(The following video shows the "major structural alterations" of Pruitt-Igoe here in St. Louis. I remember this well. Such is the fate of all inauthentic culture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd7VOz_Wstg) A Facebook friend writes (and I gloss a bit on what he writes) ... What we want is authentic Catholic culture. This means three priorities: that it be authentic, [...]
My actors and I were once booked to perform at a Catholic Family Camp somewhere in the U.S. It was one of the spookiest places I've ever been to. The lack of maintenance was appalling - everything was leaking, badly in need of paint, dreary, run down - truly a Catholic Ghetto in the worst sense [...]
These, I am told, are "hipsters" - and I feel a sudden desire to puke. A friend and blog reader writes that he thinks one of the hallmarks of the new "Hipster Catholics" - by which he seems to mean the cool young crunchy "independent music" types who are more or less orthodox (unless a bit [...]
Yesterday, on the road again, my actress and I attended a Vigil Mass somewhere in America. It was definitely America, though it may not have been a Mass. The priest was a 70-something soft-spoken slow moving effeminate fellow, and the music was all the Bad Stuff, about a dozen of the worst "hymns" played over and [...]
Walter Houston as the Devil, from the film version of The Devil and Daniel Webster It's not so much that atheists deny God. It's that they deny the soul, the one thing each of us knows intimately. Let me explain. *** I am tutoring a home-schooled student. I call what I do the School of the [...]
"The natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator containing a ‘grammar’ which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation." (Benedict XVI) Liberal Christians would agree whole-heartedly, until you point out that this applies to sex as well. [...]
A theme on my blog recently has been love. Love vs. Use. Love vs. Abuse. True Love and our falling shy of it. Only love matters. A letter written to Rod Dreher is on this topic and includes the following (my emphasis) ... “My love is all that matters. And this is who I am.” [This [...]
From an email to my friend, whose birthday was yesterday (mine is today). My friend knows my wife Karen and the shock we've had this week, learning Karen has uterine cancer. I write ... So few people know true love. Karen and I have shared true love for 31 years. Even if she is taken from [...]
We found out today that my wife Karen has uterine cancer. She will be getting a hysterectomy, and if the cancer is confined to the uterus, that will cure it. If it's spread, she will need chemo. Please pray for us!
Marcus Grodi has written a reflective post on Pope Francis and the need to convey Christ through a living relationship of love. My reflections on it follow ... *** In 1980, when Jimmy Carter decided we should boycott the summer Olympics to protest the Soviet action in Afghanistan, a friend of mine called this decision "neurotic". [...]
