Natural Law
A New Roman Question
Being a Latin teacher and an attorney (a deadly cocktail if ever there was one), I read with great interest the reports of Justice Antonin Scalia’s comments this past week of the possibility of the reappearance of internment camps here in the United States. The reason for such reappearance was left vague, other than to mention…
L’Affaire Bottum
Among the vicissitudes of life, Belloc asserted that the loss of affection among friends is the worst thing in the world. I thought of this when reading Joseph Bottum’s recent coming out as a supporter of same-sex marriage. It struck me that this coming out should not go without comment in that Dr. Bottum was…
The Myth of the Neutral State
If there is anything that distinguishes the contemporary world from past ages, it is our secularism, that is, our belief that society should exclude religion as much as possible from public life. We see this in our own country in the “separation of Church and State.” This used to mean that the government officially endorses…
If that was yesterday… Marriage catechism needs updated
From the old Baltimore Catechism… My how times have changed… That’s not even scratching the surface of Our Lord’s words: Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female? (Matt. xix. 4). Yet, people have hinged all their happiness on the idea that marriage is something different….
My last ten burials/funerals with “Fr. Strangelove”…
…or How I stop worrying and learned to love the (Demographic) Bomb, NOT! A stranger came into the sacristy after Sunday Mass. In an incriminating huff he said, “I have been away from the area for fifteen years; where are the people? And now you are tearing down the school? I went there as a…
Defensor Civitatis
I am going to be polemical. You are forewarned. There is a fundamental aspect of the debate over so-called same-sex marriage that needs to be understood: most people in the cities and towns of Minnesota and across the United States are not eager nor clamoring for the legal recognition of two homosexuals to form a…
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…
The Perfect Ecclesial Storm
by Fr. Mark Pilon The Holy See has sent out a survey or questionnaire on the topic for the next Synod of Bishops, the family, and the bishops have been instructed to give it the widest possible distribution. So some dioceses in Great Britain have already put it online, and dioceses everywhere will soon send…