Young Adults and the Problem of Artificial Community
The transactional nature of the political scene in Washington, D.C., is well-known. A friend of mine once summarized things well: it’s the kind of place where people are keen to feign interest in you for just as long as nobody more interesting, useful, or prestigious enters the room. As a newcomer to the District, this […]
Facing the Atheism All Around Us
I do not think of myself as a visionary or a prophet. Indeed, I am dubious of such phenomena. I’d prefer to call my experience a “mental image” or a “dream image.” It came to me in that in-between state when I was not sure if I was praying or dozing. But it really doesn’t […]
A Beautiful Funeral
She was only 24 years old when she fell asleep in the Lord—a tragic swimming accident in late September. Bright, kind, and beautiful, she had recently graduated from a Catholic college in California and was studying nursing at a university in Ohio. When our community heard what happened, we were shaken to lose such a […]
Cremation: The Denial of Human Bodily Integrity
Damien Le Guay is a contemporary Catholic French thinker and author of two important, but unfortunately untranslated, books. Qu’avons-nous perdu en perdant la mort? (What Have We Lost in Losing Death?) questions how today’s funerary customs have erased death from human consciousness. La mort en cendres: la crémation aujourd’hui, que faut-il en penser? (Death in […]
Salesman of the Month
The Time for Secession is Now
Secession, “National Divorce”, whatever you call it, more and more Americans are talking about the potential breakup of the United States. Is this desirable? Is it feasible? Eric Sammons argues for breaking up the country for the good of all. Links: • The United States of America: Too Big to Succeed? • The Catholic Case for Secession? […]
Reviving Catholic Family Traditions
The Church has an ancient storehouse of vast treasures, old and yet fresh as the morning dew. Most of us have forgotten them, these treasures which used to be in the daily lives of the simplest peasant in medieval Europe. The feasts and fasts, commemorations, processions, prayers, and hymns that make up the traditional liturgical […]
Vaccine Passports for Mass?
Last month I wrote a piece entitled Unclean! Unclean! in which I criticized the decision of the Archbishop of Moncton to divide his flock between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, and to refuse any longer to nourish the latter with sacramental graces. That piece lasted some thirty-six hours before it was removed. Apparently, one doesn’t […]
The New Anti-Catholic Bigotry
There’s a growing consensus on the Left regarding religious exemptions: namely, that they’re absurd. “Dump COVID vaccine religious exemptions—there is no Church of Moderna Disbelievers,” declares the editorial board at the Los Angeles Times. There have been similar op-eds at MSNBC and Wired. But it’s not just frustration with resistance to the vaccine mandates. In […]
The Pope’s “9 Commandments for a Just Economy” Forgets the First One
The “popular movements” are the vanguard of the Catholic social justice warriors. They consist of a vast menagerie of Leftist activists and community organizers found in political action groups, Basic Christian Communities, worker organizations, and indigenous peoples’ lobbies. They exist worldwide, especially in less-developed nations, and they implement the tenets of liberation theology. Pope Francis […]