“But my people would not listen to me . . . . So I let them go their stubborn ways and do whatever they wished” (Psalm 81:11-12; cf. Romans 1:24-25). One version of a famous fable is this: A scorpion asked a frog for transportation across a river. The frog, thinking that the scorpion…
A couple weeks back, I announced that I was temporarily turning off our comment section as a desperate attempt to help keep my head above water. With an overwhelming amount of feedback from a couple of pieces I’d written still generating emails, direct messages, and comments, and a brand new baby in the house, along…
There is one business that is thriving in this pandemic: The dog-breeding business. Of all things! This I did not know. I discovered this one day as I was walking along the pier at our lake-side city. A popular spot with dog-walkers. Of which we have a great many in our town. As I struck…
Browse the Catholic realm of the internet on a fine afternoon following work, and what shall you see? Another day, another puerile fight. Such is, with increasing frequency, the life of internet “evangelization”. On a recent day I observed a respected professor announce an upcoming book, featuring various Catholic writers, which would examine the infallibility…
It was a Saturday afternoon in summer. It was bright and sunny. It was a “Saturday vigil” Mass for some green Sunday or other. I was twelve. The celebrant was the diocesan bishop, Theodore McCarrick. He was doing a parish visit. My memories of that Saturday at church were vivid even before “Uncle Ted” became…
The phrase, “The Family That Prays Together, Stays Together” was coined by Venerable Father Patrick Peyton.* And it seems to have been received as a relatively uncontroversial assertion. But I want to ask why this works. Why does the family that prays together stay together? It’s not a magic spell we cast with our formulas.…
They protected our freedoms; now it is our turn. Yesterday, June 6, 2021, marked 77 years since the D-Day Invasion at Normandy. As memories of that fateful day dim, we must take steps to remember. We have a duty to honor the men who fought bravely, and we must learn from their resolve. D-Day’s hard-fought…
Can there still be an unanswered question in the great competition of metaphysical ideals? It may be that we are currently living in an era where clarity is available amongst the confusion of the questions of the modern and postmodern age. Seen against the disorientation and misery of the long-term project of total self-autonomy, the…
The past week has really been a wild ride. Last Tuesday, feeling I desperately needed to get some things off my chest, I published “Against Crippled Religion” at my tiny little Substack page, where I have been doing my more personal writing. I shared it a bunch of places and even linked to it from…
Deadly Indifference: How the Church Lost Her Mission, and How We Can Reclaim It (Amazon; Sophia Press) Eric Sammons Crisis Publications 304 pages $18.95 Paperback; $9.99 eBook “Just shut up and stick to reviewing the book,” I remind myself while sitting down to write, attempting to feign as though nothing sordid is happening right now.…
Today is Memorial Day. Today, Americans will honor and remember patriots who lost their lives fighting for freedoms we hold dear. Other nations honor their heroes in a similar way. In my family, we experienced Memorial Day through the eyes of my grandfather, who fought in World War II. As the navigator, his B-24 air…
