Over at his blog at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher shares a couple of emails from readers about their experiences in the Catholic Church in both Canada and the United States. The stories are awful, but they’re not surprising. The gist of it is that almost nobody at the Catholic schools these people have experienced…
I have a love-hate relationship with confession. I hate it because it’s never very comfortable to admit the stupid, shameful, ridiculous things I do. I wait in the line with a head full of exaggeration, thinking of myself like a man on death row, waiting for the needle. In my desire to make a good…
Over at The Catholic Thing this morning, Randall Smith has an delightfully scathing piece entitled “The Artificial Jesuit” (a reference to one of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories). Smith tackles the decision made by Fr. Brian F. Linnane, S.J., president of Loyola University Maryland, to strike the late (but widely beloved) Southern Catholic writer’s name from one one…
Last week, I was invited to be a guest on Joseph Sciambra’s new show, Finding Our Father. The topic was Catholic Cults and Homosexuality in the Church, with a specific focus on my experiences spent with the most notorious of these cults — the Legionaries of Christ — founded and run for decades by one…
“Social distancing.” The “distancing” part is obvious enough: stay at home, and if you have to venture out, maintain the six-foot buffer zone. The “social” part is more difficult; we rack our brains for ways of overcoming our isolation, spending hours on the phone, “Zooming” familiar faces, or boosting our presence on social media to…
Would you like to listen to this article instead? You can do so here: My wife and I went to the bank recently on a business-related errand. Unlike a number of other states, in Arizona, our banks are still open. (The irony of people walking into bank lobbies wearing face masks without everyone assuming they’re…
In the writings of the Second Vatican Council, and those of the post-conciliar popes, it’s hard not to detect a certain drift toward an increasing obscurity of language. When one goes back and reads older enyclicals, or papal bulls from prior councils, what is striking by contrast is the clarity and precision of the texts.…
It’s 2020, and right now, the Catholic Church looks like a giant dumpster fire. For the past seven years, we’ve had a pope who has seemed hell-bent — literally — on undermining or even directly contradicting the truths of the faith. From Amoris Laetitia to Abu Dhabi to the attempt to change the teaching on…
The latest update on the coronavirus situation, an in-depth look at the Cardinal Pell decision, and news about a new commission set up by the pope to examine female deacons. Again. Audio Only: [powerpress] Related Links: Evidence from Wuhan’s morgues, crematoriums suggests COVID-19 deaths 20 times higher than official count China Mourns Dead as Wuhan…
“We glory in tribulations” (Rom. 5:3) Millions of Catholics in the so-called free Western world will, in the coming weeks or even months, and especially during Holy Week and Easter, the culmination of the entire liturgical year, be deprived of any public acts of worship due to both civic and ecclesiastical reaction to the outbreak…
This week began with lots of new announcements on government restrictions and diocesan shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. In this special report, we take a look at what’s happening, and why, and try to get some perspective on what we’re facing with the Coronavirus pandemic. This one is particularly for the skeptics and those…
