My pastor was trying to write a parish mission statement when, forsaking all modesty, I blurted out, “Father, you can write our mission statement in six words: Glorify God, Save Souls, Make Saints. He liked it and promptly had it emblazoned on—the collection envelopes! About a week later, trying (as writers do, to revise, and,…
“There seems to be a new normal where sin has become almost inevitable for most of us … For some reason — which in part due to us, in part due to the wisdom of God — the new normal for our generation seems to be that we keep on falling, we keep on sinning,…
It’s hard to be a Catholic today. Every time you turn on the news it seems that there’s another statue being defaced or a crucifix being vandalized or a church being set ablaze. Just the other day, a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe was smashed to the ground in broad daylight in a Brooklyn,…
By Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò Peter Kwasniewski’s recent commentary, titled “Why Viganò’s critique of the Council must be taken seriously”, impressed me greatly. It appeared (here) on OnePeterFive, on June 29, and is one of the articles on which I have been meaning to comment: I do so now, with gratitude to the author and…
Over at Catholic Culture, Phil Lawler has a pretty devastating take on the rather convenient wielding of the threat of mortal sin by Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee, who has just reinstated the Sunday obligation in his diocese: Starting this coming Sunday, it will be a serious sin for a Catholic in the Milwaukee archdiocese…
I’ve got to be honest, I absolutely agonized over writing my piece, No More Platitudes: It’s Time to Take a Hard Look at the Crisis of Catholicism. I started writing it weeks ago. Well, I should say, I wrote the first draft of a piece that never saw the light of day weeks ago. I wrote it,…
Recently I was walking through a college campus with my young son on my way to a Latin Mass. As we walked we saw a large modern “art” sculpture lifting itself from the earth. It was an abstract form of chaos made of metal with bright colors. It contorted in every direction as if the…
By an Anonymous Protestant Convert Struggling to hang in there… At one point in my youth, I gave up on Christianity altogether. It happened after I walked away from a Protestant Church that had become cult-like in its adherence to its pastor. I went looking for answers, and sought solace in things like the turgid…
The following letter exchange addresses some of the difficult questions Catholics are asking themselves today. Dear Dr. Kwasniewski, In your article “The Failure of Todaying: Abandon the Passé and Recover Tradition,” you wrote: “The reality is that the Church is already in schism. It is a virtual, unacknowledged schism, but no less real, spiritually, for…
A few years ago, my wife looked at me, after one of my rants about how bad things were getting in the Church, and asked me a simple question: “If this makes you so miserable, why are you still doing it?” I understood her question to be about my work, in particular, but also about…
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series on the topic of introducing children to the traditional Latin Mass and making it fruitful for them. The first part is available here. NB: This article (and its companion piece) have been published, in rewritten form, as chapter 20 in my book Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright: The Genius…
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