I have no reason or standing to question Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s motives or intentions — he seems like a good man following the dictates of his conscience, and I humbly defer to the authority attendant to him and his office. Nevertheless — and I think the cardinal would agree with this — his recent words…
One of the treasures of the Catholic Church is its religious orders, with their various rules and charisms directed toward addressing particular needs in the Church at the time of their founding. Human nature being what it is, though, a common phenomenon is that over time, orders fall into laxity and lose the original vigor…
In recent years, the use of profanity has spread like a virus in our society. Among those with weak or no religious affiliation, this is no surprise, but among devout Catholics who love traditional liturgies, it is a jarring reality. As Catholics who seek to uphold the traditions of the Church, we must, like St.…
If you spend very much time in the social media tradosphere, you have likely witnessed the intermittent pleas by Catholics everywhere to cancel your Netflix subscription for the good of your soul and the souls of your children. These cries have become even louder as of late. Apparently, Big Mouth (a cartoon about teen sex)…
The top-down annihilation of a developed orthodoxy into a mad-glad tambourine session seems to have been successful for a few decades. As I grow older in the Catholic Church, I’ve gradually become aware of the various effects of this post-conciliar crumble. But it’s another thing altogether experience it firsthand – especially in the sacrament of…
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…
Editor’s note: A younger and fresher-faced version of me wrote this piece back in 2015. In the intervening years, I’ve become more cynical about the existence of a political solution to the execrable moral and spiritual problem of abortion. Readers may see why: this article remains relevant in part because after four-plus decades, the March…
“Red-pilling” is a metaphor that has caught fire in the traditional Catholic world in the last year. It is drawn from the movie, now almost 20 years old, The Matrix. The main character, Neo, is given the choice to see the world as it really is – a reality he intuits but cannot yet perceive.…
For as long as I can remember, I have had books handy. It started with a set of the 16 volume “Golden Treasury of Knowledge” from 1961, which my parents gave me when I was about eight years old. I spent most of my youth sickly with asthma, overweight, socially awkward, and introverted to the…
I often relay the anecdote that it was Steven Ray’s book on the papacy, Upon This Rock, that gave me the final intellectual push to convert – but mostly it was the opening quote, which brought me about 90% of the way even before delving into the scholarship within. “When Christ at a symbolic moment…
“No, you can’t eat that candy cane. Hop in the van. It’s time for Christmas!” My wife and I load our three excited young children in the van and drive out for a brisk sparkle tour before Midnight Mass. It is 20 degrees below zero, a definite improvement from last year. We are excited that…
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