On a frigid December evening in 2012, thirty-five of us lowly officer candidates at Navy Officer Candidate School (OCS) line up outside the base’s dining hall in Newport, Rhode Island. After another grueling day of military drill practice, academic classes, and inspection preparations, we are salivating at the thought of dinner. At the entrance, United…
Integralism is a word that gets argued over a great deal among the American Catholic Twitterati. A lot of them are still having their old dispute over the limits of the Church with regard to the State, that never-ending problem of “who’s boss” between the American Constitution and the pope. But the word “integralism,” understood…
It snowed this month. Not the heaviest snow I have ever seen, but still snow, with wind that bent the trees. A sort of snow squall. And here in a suburb of New York City, on the ninth of May — May, the “pretty little month,” when the dogwoods bloom with their blood- stained white…
Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute is a pro-life rock star. I’ve never seen a guy work harder to dig in and identify every detail of corruption going on within putatively Catholic organizations, document it, and expose it. It’s often thankless work. It isn’t always well-received by bishops, and certainly not by staffers at large…
Today in the United States, we honor our veterans in observance of Memorial Day. Many of us have family or friends who have given the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country. We ask everyone in the 1P5 audience to please say a prayer for the repose of their souls. Eternal rest grant unto…
Epistle: 1 Peter 4:7-11 Gospel: John 15:26-27; 16:1-4 Almighty and everlasting God, make us ever bear a devout affection toward Thee, and with a sincere heart to serve Thy majesty. – From the Collect for the Sunday after the Ascension We have now entered into Ascensiontide, that time of waiting between Our Lord’s Ascension and…
I let out an audible groan when I came across an opinion piece in The New York Times a few weeks ago titled “Christianity Gets Weird.” The accompanying grainy graphic of a pair of praying hands and the label-maker tags “GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE! VEILS VEILS VEILS! WEIRD CATHOLIC TWITTER!” threw me back to the era of…
Oxford-educated archaeologist Sir William Ramsay, embarking on a journey to investigate the historicity of the Gospel records and Acts, was skeptical. Taught by liberals and having adopted prevalent errors on the alleged late origin and supposed non-historicity of the Gospels and Acts, Sir William fully expected his own work to corroborate those liberal theories. Instead,…
Over the years of my adult life, as I have gotten to know more and more intimately the traditional liturgy, theology, spirituality, hagiography, and cultural accomplishments of the Catholic Church prior to the temporary bout of madness that seized churchmen after the Second Vatican Council (and continues to hold too many in its grip), I…
In the near future: Pope Francis’s health has taken a turn for the worse. He knows he has only a few weeks to live. In an effort to perpetuate his agenda after his death, he declares Cardinal Tagle as his successor. In a formal ceremony, he places a special pallium upon Cardinal Tagle, representing the…
“Naïve and immature people have a great passion to ‘serve humanity,’ but they cannot bear to serve a human being standing right in front of them.” This adage was given to me by a wise man who pithily summed up the pervasive folly of our age, and indeed several centuries of modernity. The bloodshed wrought…
