Atheists like to tell us that they can be "good without God." What they rarely do is define what they mean by "good". If they mean they can have good manners, do volunteer work, give to worthy causes to make the world a better place, then of course they can be "good without God." If they [...]
On this feast day of St Thomas More we do well to remember that the Tudor Revolution in England (sometimes given the euphemistic term: Reformation) was not immediately violent and catastrophic. It began with Henry VIII and his counsellors deciding that the church courts should not deal with cases of civil law. In the Middle Ages [...]
In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice Caroline says to Mr Bingley, I should like balls infinitely better, if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order [...]
Evelyn Waugh has been mis quoted as saying, "There are only two choices: suicide or Catholicism." I believe what he really said was in a letter responding to a friend who asked why, if the Christian faith was supposed to make you happy, Waugh was such a miserable character. Waugh replied, "If it weren't for my [...]
Am I getting older or is the news getting worse? All around the world seems to be disintegrating. What was considered immorality by everyone is now championed as good and progressive. The Christian church in America -- Catholics included--seem to be swept along by the crass materialism, commercial mentality and all the complacency and desires of [...]
You may remember that episode in Peter Pan when Tinkerbell is about to perish and all the children in the audience are asked to clap their hands if they believe in fairies. Their clapping makes Tinkerbell come back to life. Tinkerbell seems to have invaded the mindset of modern man. That is to say, too many [...]
There's a delicious scene in Brideshead Re-visited where the spiritually illiterate Rex Mottram is being instructed in the Catholic faith and the priest asks, "If it were raining and the Holy Father said it was sunny, how would you then explain papal infallibility?" Rex ponders for a moment and says, "I suppose I would say that [...]
Those who like fairy tales should love the story of the Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven. Like Dorothy, who is swept up by a cyclone to Oz, Jesus floats up and disappears up into what must be a Technicolor heaven. Fantasy tales are full of this sort of thing. Peter Pan flies away to Neverland; [...]
There are very few Catholic titles for the Blessed Virgin Mary more likely to get Evangelical Protestants upset than Mary Co-Redemptrix or Mary Mediatrix. Immediately the Bible Christian will quote I Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God and one mediator between God and Man--the man Christ Jesus." For them it is a done deal. "The [...]
I tell the boys in school that they should be a priest because every boy wants to wear a cape and a cool hat and do amazing things, and what other profession is there today in which you can wear a cape (except being a French policeman) So capes and hats and feats of derring do [...]