Classical philosophical thought has always considered love to be a quasi-deterministic force. Love, both in the human world, and the natural world which contains it, is something which seems to apply its own energy to the will of all creatures.…
The most effective form of censorship, bar none, is self-censorship. When a critical mass of people have surrendered themselves and their convictions to the tyranny of silence, to the authoritarian gag, one of the first prerogatives of a free and…
For many years, I have had an enduring affection for Marian Feasts. I have written in past years regarding this period of time sometimes referred to as “Our Lady’s Pasch”, when we liturgically commemorate the ‘Passover’ of Our Lady from…
Some weird things are going on. Like the oft-quoted Chinese curse to live in interesting times, the news cycle the past few months has been filled with the typical mix of the banal and the ultra-serious. It has been hard…
Translating Scripture is a notoriously difficult enterprise. Not only can someone confront the challenge of rendering ancient idioms and vocabulary into a modern one, there is the perennial debate between dynamic equivalence and a literal translation of Sacred Scripture. Personally,…
The Second Commandment, that of not taking the Lord’s name in vain, is, like all the Ten Commandments, a summary of a deeper, tangled web of sinful thoughts, actions and tendencies which plague fallen humanity. For example, we all know…
One of the benefits I believe that comes with age and the general disintegration of the body is that, like it or not, life teaches us to slow down from time to time. I like to joke with people that…
Recently I decided to torture myself for my Lenten Penance by reading another “exposé” by Vice, which has fallen so far from what actual journalism they used to do almost a decade ago in regard to the Islamic State and…
No one would dare accuse Pope Francis of being shy and reserved. Once again, the Twitterverse exploded this week with another easily prevented, and unfortunate statement. Pope Francis, it seems, has endorsed ‘the bird.’ And while the identification of the…
When I was in Seminary, I remember the other guys laughing once in a while about those Optional Memorials on the Liturgical Calendar which no one, until then, had ever heard about. Quite a few Saints get left in the…