I've decided to start a substack to replace my old blog. I like some of the features of substack. No paywall, so it's free to subscribe if you're interested. There's a chat for subscribers. But you can also just check the site like a normal blog.
If you can, please pray for my wife. She went into labor last night, 24 hours after I tested positive for COVID. As such, I cannot be at the hospital with her. Then she tested positive for COVID, so she cannot have anyone with her at all. And she labors without epidural.
It still amazes me that academic fields, connected by co-citation, are arranged in a ring. Is there a missing "dark field" in the middle that we will find someday to connect it all together well?
Louise Teresa O'Neill was born yesterday under some less than ideal circumstances but both she and my wife are doing well. Thank you again, friends, for all of your prayers. God bless you.
What a glory to St. Junipero to be persecuted for Our Lord's sake, even after he has died. The only ones hurt here are the poor souls who pulled down the statue.
Unpopular take: making traditionally evil creatures (vampires, monsters, dragons, etc.) into cutesy protagonists in children and teen pop culture is nefarious and dangerous. It dismantles the intelligibility of the fairy tale and subconsciously minimizes inherently evil traits.
I am having troubling wrapping my head around the idea that secluding TLM communities from the ordinary life of the parish and diocese will make them less rather than more radicalized.
Would you pray for the repose of the soul of my Great Great Great Great Grandfather Lewis O'Neill? It's probably been awhile since anyone has prayed for him.
Colonel Heg died fighting the pro-slavery Confederates at the age of 33. He spent nearly all of his adult years doing nothing but fighting for the abolition of slavery. The state of Wisconsin rightly recognized this man as a hero. His statue is now at the bottom of the lake.
Maybe I am wrong to be annoyed by this, but it is a problem when a parish only has confessions once a week for 45 or 60 minutes and a single person takes up 30 minutes in the confessional, forcing multiple others to be turned away. This happens often at various places.
My book Grace, Predestination, and the Permission of Sin: A Thomistic Analysis will be released a week from today. To help it gain a little more exposure, I'm going to give away two free copies to my followers. Follow this account, like, and retweet this for a chance to win.
Do not let anyone ever tell you that the Church's teaching on abortion is a position based upon faith. The teaching that abortion is intrinsically evil is bolstered and knowable through faith, but it is known as evil through the natural law alone.
Some personal news: I have accepted a position to join the teaching faculty of St. Thomas Aquinas College at their East Coast campus in Massachusetts. My family and I will be moving this summer and starting Fall 21. I am very excited to be joining such an incredible institution.
Divine intervention is not a Christian but rather a pagan concept. God is not one actor among many (albeit more powerful) but is rather the author of all things, the causality of all causes, and the being which undergirds all being.
Calling parents "breeders" is one of the most disgusting and inhuman insults possible. If you cannot immediately recognize the inherent beauty of a child, then God help you. A world without the experience of childhood is precisely the world of hell.
Pro-choice folks telling Catholics to just worry about themselves and not what other people do have entirely negated the common good and thus have, ironically, destroyed any philosophical basis for social justice.
"Sing a new church into being."
I don't need a new church. A new church is the last thing I need. If you could just go ahead and give me the oldest church you've got, I'd be much obliged.
This is NOT what Pope Francis has said. There has been openness to giving blessings to homosexuals and those in same-sex relationships but not that they be blessed *as a same-sex couple.* This is a crucial difference.
BREAKING: Pope Francis has expressed openness to Catholic blessings for same-sex couples, under the condition they are not confused with marriage ceremonies for men and women, in what could be a watershed moment for the global Catholic Church.
Today is the anniversary of the death of my master, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, who embodied the habitus of a true theologian and Thomist, committed to speculative truths in a sapiential mode, motivated by the desire to love and contemplate God as God. Ora pro nobis, Magister
Imagine hating children so much that you never, ever want to see them, even at the grocery store. Imagine thinking that children simply being present ruins your experience of buying Cheez-Its.
I still can't get over the fact that Zelensky was a comedian and actor who played the Ukrainian Prime Minister on a sitcom and then he became the actual Prime Minister. And he is now one of the most important rulers in Ukrainian history.
