Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem“From shadows and images into truth”1Blessed John Henry Newman’s memorial epitaph Although many years ago now, I recall the young, eyebrow-pierced woman who told me, with no hint of embarrassment or regret, “I used to be Catholic, but now I’m pagan.” She did not say that she struggled with faith…
“It’s very difficult for us to recapture people’s motivations for carrying out this practice[.] … Perhaps it was out of … a sense that the good the sacrifice could bring the family or community as a whole outweighed the life of the child.” —Dr. Josephine Quinn, on Carthaginian ritual infant sacrifice “The reasons and need…
You see a lot of strange words now in Catholic circles. Words that you would never before have associated with the word “Catholic,” like “shaman” and “cosmos” and “integral ecology.” All having to do with the recent Amazon Synod. You have to wonder: what would such an “inculturated” church even look like? And what about…
Professor Richard Dawkins’s latest book is entitled Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. It is divided into two parts, the first being, after a fashion, theological, and the second claiming to be biological and scientific. In the theological section, the author presents his philosophical, theological, and moral arguments against the existence, justice, and goodness of God;…
On May 13, 1524, twelve Spanish Franciscan friars set foot on Mexican soil for the first time. After walking barefoot from the coast of Veracruz, they finally arrived at Mexico City, a distance of 250 miles over two mountain ranges. These men “of exceptional worth” became known as “The Twelve Apostles” because of their apostolic…
Many Catholics are just now awaking from what seemed like a surreal dream, or rather a hellish nightmare. The Pan-Amazonian Synod mercifully stumbled past the finish line at the end of October, and now the revolutionary attack on the Church will continue in earnest, sans grating daily press conferences and Pachamama denials. First, a caveat.…
The news that in these days comes to us around the statuettes of the Pachamama, the mother goddess worshiped in the Inca religion, thrown into the Tiber from Ponte Sant’Angelo, at the foot of the castle dominated by St. Michael, makes us think of the fourth act of Nabucco, the opera by Giuseppe Verdi who…
Something ancient — paganism — is “struggling to be born” again. It’s slouching toward birth, like Yeats’s “rough beast,” laboring to arrive for its hour. It’s emerging amid the rise of what exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger ominously describes as the “sixth generation.”[i] According to Fr. Ripperger, specific “generational spirits” — demons — afflict different generations.…
