In Defense of Bishop Barron (The Fourth Watch): “Despite attacks from a certain segment of Catholic commentators, Bishop Barron is a model of how to be a good bishop in times of turmoil.”
Settling accounts for the Covid lockdown (Phil Lawler’s Substack): “It has taken several years, but now we know that the ‘official’ narrative was wrong on nearly every important point. More shocking, we also know that leading government officials and pharmaceutical-company executives knew that they were wrong … ”
Notre Dame Affirms Appointment of Abortion Advocate to Prominent Post (National Catholic Register): “Scholar Susan Ostermann, due to take over as director of the university’s Asian studies institute on July 1, has written multiple columns castigating attempts to make abortion illegal.”
Steelman or Strawman? Carrie Gress’s Something Wicked (Public Discourse): “Regrettably, Gress’s latest book is an exercise in dispatching straw men of its own making.”
Announcing the 2026 Jane Greer Memorial Poetry Contest (Dappled Things): “Jane was loved—so much so that when her social media friends pooled their money to send funeral flowers, they ended up with several hundred dollars left over. Her friends asked themselves what Jane would have wanted them to do with the funds, and supporting fellow poets was the obvious answer.”
Cardinal McElroy fans the flames (Catholic Culture): “By now all responsible public leaders have recognized the need to dial down the rhetoric and de-escalate the confrontations in Minnesota. Yet Cardinal Robert McElroy has joined with several other religious leaders in Washington to rouse passions still further … ”
Aquinas Articulates Artificial Intelligence (What We Need Now – Substack): “When Aquinas addresses the principles of human intellect, he does so on the basis of philosophical argumentation and not from Christian revelation. This makes his thinking important in the conversation about Artificial Intelligence, which is developed and operates independently of Christian revelation.”
Leo XIV’s remarks to Doctrine office give subtle signals (Crux): “Pope Leo XIV addressed the participants in the plenary session of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on Thursday of last week, and his remarks for the occasion reward careful attention.”
AI Is Making Everyone Stupid (The ghost – Substack): “We just consume. It doesn’t matter what—videos, notes, podcast excerpts—it’s all just content, there for us to gorge ourselves on.”
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@ Aquinas Articulates Artificial Intelligence
While writer Schramm makes a correct general observation he neglects to address the question of ends of nature, that for Aquinas are always subject to the ultimate end of all things in God.
Consequently the ends and natures of things are not entirely subject to processes as the totally subjective observations of the scientist, rather to their end determined by their ultimate end, specifically in that regard the end of human nature.
Addendum to “subjective observations of the scientist” and logarithm.
@ In Defense of Bishop Barron
James Keating announces that in the United States Bishop Barron far exceeds other prelates as a purveyor of truth and beauty, and in the epistemic sovereignty he gives to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. That Barron initially chewed on Rahner, then [at least in part] spit him out, then turned to the wide favorite of the cognoscenti Urs von Balthasar is deemed in his favor.
Of course with that is the salvation of all quasi heresy [some say heresy] and the dissolution or non existence of eternal hell and suffering. It’s one of the few sentiments I share with Jorge Bergoglio, Balthasar, and Bishop Barron. Although like Barron I put that sentiment aside and put faith in what is clearly revealed in revelation, not simply John’s book, rather the Gospel of Christ.
While lesser bodies are robed in scarlet Barron does quite well in purple.
James Keating wrote an excellent article about the attacks on Bishop Barron, and it’s definitely worth reading. I have great respect for Bishop Barron and have often found his Word on Fire work to be truly inspiring.
I listen to Bishop Barron’s homilies every Sunday.
Mrscracker, I do as well. Always affected by his closing: “May God bless you.”
Re the excellent James Keating piece on Bishop Robert Barron, my admiration for the Bishop grows even more seeing who his critics are.
@ Aquinas articulates AI
About the absolute difference between an electronic data dump an intellect/wisdom, this too from Cardinal Newman:
“I will tell you, Gentlemen, what has been the practical error of last past twenty years [etc!]—not to load the memory with a mass of undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so much that he has rejected it all [….] All things now are to be learned all at once, not first one thing, then another, not one well, but many badly. Learning is to be without exertion, without attention, without toil, without grounding, without advance, without finishing. [….] What the steam engine does with matter, the printing press [and AI!] is to do with the mind; it is to act mechanically, and the population is to be passively enlightened by the mere multiplication and dissemination of volumes [….]
“Wise men have lifted up their voices in vain; and at length, lest their own institutions should be outshone and should disappear in the folly of the hour, they have been obliged, as far as they could with a with a good conscience, to humor a spirit which they could not withstand, and make temporizing concessions of which they could not but inwardly smile” (John Henry Newman, Discourse VI: Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Learning, “The Idea of a University,” 1852).
@ Steelman or Strawman? Carrie Gress’s Something Wicked
18th century occultism, hatred of men, and love of autonomy and unfettered sex (Ms Franks’ first line of defence in repudiating Gress’ book).
Actually, that’s what feminism, except for more fashionable attire, is today. But wait. Franks comes back with a powerful response, citing historical degrading and abuse of women by men, and the admission of that and more by John Paul II. Unfortunately, for Ms Franks that lends to motivation. Are we speaking about what Franks calls strawmen than what should be called strawwomen? Because Gress doesn’t deny those conditions existed.
It seems based on Franks’ essay that she is more intent on defending a woman’s right to manage their own financial affairs, own property, and have abortions. Edith Stein was a feminist due to Nazi Germany’s laws regarding women and Jews in the teaching profession. Although Stein was not in favor of abortion. Far from that her feminism was authentic to the dignity of women as ordained by her Creator.
The problem with Carrie Gress’s argument about first-wave feminism is how historically vapid it is, Father. Franks highlights a number of laughable arguments (and tendency toward ad hominem) that a philosophy PhD like Gress should (theoretically) be above.
The Catholic Thing ran an article about the Gress book the other day, it was head lined Fighting the wicked Witches of the West, which is exactly the kind of cattiness Gress invites and which numerous women busy getting on with their life rightly resent. Gress reminds me of the awful women who used to write for The Daily Mail back in the 1980s, thundering on about evil working moms while they smugly worked leaving their own children either in day care or boarding school.
Re #1 – In Defense of Bishop Barron (Fourth Watch)
Wonderful article.
Note to self – Add to reading list: 1)James Keating 2)Fourth Watch.
@Settling accounts for the Covid lockdown (Phil Lawler’s Substack):
From The Guardian
Disposable face masks used during Covid have left chemical timebomb, research suggests
An estimated 129bn were being used every month around the world at height of pandemic, with no recycling stream
Damien Gayle
Mon 8 Sep 2025 11.32 EDT
Excerpt:
Every mask examined by Bogush and Kourtchev leached microplastics, but it was the FFP2 and FFP3 masks – marketed as the gold-standard protection against the transmission of the virus – that leached the most, releasing four to six times as many.
“The particle sizes of MPs [microplastics] varied greatly, ranging from around 10μm–2,082μm, but microplastic particles below 100μm were predominant in the water leachates,” they wrote in their paper, published in the journal Environmental Pollution.
And they made an even more worrying discovery. Subsequent chemical analysis of the leachate found medical masks also released bisphenol B, an endocrine-disrupting chemical that acts like oestrogen when absorbed into the bodies of humans and animals.
Taking into account the total amount of single-use face masks produced during the height of the pandemic, the researchers estimated they led to the release of 128-214kg of bisphenol B into the environment.