In Part One of this post, I quoted Jeff Ostrowski of Corpus Christi Watershed as he showed the similarity between a sappy setting of the Gloria by renegade priest Dan Schutte and the theme to "My Little Pony". The tunes are disturbingly similar. Click on the links and compare them yourselves. Here they are again: Schutte's Gloria "My [...]
Matthew Tan has written an essay that is filled with vocabulary and allusions that only an economist from academia could appreciate, but he ends up saying some compelling things that I will try to translate into non-academic English. He points out that abortion is more than an individual decision; the abortion industry is a social construct [...]
It was the best Easter homiliy I had ever heard. "Good Friday was the worst thing that ever happened in all history," the homilist said. "And Easter Sunday was the best thing." But, he said, we could not have the second without the first. The Resurrection incorporated all of the evil that went before it, turned [...]
As we reflect during the Triduum of the effects of sin - sin which battered and bruised Our Lord, betrayed Him, tormented Him, abandoned Him, killed Him, pierced Him - as we reflect upon that, something occurs to me. While I have written a lot on the nature and the effects of sin, there's one part [...]
On Monday, the Grunky Book Club discussed Shakespeare's Macbeth. Macbeth is a play that illustrates the effect of sin on the human soul. I led the discussion of Macbeth not because I'm an expert on Shakespeare, but because I'm an expert on sin. It's one of the benefits of being a lifelong sinner! In fact, as an [...]
This remarkable article by Will Seath at Fare Foreward is truly inspiring. It's about how the "Benedict Option" - also known as "Intentional Communities" - also known as our Faith - is lived out. It's about how our culture is being reformed. The story begins with Chris Currie, who grew up in a Detroit neighborhood where parish [...]
The plant wormwood. A few days ago I talked about Fr. Longenecker's reflections on Radical Christianity. The word radical, as I pointed out there, means "of the root", or addressing things at the most fundamental level, the level of origins, the place from which all things spring forth. We see this in Scripture in the Book [...]
One of my tutoring students wanted to learn how to play piano. He was musically gifted, and this was a sincere desire of his. Since my tutoring students are home schooled, I can, to a large extent, set the curriculum to match the interests of the student. So I bought and paid for a "do it [...]
Homo Consumens - consuming man, man who exists entirely to fuel the economy and whose ultimate end and purpose in life in shopping - is more "homo" than consumens. A hundred years ago G. K. Chesterton was busy pointing out that eugenics and contraception were tools of our capitalist masters, intended to create more malleable and affordable [...]
Thomas Mann-I'm-Bored Thomas Mann's Death in Venice is about a guy who's got a problem. He's got a thing for little boys. And slowly but surely his perversion ruins him - eats away at him from the inside like a cancer. It's one of those intellectual novels of despair and effete ennui, but it tells the [...]
