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. [...]
My new book is published next week. Beheading Hydra - A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age looks at sixteen insidious "ism's" that infest our modern society and are like sixteen heads on the monster that is atheism. The first half of the book explains what the sixteen isms are and explores the historical [...]
OK. I admit it. The title of this post was sort of click-bait-ish. I'm not really proposing the abolition of the doctrine of transubstantiation, but suggesting that Catholics stop using the term "Real Presence". This older article from my time over at Patheos helps explain why. Put simply the term "Real Presence" is a term coined [...]
...in my sophomore year in college I met an old woman named June who changed my life. On Saturday morning, to earn some extra pocket money, students could line up on campus and people in town who wanted some extra muscle for odd jobs would turn up and you would get into their car and they'd [...]
In Sunday's gospel Jesus declared himself to be the Bread of Life, and this image must be linked to the phrase in the Lord's Prayer where we are told to ask for our daily bread. Therefore we can ask ourselves where and how we get our daily Jesus. There are plenty of preachers and teachers who [...]