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 →

Who am I to Judge?

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It seems these days that moral outrage is able to muster only the feeblest of responses, perhaps because outrageous behavior has become so commonplace we have come to expect it. Just recently a high profile Catholic, who also happens to be our nation’s vice-president, publicly officiated at a “gay wedding” in willful contempt of the clear and explicit teachings of his own Catholic faith. Any response from the American bishops has been largely muted if one discounts a bland, vanilla statement issued by the USCCB which passively recommended that it might not hurt to pray for our public officials. It would seem that even bishops are no longer willing to call out egregious public scandal by a prominent Catholic figure for what it is for fear of being labelled as “judgmental.”

Modern society has developed a severe case of “judgment phobia” which insists that no one is ever allowed to judge another’s actions. Continue reading →

Back to Reality

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Even as anarchy seems to spread like wildfire to every corner of the globe, the most vociferous defenders of liberal democracy seem to retreat ever deeper into abject denial. One recent example: When the mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold was asked in an interview whether she believed in the existence of evil, she paused then replied, “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I do.” But what really sent a chill down my spine watching that clip was her utter, and I believe genuine, sincerity. Obviously there had to be a disconnect from reality somewhere in her process of logic. Nor am I singling out Ms. Klebold who, I believe, is only echoing a more widespread disconnect that seems to have pervaded the entire Western society.

Headlines daily confirm the reality of existential evil at every level, and yet it seems that all the media and political classes want to do is to shift the discussion to social conditions, poverty, guns. or mental illness. The one subject that is rarely raised in any of these discussions is morality, Continue reading →

Word Without End

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This past week I was fortunate enough to receive a great review of my new book Word Without End published by journalist Francis Phillips in the British Catholic Herald. I am passing along a few excerpts from that  article and will close with some of the more interesting quotes taken from the book itself such as, “God takes on corruptible flesh so that flesh may one day be freed from corruption.”
Francis Phillips headlined her article, Want to Stop Taking the Mass for Granted? It is a very appropriate tagline, I think, because it mirrors one of the book’s major themes,is to stop and reflect at a deeper level on both the Mass and the Incarnation as revealed in the Eucharistic banquet. Francis writes: 

Continue reading →

A True Reformation? Conclusion

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Part I   Our Sinful Church

One of the things that has confounded both Christians and non-Christians alike over the past 2,000 years is this. If the Church is truly the Body of Christ present in the world as she has continuously insisted, then how could that body exhibit such a shocking degree of sin and corruption within her members? Is it possible that the same Holy Spirit which first energized the Church on Pentecost and who ostensibly guides her very actions has fallen asleep at the switch? Yet continuing into the present day, a seemingly endless stream of scandal emanates from Ecclesial quarters, and I am referring to much more than sensational headlines about clerical sex abuse which may only represent that part of the iceberg floating above the water line. Continue reading →

Momentous Signs

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Glorious Vacation! We just spent a thrilling week touring about Northern California, a delightful experience augmented  by the extraordinary beauty and fascinating history of this corner of the world. Pristine Sierra lakes, sprawling vineyards, and majestic giant redwoods all conspire to leave the tourist breathless. My only complaint during an otherwise perfect holiday was the haphazard posting of road signs, a situation which too often left one in a state of mystified spatial confusion.

We little realize or appreciate just how much we exist at the mercy of sign makers until we find ourselves unexpectedly on the wrong side of a six lane torrent of madly rushing traffic, Continue reading →