Tolkien and Chesterton – “J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton, two great champions of the modern fantasy genre, understood literary creation, and art in general, as somehow expressing God’s creativity in the world.” The Theology of Chesterton and Tolkien: An Interview with Alison Milbank (European Conservative)
Not just a child – “One can desire a child—but never this child.” Abortion is Eugenics (New Polity)
The Manifesto – “The Buffalo shooter is a despicable racist who should be executed, but the media are trying to mold him into an acolyte of a talk-show host they dislike.” What They’re Not Telling You about the Buffalo Shooter (National Review)
Lives Legally Taken – “The pro-abortion machine has been working overtime to churn out lies about preborn babies and laws designed to protect them.” 5 Lies Abortion Supporters Spread About Overturning Roe And How To Counter Them (The Federalist)
Canon Law – “many Catholics, regardless of their background or political views, including many clerics, view canon law mostly as a kind of prudential fiction, if they know about it at all.” Why Canon Law Matters (The Lamp Magazine)
An American Awakening – “Some people say that there has never been a harder time in the United States to be Catholic. One can understand why. Public approval weighs against us” The Next American Awakening Starts Here (The Catholic Thing)
Why Believe? – “What does it mean to profess belief in one God, as we do when we pray the Creed at Mass?” Why believe in the Christian God? Why not Zeus, Loki or Apollo? (CTS Books)
Smarter Revolutionists – Our American progressives move slowly. Take the sexual revolution. It has passed through many stages in the last sixty years, with perhaps more stages to go. How to Destroy a Civilization: Gradually (The Catholic Thing)
Confronting Totalitarianism – Orwell’s two comic novels of the 1930s, Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1936) and Coming Up For Air (1939), remind us of how essential the satiric impulse was to his anti-totalitarianism. Orwell’s Humor (City Journal)
Pro-Life “Male Supremacists” – “The online headline was ‘Supremacy movements unite over abortion restriction, though for different reasons.'” NPR Host Calls Pro-Life Americans “White Male Supremacists” (Life News)
Summer of Rage – “Pro-abortion activist groups including the Women’s March, Planned Parenthood and others have planned upwards of 400 ‘Bans Off Our Bodies’ demonstrations for Saturday”. President Of Women’s March Promises ‘Summer Of Rage’ (Daily Caller)
Traditionis Custodes – “We are entering the first ordination season after Francis’s motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and many of the ordinandi, as well as their confreres in lower years, are suffering anxiety and distress.” Newly Ordained Priests and Permission to Offer the Traditional Latin Mass (One Peter Five)
Never Too Late – An Italian woman whose 13th birthday cake was stolen from her mother’s windowsill by U.S. soldiers in 1945 has received a replacement cake, 77 years later. US Army Replaces Birthday Cake Stolen From Italian Girl in 1945, 77 Years Later (The Epoch Times)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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Eberstadt’s commencement address to Warner College graduates inspires and uplifts. It pictures the potential good that American Catholics should shed among the scarred, angry secularist Woke sleep-walkers in our streets and institutions today.
Correction: NOT Warner College, but Magdalen College, in Warner NH.
“Canon law touches upon every aspect of the Church. It defines, binds, and rules over the whole of the faith” (Gregory Caridi Why Canon Law Matters).
Ignorance of the purpose of canon law, which, in words similar to Caridi’s, informs and articulates our practice of the faith, our beliefs is partly the reason for apathy. It’s also akin to the old adage, the Italians make the law, but only the Irish follow it. Today the Irish and mostly everyone else rarely seems to follow it. The idea of law is perceived as pre Vat II legalism. John Courtney Murray SJ may have written a brilliant defense of the practice of freedom of religion within the State, Dignitatis Humanae, although he failed to address the obligatory nature of Catholicism. Both in practice for the Catholic and, perhaps even in a pluralistic society as the one true Church. This later set aside for sake of argument, that lacuna led most to believe you can skip this or that in good conscience. Also, the understanding of serious sin and condemnation sans repentance seemed remote, especially with the list of [subjectively expressed] requirements to commit serious sin, making it appear improbable, virtually impossible. So Catholics dismiss law.
Surprisingly for this writer when His Holiness became harping about legalistic clergy throwing rocks at sinners my thought was where, what rocks? Bemused, I ruminated perhaps he’s targeting the less than prodigious remnant of the faithful. Or. Were they, the nominal, themselves too rigid? I haven’t discovered the rationale to date except that his Holiness seems to sense they’re out there somewhere. What the Church sorely needs is greater rigidity and familiarity with canon law.
Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture references a Le Figaro piece on the end of Francis’ papacy. Interesting. Translated at Rorate Caeli: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2022/05/questioned-deaf-to-criticism-end-of.html
“He [Pope Francis] has appointed a prelate [cardinal Hollerich SJ] who supports the orientations of the German synod to the key position of rapporteur of the next Roman synod on synodality” (Jean-Marie Guénois Le Figaro in Rorate Caeli).
At this stage there’s little to be curious about the direction Francis is taking the Church.