Every year on Easter the pagans come out en masse and try to "well actually" everyone because Christianity takes their spoils, as if this too isn't a sign of its veracity. They clearly always forget that
C H R I S T V S V I N C I T
If only there were some vetting process of the Church to determine whether a man or woman had lived a saintly life. That way young, online Catholics didn't have to make the decision.
Not sure if I am young anymore, but when I was young, the thing that made me stay (or rather return), was finding out that there was a rich intellectual and spiritual REASON (or Logos) behind the felt banners and superficial platitudes which initially pushed me away.
A reminder that, contrary to what we may or may not be about to hear ad infinitum, abortion being evil is not an intrinsically religious position. It is not the result of any particular faith but is knowable with certainty by the unaided intellect.
Rant: The groovy 70s were almost a half century ago. Can we please, finally, for the love of God (literally) put the John Denver liturgical music out of its misery? It was bad then; it is positively absurd now.
It is strange that we are ok with almost any sexual orientation or practice so long as it is freely chosen except the free choice of a priest or nun to remain celibate.
Frog and toad remind me of multiple friendships that I have which are entirely platonic. I do wish that we could cease collapsing all intimacy and love into the realm of the sexual.
I don't think that I've ever seen someone get mobbed just for posting basic Catholic moral takes as much as Fr. Schneider does. The vaccine conspiracy theories and "my body, my choice" liberalism run deep in contemporary American Catholicism, I fear.
The Vatican just needs to take a nuclear option with child abuse. Whatever it takes, root out every last cell of that rot. Shine the brightest of lights on that darkness and expose everyone. Burn and purge the disease.
Thread:
I was raised Catholic but quite nominally so. The education I received at home was largely Protestant. We only attended church a few times a year. Easter/Christmas Catholics. I actually attended Catholic school K - 12 but the religious education was very poor.
Your regular reminder that people who name drop St. Thomas Aquinas on conscience in order to tear down Church authority, promote antinomianism, and normalize sin do not understand St. Thomas in the slightest.
It is indeed possible to be personally upset or worried about Traditionis custodes and to continue to love Pope Francis, to pray for him, and to give him all due obedience and deference as the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of Christ. In fact, it is required.
Fr. Reginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange died on this day in 1964. He is, I think, one of the most important thinkers of the last 100 years, and a source of not only philosophical and theological knowledge but true, holy wisdom. Santo subito! Fr. Garrigou, ora pro nobis.
"After being scolded by our PR team and then running the numbers, we've recognized that promoting anti-Catholicism will be much easier on our profit margins than appearing anti-drag/LGBTQ."
One of my major social struggles with being an American Catholic is, when finding myself in polite Catholic company, having to choose between pretending that I'm a Republican or being judged as a bad Catholic.
The Church has never ordained women to the priesthood. If one takes it seriously that the Church is instituted and guided first by God and not men, then, at some point, one has simply to recognize that these kind of novelties after 2000 years are undesirable and not from God.
@michael_merrick
@AccountNo3445
Michael you have to know this is untrue. It’s perfectly plausible that a future pope will ordain women to the priesthood. In fact highly likely. There is nothing ‘plain and simple’ about ecclesial history.
Here's what most worries me about the Butker speech: the increasing trend among Catholics to define the Faith along reactionary, cultural lines. We must always be wary of error, but Christianity is primarily a positive, joyful *affirmation* of the Gospels.
Imagine saying this about literally anything else. "Everyone telling me I don't know about biology might be interested to know that I have a 6th grade education in it."
The Mark of the Beast is not some arbitrary tech or certificate which one will accidentally procure. This conspiracy theorizing of faith indicates a deep-seated disorder in the understanding of the spiritual life, which is about the state of the soul not some game of gotchya.
God is infinitely larger and more powerful than your sin. He laughs at it. It is significantly better to sin and to hope than to sin and despair of God's mercy. The latter is entirely irrational. God loves you. You do not need to be perfect to love Him back.
A new party platform needs first to be confessionally pro-family. Flowing from that, it needs to be anti-abortion, pro-economic justice, especially for the economic well-being of the middle and lower class. Trust-busting. Anti-military intervention. People will vote for it.
In my opinion, all Catholics ought to favor complete and total global nuclear disarmament. Creating or stockpiling nuclear weapons should not be tolerated. These are weapons which should simply not exist.
