A sub-category of News.
The trouble with Manichaeism, some wag once wrote, is that it won’t let you eat a Big Mac. At least not without having to bear a load of guilt equal to the weight of the burger. Never mind, of course, that maybe even non-Manichees might not wish to eat one. In a world ruled by…
Above: the looting of the churches of Lyon by Calvinists in 1562. Today is Day 1 of the Octave of Christian Unity. Traditional Prayer for the Octave: A plenary indulgence is granted to the faithful who “participate in some of the services during the Week of Christian Unity and assist at the closing of this…
Traditionalism and its Dangers part II Read Part I: Hermeneutics of Rupture and the Extremes The first great danger for traditionalism is to try to act as though Vatican II did not happen and to seek, in practice, simply to ignore the post-conciliar Magisterium. Rather, recognizing the different levels even of papal Magisterium, the traditionalist…
Gays online were hootin’ and hollerin’ last week when Anita Bryant died. They danced on her grave, as they are wont to do. You may not remember Anita Bryant. At a tender age, she won Arthur Godfrey’s Amateur Hour talent contest, a huge deal at the time. She went on to win Miss Oklahoma in…
It generally isn’t charitable to say unkind things about people at their death. For me, that rule was especially challenging with the death of President Jimmy Carter a few weeks back. As a presidential historian who does much punditry, I dreaded Carter’s death because I knew I couldn’t avoid stating the obvious, namely, that he…
Wesley Smith is a pro-life bioethicist with the Discovery Institute who frequently writes in conservative publications like National Review. A recent essay was titled: “Assisted-Suicide Death Ceremonies Becoming Normalized.” People should not be surprised. In Canada, where getting a doctor to kill you (they call it “Medical Assistance in Dying,” MAID) has been legal since…
On December 28, 2024, Fr. Tom Pringle observed on 𝕏, “I’ve been at my parish for about 3 years. What I’ve seen in that time is a resurgence in Catholics going to confession.” I am the pastor of a parish with about 900 families, and I echo what Fr. Pringle said. This past Advent, I…
Two hundred and fifty years ago, on January 15, 1775, Giovanni Battista Sammartini passed away in Milan due to pneumonia. He was a musician to whom “a place of honor in the history of music is reserved not for his qualities as an opera composer or sacred music composer, but for having first sketched the…
By this point, most people have heard of the term “nones,” which refers to religiously unaffiliated individuals who claim to be agnostic, atheist, or “nothing in particular.” Have you ever considered that religious disaffiliation might be the very first step a person might take on the path to getting trapped in occult practices? A 2023…
The term “openness” is one of those flexible notions which, like those of “public order,” “good faith,” or “proportionality,” evade the exercise of definition. We know the important function of “standards” in legal technique. Legislators and judges deliberately use these words taken from ordinary language, the meaning of which varies according to the context and…
