Posts
Demystifying Why There was Supernatural at Medjugorje, but not the Messages
News is circulating today about a decision having been made in the Congregation for Doctrine and Faith that the messages of Medjugorje were in fact not supernatural. Nobody should be surprised. Over the years over we’ve been burdened by smug believers of the Medjugorje phenomenon who look down their nose and lecture on the superior knowledge to be…
Eating Gyros on Good Friday? Kiril Sends Message to Francis on the Easter Date
Being half Greek and enjoying a gyro, while at the same time enjoying the meat-free Great Lent can cause some peculiar cravings once Easter season arrives each year. My Polish half cannot fathom Easter Sunday without ham. Kielbasa is nice, but ham. Ham. Ham with horseradish. Ham with hard boiled egg. Ham slice on babka bread. There’s always a little tension, however,…
A Different Take on Laudato Si: The Church Could Change a Lot Directly
It shouldn’t surprise Bellarmine Forum readers that I’ll have an opinion posted here regarding Pope Francis’s Laudato Si encyclical forthcoming. Readers may not be aware of my background as a chemical engineer, environmental work (even worked for the Army Corps of Engineers on water quality), and that I was an Assistant Attorney General in Michigan for…
Using Social Justice Alliances to Subvert Catholic Principles
Frontal assault is not the best way to bring down a religious establishment. That only creates martyrs and underground resistance. Minimizing religious values, however, while elevating political ones is much more effective and, when the religious establishment cooperates with the process, it withers like a vestigial organ. Two examples – one from a predominantly Catholic and one…
Do Something to Honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus Today on the Feast
Today, the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi, is the feast of the Sacred Heart. Sometimes, the feast is held on this following Sunday. The short story of the feast is explained in my trusty old catechism: A single word of Christ would have fully sufficed to redeem us, but it was not enough to…
Calling Jesus a Liar: Anglican Style (which is twenty years behind AmChurch fashion trends)
It was over twenty years ago, at a daily Mass in Cincinnati (the head of the AmChurch hydra), when I first heard someone try to pray the “Our Mother” prayer. They also liked to say the Suscipe with the fantasy option, ending it with the “her Church.” [that was the older english form at the time, so naturally it…
The Fix is in: World Russian Council calls to remove abortions from the system of mandatory medical insurance
One of the earliest things the Bolsheviks did after destroying churches in an ISIS fashion was legalize abortion. In 1920, they cried that women were procuring back street illegal abortions and all they wanted to do was make it safe. They made a law permitting it to be performed in hospitals. Note the logic, the incremental approach. The initial…
The De Smet Statuary at SLU: An Alternative Approach
by Fr. Claude Pavur, S.J. Editor’s Note: This guest commentary is by Fr. Claude Pavur, S.J. on the recent controversy surrounding the Fr. De Smet statue at St. Louis University. Fr. Pavur is a well-respected Jesuit priest and scholar–formerly of St. Louis University, now at Boston College–and the Bellarmine Forum is honored to have his contribution here. The two…
Pentecost and the Church of Tommorrow
One thing I notice that’s different today from when I was a kid is that there doesn’t seem to be anymore fiction geared towards tomorrow that isn’t dystopian. Sure, I was still a tyke when the movie Logan’s Run came out about a world in the future where people that hit thirty were euthanized, yet others ran…
The Inconvenient Truth for Liberals in Laudato Si
By Guest Author Terri Aluise The Vatican is set to release Pope Francis’ much anticipated encyclical Laudato Si on Thursday. A leaked draft version of the encyclical was released earlier this week and shows that Pope Francis believes that man is the primary cause of climate change. Not surprisingly, Conservatives are already in an uproar…