life is a problem waiting to be solved. Like the sum of two plus two, for instance, for which one needn’t be a rocket scientist to unpuzzle. Or even putting some guy on the moon, for which an understanding of rocket science would certainly prove helpful. But life is not a…
It has been almost a year since the anti-SSPX crowd took yet another legalistic shot at the Priestly Fraternity of the Society of Saint Pius X, and it seems — at least for now — that the enemies of Archbishop Lefebvre and his priests have stopped with their griping. At the end of 2022 and…
It appears that my generation is experiencing an epidemic of scrupulosity. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, scrupulosity is a form of OCD that is primarily religious. Similar to normal OCD, there are obsessions and compulsions. But with scrupulosity, the obsessions and compulsions are religious. Unlike OCD, scrupulosity involves an intense moralism tied…
Not so long ago, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was embraced by the New Atheists. The likes of recalcitrant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, who were dubbed the four horsemen of such a movement, claimed her as the fifth member, or, as Dawkins put it, “plus one horsewoman.” This is,…
All good things come to their end other than the joy of Heaven. Just so, this series ends with a dive into the Epistle reading for the 24th and Last Sunday after Pentecost, the final Sunday before the beginning of a new liturgical year with the 1st Sunday of Advent. Our reading is from the…
Forgiveness is a difficult topic for most of us, and it is usually focused on the pardon of those who have wronged us, whether maliciously or negligently. We don’t typically give much thought to that other forgiveness. Each of us knows the weight of our own sins, for regret can be a searing pain. What…
Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was for…thanksgiving. It was an occasion when that inchoate goo called “American civil religion” gelled long enough to admit that we should give thanks to God for the blessings encapsulated in New Jersey’s state motto: “liberty and prosperity.” Americans were grateful to live in a “free” country and to have…
The family unit is the foundation of a morally upright and virtuous society. However, the integral and well-ordered structure of the family is built upon more than secular means. The family is a holy framework of God’s sacramental love and a structural force against powers of evil. There is no dispute that for the last…
One of the all-time classic episodes of The Simpsons is “Deep Space Homer.” Aired in early 1994, amid questions of a post-Cold War space program, the episode sees Homer join an orbital mission as an “average-naut” in a NASA-sponsored scheme to boost the Space Shuttle’s popularity. While in orbit, Homer’s predictable incompetence leads to an…
