The lives of these two shed light on the role of our bishop and especially the Pope in every age. In the third century the church was divided over the Novatian heresy. Novatian was a Roman priest who stood up against the rightfully elected pope Cornelius because he thought Cornelius was too liberal in his treatment [...]
Scientism is the mask of atheism that states that no knowledge is possible that is not scientifically verified. In. my new book Beheading Hydra I point out that this is a mask of atheism because it follows logically from materialism--the belief that there is no reality other than this physical material world. There is no heaven, no [...]
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a marked decline in the number of blog posts. For more than fifteen years I have been writing blog posts here and articles for a range of websites, journals and papers. This sort of small scale journalism is rewarding but time consuming. It has been supplemented with the [...]
I was brought up in Evangelical Protestantism which has always been strong on individualistic religious experience, and often that experience was highly emotional, and whenever the emotions are involved, manipulation of some sort is always around the corner. We've all experienced the emotional blackmail imposed within families: "All I've done for you and this is the [...]
Sister Mary Lucy was a Poor Clare nun who suffered greatly. She lost her eyesight and had a degenerative bone disease which caused her spine to crumble. The doctors could do very little to help her. I used to visit her regularly, but never once heard her complain. Instead she had a huge radiant smile. I [...]
Some woke folk are getting down on Notre Dame University because of their famous "Fightin'Irish" leprechaun mascot. The article is here. When I tweeted a wisecrack about this someone commented that it couldn't be offensive since leprechauns are imaginary. This reminded me of something I read in the diaries of the nineteenth century English country parson [...]
Read the introduction to my new book Beheading Hydra: A few years ago, when we were on family vacation at Myrtle Beach I dared the kids to go through one of those walk-through spook houses with me. It was terrifying fun. We had to feel our way through dark corridors where most any sort of horror [...]
Here in the Bible Belt we have a steady flow of converts from the various Protestant denominations. They have various difficulties in adapting to the Catholic Church and one of their grumbles is "Where's the fellowship?" I feel their pain. The fellowship, camaraderie, esprits de corps etc in the Protestant churches is usually strong and one [...]
I remember clearly my feelings on leaving the Anglican Church to become a Catholic. It was a trepidation--the knowledge that I was launching out into the deep in a way I never had before. It was an awareness of what I call the impossibility of Catholicism. Here was a religion that (in theory) held to the [...]
I've been a Catholic now for over 25 years and I have to admit that our religion--as a culture--still has some pretty amazing blind spots, and one of them is the issue of wealth and poverty. There is a lingering idea that somehow it is a blessing to be poor and a curse to be rich. [...]