I have been hired to write a short biographical drama on the life of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. And although I believe she had a strong influence upon me (behind the scenes) at the Chesterton Conference in Emmitsburg, Maryland four years ago, it has taken her a while to grow upon me. But the more I [...]
Today's Mass Readings were on a similar theme, a theme I've written about in the past, a theme that is close to my heart. The first reading was a powerful passage from Isaiah ... Thus says the LORD: Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they [...]
Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has interviewed Annie Lobert, the founder of Hookers for Jesus, an organization that helps women break free of the sex industry. Lobert's point is that prostitution is simply the extension of the basic principle of a radically capitalist culture: everything can be bought and sold, including people, including the most intimate parts of [...]
There's an excellent article in the current New Yorker by Lee Siegel about the strange friendship of Groucho Marx and T. S. Eloit - or perhaps the "strained" friendship. And from Siegel's article we can conclude one thing: Eliot may have been a better poet than Groucho, but Groucho was a lot funnier than Eliot. Of course, [...]
Since talking about hell has become embarrassing for most Christians, you won't often find discussions about the eternal consequences of sin. But look at the temporal consequences of sin: addiction, misery, spiritual blindness, compromising our relationship with the truth in order to rationalize our behavior, etc. Sin causes so many obvious problems this side of the [...]
In the photo above, you see me (left) at a restaurant with Fr. Dwight Longenecker. Fr. Dwight was in St. Louis presenting a three day mission at Immaculate Conception Church in Dardenne Prairie. I offered to take Fr. Dwight out to breakfast one morning. My plan was to take him to the lobby of his hotel [...]
There's a strange phenomenon that's been at work within the Church for the past sixty years or so. A number of groups have sprung up within the Catholic Church that have become more or less full-blown cults. These groups present themselves as Catholic, but they share several of the following characteristics with cults ... An "us [...]
Yesterday I experienced a brutal and shocking encounter with evil that still has me reeling. It's the kind of thing I really can't describe, but one of the effects of it was a distinct desire to go to confession today before Mass. I felt dirty and needed a shower, so to speak. *** So I went [...]
Here's a photo I've posted before. It's a picture I took of a stained / painted glass window at a rural church in the archdiocese of St. Louis. It's by the Emil Frei studios, and I'm guessing it's c. 1910, which is when their best work was done. And here's a painting by my friend, artist [...]
We know Christ is Lord not simply because Christ survived death and the cross, but because He survives Christians. If Truth, Beauty and Goodness bring us to Christ, it is a miracle He survives our Lies, Ugliness and Evil. But He is the thin thread that takes us through the maze of darkness. Let's take a [...]
