The news is buzzing this week with reports of UFOs buzzing around New Jersey. UFOs are certainly among the most puzzling paranormal phenomena. BTW I like Jimmy Akin's distinction between "paranormal" and "supernatural". Paranormal refers to phenomena that are beside or outside normal experience. "Supernatural" refers to phenomena "above" the natural. In other words, paranormal phenomena [...]
As a convert from Anglicanism I remember important conversations among my fellow Anglican clergymen about the "validity" of the sacraments. Pope Leo XII famously judged Anglican orders to be "null and utterly void", but what does that mean and what do Catholics mean about "validity"? Most people would associate validity with authenticity, value, goodness and (in [...]
Those who have read my 2017 book The Mystery of the Magi--The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men will be familiar with my proposal that the Magi were, first of all historical figures--and not (as mainstream Biblical scholarship supposes) a fanciful legend. Also, they were not from Persia, but from Jordan--more specifically from the Nabatean kingdom [...]
I seem to have been added to the email list of a women's ordination activist. From time to time I'll get an amateurish graphic or a passage of shallow theology speak from this guy. I don't argue with him because I've learned that arguing with ideologues is a waste of time, but as far as I [...]
I don't profess to be a prophet, but you don't need supernatural revelation to read the signs of the times. Yesterday I read an article online about the large number of Generation Z young men who voted conservative. Then today this on Twitteer-X Who are these guys? They are the folks born between 1997 and 2012. [...]
I am blogging from EWTN HQ in Alabama where I have come to record some TV programs. One of the pleasures of a visit to EWTN is dinner in the common dining room where you get a chance to meet and converse with various interesting guests. Tonight around our table were myself and author/editor Mike Aquilina [...]
What's the old saw by Mark Twain? "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." On a recent visit to Italy I when I was tootling around the Uffizi Gallery in Florence I took time to study some of the busts and statues of the ancient Romans, and there was one of Julius Caesar, who was [...]
My ancestors were Mennonites and Amish folk. They came to William Penn’s start up colony in the 1770s searching for the freedom to follow their religion and be left alone. Those motivations and values remain deeply written in my personality code, and they have helped me understand why so many Americans have come to trust Donald [...]
...was how that dumb political ad opened up last week. If you haven's seen it, it featured about half a dozen actors who explained that they were really MEN! and that they ate steaks cooked rare, repaired cars, went huntin' and fishin' and drove pick up trucks and motorcycles. They were also not afraid of women [...]
A passage from today's gospel struck me in a fresh and astonishing way today. It's the final few verses in which Jesus emphasizes his identity as the lowliest one by embracing a child. “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed [...]