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…
It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it… ― Flannery O’Connor, “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor” At mid-life, I have absolutely no patience or charity for eunuch huckster priests who sell the LGBT lie like patent medicine. At 16, I bought…
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series on the topic of introducing children to the traditional Latin Mass and making it fruitful for them. The second part is available here. NB: This article, along with its companion piece, has been published in rewritten form as chapter 20 in my book Reclaiming Our…
In a new directive from Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation For Divine Worship and the Sacraments, published with the approval of Pope Francis, Catholics are urged to recognize that virtual participation in the liturgy and the life of the Church is not a replacement for the real thing. The letter, published today, is entitled,…
On Aug. 20, Vice Adm. Yancy Lindsey, Commander, Navy Installations Command, announced that “religious services will be cut at bases where those services are readily available in the surrounding community outside the base” in order to “reduce redundancies and capture efficiencies” as part of a national realignment. Commander, Navy Installations Command, commonly referred to as…