This is easy to answer. The Church has always maintained that Christians outside of visible unity with the Catholic Church maintain some invisible unity with Her. If this were not so, non-Catholic Christians could not be recognized as validly baptized. But they are.
Are the trads screaming yet? “This is contrary to the Council of Florence, which taught that ‘no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church’!”
I will never understand the anti-Halloween sentiment found among some Catholics. Sure, glorifying witchcraft and the demonic is bad... when it happens. But jack-o-lanterns, ghost decorations, trick-or-treating as a dinosaur or a princess? If anything, it shows hope beyond death.
This is, actually, an incredibly enlightening comment on Fiducia Supplicans that ought to make people more comfortable with at least the intent of the document. The person is blessed, not the sin, so that the person can overcome the sin.
JUST IN: Asked in new interview about
#FiduciaSupplicans
,
#PopeFrancis
says: “Nobody is scandalized if I give a blessing to a businessman who may be exploiting people, & that is a very serious sin. Whereas they are scandalized if I give it to a homosexual ... This is hypocrisy!”
There are many important political issues for Catholic voters to consider today but, cliche or not, I cannot see how abortion is not the most important.
It will never cease to amaze me that good Christians have been so influenced by anti-Catholic political philosophy that they maintain that it is better to have a non-Christian state than a Christian one.
Why in the world are people still arguing about the moral nature of the COVID vaccines? The Church has spoken, both here and previous to this pandemic. The moral assessment is clear. I don't know a single Catholic moral theologian who doesn't agree that the vaccines are licit.
Drag is an anti-culture. It's a lack where culture should be. It perverts principles of true culture. It is fundamentally parasitic since it exists only as a rejection of something else. On its own, it stands positively for nothing.
I don't set the price, Taylor. You should know that. In fact, academic publications usually net the author somewhere around $0 in royalties. But, yeah, I'm the grifter.
Claiming that the Resurrection was not a literal, historical event is not merely an unorthodox opinion. It is heresy. You ought not to listen to a single world spoken by a theologian who denies the historicity of the Resurrection, for they deny the Resurrection itself.
Leaving The Catholic Church because of scandal is like breaking up with your gf/bf because they are going through a rough time in life. The Church suffers from the sins of her members as your S.O. struggles with life. Don't abandon either when they need you most! ❤️
The end of the earth's goods is the common good and not maximal privatization. As such, if someone has more than what he needs while another is lacking in what he needs, the excess is truly the property of the one lacking, again bc goods are *for all,* i.e. common distribution.
No because it’s not even theft.
“It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need.” (ST II-II, q66, a7, ad3)
I don't take the line "Blood of Christ, inebriate me" from the Anima Christe seriously enough. The goal isn't to have a nice set of doctrines animating our life. A good start, but the goal is to become absurdly lost in love for Christ. Pray that Christ makes me a fool for Him.
Joke: God doesn't care about who wins football games.
Woke: God influences who wins football games.
Bespoke: Every single motion of every single player in a football game falls under the meticulous providential governance of God.
Objectively, virginity is superior to marriage. This doesn't mean that it is better for you, however. If God wills that you be married, it will be better for you to be married than it would have been had you been celibate. This is an easy distinction which, I think, many miss.
Similarly, Trent taught the superiority of virginity over marriage. But Francis teaches that both complement one another and each can be more perfect in different ways.
While there may appear to be contradictions in these teachings, there is continuity in their substance. 5/10
Setting aside all opinions about contemporary universities, the value of degrees, etc. it's simply not true that reading a book is the same as reading a book w/ others, being guided by a professor, having your ideas challenged, hearing the insights of others, etc.
Look, you love German literature? Neat. Go to the library and read your heart out. You don’t need a degree in it.
And you don’t need Mississippi taxpayers to help pay for your degree in it.
We should spend taxpayer money on the majors that fit Mississippi’s economy.
When people wonder about what others admire in King Charles, this is surely one of the most important things. Charles is and has been a staunch proponent of a kind of agrarian traditionalism, a retvrn to human proportions and ways of living.
"The countryside we value so highly does not just happen by itself.
No farmers - no beautiful landscapes with hedgerows and stone walls
No thriving rural communities - no villages or village pubs
No local markets - no distinctive local foods"
- HM King Charles III