In my high school days, I used to listen to a wide range of rock music — bands like The Beatles, The Police, The Doors, U2, Rush, Van Halen, Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, ELP, Steely Dan — and rap was part of the mix, too. At a certain point, thanks to a charismatic…
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), in addition to being among the widely acknowledged geniuses of the human race, was one of the most eminent modern apologists for the Christian faith. In an era such as ours that denigrates both rationality, man’s distinctive trait, and belief in God, man’s highest dignity in this life, we have much to…
A one-year-old blog known as “Where Peter Is” — a sort of inverse image of OnePeterFive — features writing from ardent defenders of Pope Francis. Recognizing that Catholicism is inherently a religion of Tradition, the blog avoids the awkwardness of patent contradiction between earlier magisterial teaching and Francis’s “creativity” by arguing that Tradition equals “what…
In G.K. Chesterton’s story “The Queer Feet,” Father Brown says: A crime is like any other work of art. Don’t look surprised; crimes are by no means the only works of art that come from an infernal workshop. But every work of art, divine or diabolic, has one indispensable mark — I mean, that the…
A university student once sent to me the following heartfelt letter. He expresses well the thoughts and feelings of many young Catholic men and women his age, who are open to a vocation from the Lord, but struggle with how to think about the whole matter. In my response, I try to clear away some…
To a degree not yet as widely recognized as it should be, Pope Francis – Jorge Bergoglio, S.J. – is showing himself to be an admirable disciple of his Jesuit forerunner Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955), the Piltdown paleontologist and “Omega Point” mystagogue, who exercised an enormous influence on the young Jesuit Turks of…
My article “Twelve Reasons Not to Prefer the Novus Ordo” was greeted with a barrage of snide remarks, flustered dismissals, relativistic claims about “tastes,” and soberly framed objections. As a philosopher and theologian, I care little for empty rhetoric, but I care very much about rational objections, which deserve a response. I have seen every…
Fr. Longenecker has written some fine books and articles. Years ago, I enjoyed and benefited from his book on St. Benedict and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and his recent book on the historical veracity of the Magi is interesting. It would appear that in matters liturgical, however, Fr. Longenecker is out of his depth. Each…
Part of the problem with Pope Francis’s change to the Catechism on the legitimacy of the death penalty – a decision on which he is doubling down in the face of worldwide opposition from theologically literate Catholics – is that it fundamentally misconstrues the role of a catechism. A catechism is not, and has never been…
It never ceases to amaze me just how dark the world becomes in the month of December, as we approach the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. I wake up in darkness, thinking it’s the middle of the night, when it’s already almost breakfast time. I look around at a dismal sky at…
Children change everything. This is a truth we ponder many times in our lives. First, if we are believing Christians, we celebrate each year the coming of a child – the Child, Emmanuel, God with us, the Word made flesh – the infant, the boy, the youth, the man, on Whom all of reality hinges,…
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