Catholic Culture
Surviving Depressing Church News, Doom Porn, and Spiritual Vampires: BFP 006
https://media.blubrry.com/bellarmineforumfootnote/bellarmineforum.podbean.com/mf/play/s2zven/bellarmineforumpodcast_bellarmineforum_org_wp-content_uploads_2017_10_BFP-006-DePasquale-on-depressing-Church-news.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadIn episode 6, Landon DePasquale and John B. Manos talk about the drag that depressing Church news can have on one’s spiritual life and how to avoid it. You may not even realize how this problem creeps into your life… Spiritual vampires and how they suck all the energy…
Can the Benedict Option Save Catholic Preppers?
Would you agree that the demoralization of society has produced a base (even gross) society around us today? Worse, do you agree that the secularists attack principles of faith in every public square? Something must be done! right? Circle the wagons and offer a place for flourishing! Some see a cultural doomsday imminent and a dark ages afoot. Especially when…
Discussion: Men and the Church
Recently I had the privilege of being asked by Mr. Matthew Christoff to sit down for an interview on the state of men in the Church. Mr. Christoff’s apostolate–The New Emangelization and Catholic Man Night–is becoming increasingly popular and provides solid spiritual food for Catholic men. Where go Catholic men…there goes the Church. You can listen…
Suffering the Ignorant Orthopraxis of Our Day
One of the things I really like about how God ordered this world is precisely how unassuming some of the greatest things He has worked really are to the passer by. If you didn’t look, you wouldn’t notice. It’s so easy to take them for granted until you look with the eyes of faith that…
Needed: Catholic Cab Drivers and Bartenders
Some years back–in an interview on EWTN–Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, was addressing some of the pressing needs of the Church. He said–and I paraphrase–“we need Catholic cab drivers and bartenders.” It was a comment that elicited a chuckle, but the truth of it was very serious and speaks to the way the Church understands…
Catholics, Get Serious! – Father Rutler
Father George Rutler’s latest piece in Crisis Magazine is a must-read for every think Catholic. Each paragraph opens a door to serious discussion, long overdue. And his cite of this from Pope Benedict XVI is sobering food for thought – and prayer: “The bureaucracy is spent and tired. It is sad that there are what…
Take a Stand
I finally watched For Greater Glory — a little late, I know — about the persecution of the Church in Mexico in the 1920s. The Cristeros joined the cause for freedom for various reasons, plunder, prestige, faith, but in the end they stood for something even to death. It was a moving testament which gave…
From Under the Rubble…Progress, Progressives, and Perversion
Progress, Progressives, and Perversion “I Am Who Am” (Exodus 3:14) Last week’s Rubble examined change. Heraclitus feared it and longed for the unchanging logos. Only with the Incarnation did the logos get a name: Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, “first, last, and always.” In contrast to Christian philosophy, the heady hedonism of the…
Why Do They Hate Us?
Save Me, Lord, from lying lips, From the tongues of the deceitful — Psalm 120 Why do they hate us? No, I don’t mean Al Queda, or the Arabs, or the Persians, or the Taliban. It’s my acquaintances in the media who ask the question – quietly, and among themselves: “Why do the American people…
Subpar Catechesis
It is not uncommon to run into a debate on how best to solve the issues plaguing the Church. There is no dearth of suggestions about what to do to combat the many forces, both within and without, that assail the Church. I’ve heard many great suggestions, from a renewal to the liturgy to a…