G.K. Chesterton once remarked, “the Catholic Church is like a thick steak, a glass of wine, and a good cigar.” When most secular people think about the Catholic Church – or, more often, some mischaracterization of it – I doubt …
Category: Catholic Life
The State of the Church and the State of Our Souls
This article was first published at OnePeterFive on March 31, 2015, under the pen name Benedict Constable. It is here republished under the name of its author. Catholics striving to be loyal to “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude …
Abbess Caritas Pirckheimer: A Crucial Witness In Times of Persecution
If religious differences are discussed at all today, they tend to be elided or celebrated. Ecumenism has been the watchword among Catholics in recent decades; the Second Vatican Council’s On Ecumenism was one of the most-frequently mentioned documents in American …
Effeminacy and the False Gospel of Psychology
All of mankind is trying to solve the problem of suffering. Throughout time, no less than in our day, a multitude of false religions and false gospels have arisen to solve the problem. In our day, the false gospel of …
North American Martyrs and the Importance of Baptism
The religious impact of the discovery of the New World in the late 15th century cannot be overestimated. Although Catholic Europeans were aware of areas of the world that were not Christian (they had been involved in centuries of crusades …
The Catholic Origins of Modern International Relations Theory
When teaching the history of the field of International Relations (IR), scholars tend to start with the classical author of The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, then skip immediately to the early modern political theorists Machiavelli and Hobbes. In the process, they …
The Flight to Eternal Rome and the Mass of the Revolution
About ten years ago, I was a confused, libertarian, atheist college freshman, and I was about to embark on a revolution – first downward towards Hell and then upwards towards Heaven. As a complacent atheist who grew up in New …
Mercy is for Sinners
I have a love-hate relationship with confession. I hate it because it’s never very comfortable to admit the stupid, shameful, ridiculous things I do. I wait in the line with a head full of exaggeration, thinking of myself like a …
One Step to Revive Contemplative Life
Catholic News Agency published an article stating that in the wake of monasteries closing left and right in Spain, Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, the head of the Vatican’s congregation on consecrated life, insists that contemplative life will not go …
The Church in Crisis Is Like The Light of a Dying Star
Over at his blog at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher shares a couple of emails from readers about their experiences in the Catholic Church in both Canada and the United States. The stories are awful, but they’re not surprising. The …
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