On May 30, 1990, a grievously depressed teenager hurled himself from the balcony of his apartment in Mexico City, plunging 30’ to the pavement below. He suffered life-threatening head injuries and the doctors gave him a zero chance of survival. Hoping against hope, his family prayed urgently to Juan Diego for a miracle. Ten days…
Image: The Immaculate Conception, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo by Marianna Bartold “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” (Gen. 3:15) “Amongst all the works of the Great Creator,” says Raymundus Jordanus (who, in…
“My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called…
Author’s note: I originally wrote this elsewhere, 9 years ago this Sunday, on the day my grandmother died. I’ve been thinking about her this morning, on what would have been her 96th birthday. After re-reading what I wrote back then, unable to keep the tears from flowing, I wanted to share her – her light, her…
As she appears in her present earthly configuration, the Catholic Church has no credibility to the world, for she looks, speaks, and acts like the world: the world has claimed her, to make of her what it wants, to have its way with her. Or rather, those who speak and act on behalf of the…
“He that walketh with the wise, shall be wise: a friend of fools shall become like to them” (Proverbs 13:20 DRB). There are, I know, exceptions to this “rule,” but let’s stipulate that men who enter the priesthood are good guys: They like people, generally interact well with people, expect good things from other people,…
Holy relics are a distinctive feature of Catholicism. Would you expect to see the bones of some ancient martyr on display at your local Evangelical church? To most non-Catholics, holy relics are just plain weird. Sadly, veneration of holy relics even among Catholics has also been a practice often relegated to “old-fashioned” Catholics—a quasi-superstitious holdover…
A reader sent me the following question: Dear Dr. Kwasniewski, The question that all of Viganò’s essays and your own raises is: Why at this point should we remain in communion with the Catholic Church—you know, the one that most people (reasonably?) think is headed by Pope Francis and the bishops in communion with him?…
A good Orthodox Presbyterian friend of mine and I like to spar back and forth about the faith, to talk about raising our kids rightly in the eyes of God (even in Comrade Northam’s Virginia), and, more recently, to discuss the philosophy and writings of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. His four book “incerto” has been massively…
Much of the 1P5 audience, I suspect is quite wary of taking any of the proposed COVID vaccines. There are any number of pragmatic concerns, not least of which are the potential side effects of any vaccine that is rushed to market. There are also ethical concerns, however, based on methods used to develop the…
As I was reading the comments (I know, never do that) of my recent article in The American Conservative, It’s Not Your Father’s GOP, several commenters opined that a socially conservative political movement will never play with the Millennial and Gen Z crowd. In essence, their argument was that young people are, and always will…
