Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Fathers and mothers must be aware of what has become common in popular music On Nov. 5, pandemonium erupted at a Houston concert by rapper Travis Scott. After the crush of the crowd subsided, more than 300 concertgoers were treated for injuries, 25 were hospitalized, and 10 people (including a 9-year-old boy) were dead. My … Read more
The experience of the Church and the saints demonstrates a general law: what comes from the Spirit of God brings with it joy, peace, tranquility of spirit, gentleness, simplicity, and light. On the other hand, what comes from the spirit of evil brings sadness, trouble, agitation, worry, confusion, and darkness. These marks of the good … Read more
Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals who have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, ‘I am too great a sinner to change,’ or ‘God would not want me.’ God will take anyone who is willing to love, not with an occasional gesture, but with a ‘passionless passion,’ … Read more
While out on an evening walk in a local park, I heard a fellow walker coming down the path behind me, talking on his phone. His tone was even-keeled and calm … but it seemed like every fifth word was an expletive, uttered in the same calm manner. I cite this incident not because it’s … Read more
Each man should make a decision to have a patron Saint. While there are many more, I offer the names of ten saints with whom each and every Catholic man should become familiar. Next to each saint’s name is is listed the virtue with which he is associated, as well as the sin which opposes … Read more
Oh, how the Left media devoted four years of the Trump presidency to a narrative that the Trumps were in it just to get rich at the expense of American suckers. A favored storyline was that Donald Trump, Ivanka, the sons, Jared Kushner, the hotels, casinos, and golf courses all were awash in cash and … Read more
Religious exemption is on the chopping block under Xavier Becerra’s aggressive new plan. At the time of Xavier Becerra’s confirmation, the Register warned his appointment as secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) posed a grave threat to the religious freedom of believers. We based that warning on a sober assessment of his disastrous political … Read more
Our freedom always has this marvelous power to make what is taken from us—by life, events, or other people—into something offered. Externally there is no visible difference, but internally everything is transfigured: fate into free choice, constraint into love, loss into fruitfulness. Human freedom is of absolutely unheard-of greatness. It does not confer the power … Read more
If you are pregnant and in need, come to the Catholic Church! That was the message of Cardinal John O’Connor 30 years ago when he founded the Sisters of Life in New York. That community of Catholic women religious (“nuns”) was founded to do just that: protect and enhance the sanctity of human life. The … Read more
The Biden administration is seeking to radically narrow the boundaries of respectable American political thought. The administration has repeatedly issued statements and reports that could automatically castigate citizens who distrust the federal government. We may eventually learn that the new Biden guidelines spurred a vast increase in federal surveillance and other abuses against Americans who … Read more
The problem with Team Integralist is they are good at picking out the flaws of the liberal order, but as yet have no realistic replacement for it. Pluralism might seem like a phantom to Patrick Deneen, but just try to create a political order based on subjecting the state to Catholic teaching, and see how … Read more
Intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUDs) appear to have systemic effects on the body like those of hormone replacement therapy, according to a breast MRI study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “It has been claimed that IUDs have a purely local effect on the uterus,” said … Read more
The promise of federalism might be realized soon on the contentious issue of abortion. Progressives should not fear it. Abortion wasn’t much of a national issue until abortion-rights advocates made it one, the matter having previously been regulated on a state-by-state basis. Progressives, who think of society as one big factory to be managed scientifically … Read more
I’ve spent most of my life in what is now called corporate legacy media. Many colleagues were committed to doing great work and telling the truth and I loved it. But now I see it rotting away. Any gardener can see it. I have a few hobbies to clear the mind and find refuge from … Read more
John McWhorter’s Woke Racism is an elegant, essential demolition of today’s ugly racial politics. ‘I write this viscerally driven by the fact that the ideology in question is one under which white people calling themselves our saviours make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species, … Read more
For us Christians, the first virtue of godliness is to honor our parents—to pay back the troubles of those who bore us, and to give them whatever comforts we can with all our strength. For if we repaid them as much as possible, we could still never pay them back for their gift of life. … Read more
If bisexuals are a persecuted minority, then I’m a rainbow-coloured cupcake. I’m always suspicious of being ‘proud’ of anything you didn’t actually achieve for yourself. You might be proud that you can run really fast or write really well. But being proud of something you had to make no effort to be? That’s like someone … Read more
Sen. Durbin complains that his pro-abortion voting record has kept him from receiving Communion in his home diocese, and a Catholic priest and journalist offers a sympathetic ear. A week after President Biden said that Pope Francis told him he was a “good Catholic” and should “keep receiving Communion,” and just days before the U.S. … Read more
The Satanic Pose of False Individualism The pose of Satanism has been attractive for centuries. From exalted poets like Charles Baudelaire to the guys in Slayer, Satan comes to stand for the ultimate rebel—the person who cannot fit into the established order of things, who seeks to break it and remold it nearer to his … Read more
There is a popular image, very useful to abortion advocates, of anti-abortion protesters screaming insults in the faces of women going into the facilities we insist on calling “clinics” as if what went on in there were health care. I have spent some time on those sidewalks and I have never seen that or anything … Read more
Social psychologist Roy Baumeister begins his book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, with a proposition that will be counterintuitive to many: “Evil usually enters the world unrecognized by the people who open the door and let it in. Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil.” Dismissing evildoers … Read more
Many things happen that God does not will. But he still permits them, in his wisdom, and they remain a stumbling block or scandal to our minds. God asks us to do all we can to eliminate evil. But despite our efforts, there is always a whole set of circumstances which we can do nothing … Read more
Bernard of Clairvaux, the great 12th-century saint and Doctor of the Church who renewed the Western monastic tradition, once warned that “The most grievous danger for any pope lies in the fact that, encompassed as he is by flatterers, he never hears the truth about his own person and ends by not wishing to hear … Read more
C.S. Lewis was right: Atheists cannot be too careful of their reading. Broadly speaking there are two types of atheism. One is, or can be, truly noble; the other is, and always will be, truly ignoble. The noble sort of atheism is that which is genuinely interested in the quest for truth and pursues it … Read more
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. G.K. Chesterton, “The Club of Queer Trades” Related PostsWhat’s New is Old Sin and Evil – G.K. Chesterton The “Press” 100th Anniversary of G.K. Chesterton’s first visit to America Love and Truth