Author Archives: Francis

A Parable on Prayer – for 2017

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There was once a kingdom ruled by a wise but very mysterious wizard who lived reclusively in a very high tower set at the edge of a beautiful and productive valley. The wizard was a generous hearted ruler and quite concerned for the welfare of all the people living there but, alas, the tower had no entryway allowing any person access, either to it ─ or to the wizard who lived there. Perhaps that last statement is not strictly true. Many years before the present time there had been one small doorway leading to a spiral staircase inside the tower, but this vital portal had long been lost; buried under a great landslide. So many ages had passed since the disaster that even the general location of that ancient portal had long faded from men’s memories. Continue reading →

Reflecting on the Electoral College

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Merry Christmas to all! I generally make it a point to avoid purely political topics in this blog, and yet there are times when certain current events demand a response, as in protestors hounding electors en masse or students violently denouncing ordinary voters as “racists” for simply exercising their civil right to cast a ballot. Some time ago a respected Berkley law professor, Phillip Johnson, coined the term “microphone man” to explain how certain factions in society routinely use the microphones of media, government, and education to effectively silence any dissenting viewpoints. And since the stunning electoral upset of November 8, a shocked and visibly upset microphone man has wheeled into action by disclaiming the “unfairness” of the Electoral College (EC), a favorite liberal whipping boy whenever “progressive” presidential candidates lose elections they figured were easily won. Continue reading →

Bread From Heaven: Is the Mass Truly Biblical?

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    Has Christianity lost its moral relevance in the modern world? I live in a state where two thirds of the electorate recently agreed that physicians ought to be allowed to prescribe a lethal toxin to a dying patient as a substitute for pain medication. Apparently the Christian message no longer resonates with a large percentage of the populace. Could this possibly reflect a fragmented Christianity whose continued doctrinal and moral disunity has reduced even the Ten Commandments to debatable talking points? After all a church itself splintered by countless divisions can hardly expect to hold the attention of the masses. But until the rupture in this body (of Christ) is truly resolved, there seems to be little chance that Christianity can ever heal itself much less the world.

    In order to correct such problems one must first address the fundamental cause of that religious cleavage. Ironically, it is the very thing that ought to unite Christians that has proven to be the most significant stumbling block to unity. For it is the Eucharist itself that has polarized Catholics and Protestants into opposing camps for 500 years now. Continue reading →

It’s Time to Turn the Corner

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Reflecting on perhaps the most unpredictable and bizarre presidential elections in my entire lifetime brings a satisfied yet wary smile to my face. Certainly the political outcome represents a moment of reprieve for cherished religious liberties that have been increasingly threatened or subjected to governmental intimidation as of late. Still, I sense that Americans are not entirely free of the ever looming specter of overbearing “political correctness,” a phenomenon that has been quietly invading every private (and public) corner of American life for far too long now. My pessimism in this regard stems from the fact that millions of young high school and college age students continue to be systematically radicalized against their own culture, flag, and even religion by those very institutions to which they have been entrusted by parents and taxpayers. I refer to that juggernaut called public and higher education Continue reading →

Darwinism’s Need for a “cruel” God

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The unprecedented ascendancy of a Donald Trump in the American political equation raises some very interesting questions about the unfolding culture divide, namely that abyss between the ordinary people and a new ruling class comprised of intellectuals, tech wizards, and politicians which has widened into an insurmountable gulf. One of the more telling fault lines demarcating that growing schism involves the belief, or lack thereof, in a Divine Creator. In fact, religious skepticism has become a widely accepted creed among political elites and academics, many of whom who have adopted philosophical materialism, the belief that the only reality is material reality. That materialist philosophy is primarily buttressed by Darwinian macro-evolution, a corrosive philosophy that has been taught as a scientific certainty in virtually every public school and university in our country for decades.   Continue reading →

Slaves to History at Georgetown U

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Historians recently discovered that Georgetown University had sold off a number of slaves back in 1838 in order to raise capital needed to insure the school’s survival. This revelation has apparently plunged its present day administrators into paroxysms of guilt-laden remorse and penitential self-flagellation. And while I agree that it is necessary to honestly own up to the events of history, including its more unsavory aspects, too many academic culture warriors of today seem more than willing to dismiss offhand the social context in which those past events occurred.

Today’s historical revisionists seem to expect that what people did in the past ought always to be judged by current-day social and cultural standards. The hypocrisy in this approach lies in the fact that we pretend to remove the speck in our ancestor’s eye while ignoring the beam in our own. Continue reading →

Identity, Politics, and Stuff

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Politics is the only area of life or nature where failures seems to be consistently rewarded. The more wrongheaded a policy proves to be, the more necessary it becomes for the political class to prop it up, if for no better reason than appearance sake. (It must appear to the voters that I am “doing” something, regardless of unintended, or possibly intended, consequences.) And as a result of many years of thoughtless (and sometimes even malicious) policies, society today is saddled with failed schools, a failing foreign policy, failing criminal justice, and saddest of all a rapidly growing number of failed families, And one has only to observe the present toxic political climate to realize that no meaningful reform is anywhere on the horizon. Too many special interests have doubled down on demands to even permit rational, civilized dialogue, much less any movement towards intelligent reform. Continue reading →

Abortion: Good Faith or Bad?

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Perhaps you saw it; Sept. 12, 2016. A slick 4-color full page spread in the Denver Post (and most likely other major dailies around the country) headlined, “Abortion in Good Faith.” The ad featured an attractive business woman, a self-proclaimed Catholic, arguing passionately that public funding for abortion is really a matter of social justice. This pitch was sponsored and paid for by by the aptly misnamed “Catholics for Choice” (CFC), a pro-abortion group which, in fact, wants only to deny conscientious Catholics any real choice in having their tax dollars diverted to pay for other people’s abortions.

Not only is CFC’s strategy nauseatingly deceptive in its sophistical inversion of the term “social justice” to mean its very opposite, Continue reading →

Modern Day Aztecs

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Warning! This post contains very graphic language from which you may want to shield young or impressionable readers. .

The jagged obsidian blade glistened briefly in the dazzling sunlight before it came crashing down forcefully, tearing the terrified victim’s abdomen wide open. Eight strong arms bound this unfortunate creature to the blood-stained altar of the vengeful god of war, Huitzilopochtli. The priest, whose coarse hair was thickly matted in dried blood, showed no sign of revulsion, nor even a passing glance of pity, as he performed his grisly task. Blood bathed every pore of his bronze skin as he thrust his right arm forcibly into the victim’s gaping wound. Piteous cries of agony were rendered inaudible over the din of an enormous crowd Continue reading →

Trying To Have It Both Ways

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Even as contemporary society spirals ever downward into its obligatory culture of self worship, one absurdity constantly attempts to trump another. Consider the whole transgender uproar which vividly epitomizes the ludicrous state of the current political correctness narrative. When, for many people, rocks and trees begin to look like sensible alternatives to using a public restroom, you can be sure that someone has flipped the sanity switch to “off.”

So ask yourself this simple question. “How is it that sexual orientation is not treated as a viable “choice,” and yet choosing one’s gender is?” Continue reading →