Royalty is a hot button issue in Europe because the Church often identified itself with the power and glory of monarchs. Supposedly this was for the protection of religion but in always involved the destruction of religion. It took a long time for the Church and much blood before the simplicity and vulnerability of Christ [...]

In discussions of faith, it seems to be a constant that conscience as the basis of religious faith gets overlooked or is even replaced by some other principle. So one more time, let us hear Cardinal Newman…
“I add one remark. Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not [...]

That is an unattractive stark title about a two edged sword cutting across most camps.
Jason Byassee in 22 September issue of Christian Century reviews Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart’s Atheist’ Delusions. One of Hart’s arguments is summarized as “paganism, whether ancient or modern, has no grounds for such tongue clucking [about the failures of religious [...]

Edith Wharton looked the very essence of a high society grande dame of 1900. Willa Cather for all her western and midwestern novels dressed fashionably and spent her last years in New York City. Both wrote books that are still companions revealing to me with empathy and deep insight the place of suffering, the cruelty [...]

There is an email erronesouly saying that the Obama care bill allows illegal aliens access to government health care. If you get sick in France or the UK you walk in and get medical attention. In France you pay a small amount without paper. In the UK they do not accept payment. You could make [...]

I cannot leave August behind without sharing Newman’s honest description of the depression he suffered as a Catholic. I do this because we think of saints as cheerful in God’s service even though John of the Cross writes horrific accounts of the dark night of the soul, Therese of Lisieux suffered near despair the last [...]

August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration, a vision of Jesus the Lord in blazing light, is also the anniversary of another vision, of blazing light,  one of total hell, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima…and followed on the 9th by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. We bombed Hiroshima because of the Mitsubishi plant there! Mitsubishi [...]

One of the great bold things about the US has been its history of journalism…both the horrors of the Hearst papers, for instance, and the heroism of the reporters in World War II. Now in Tehran, thanks to twitter (I hate to say that) and cell phones, and brave people wanting to get the news [...]

This is making the rounds of the blogs. I wanted to do my part in sharing it not only because it rings very true and up to date, but because a writer like CS Lewis has his day and then passes from the scene only to have events catch up with him dead in the [...]

The feast is dominated by the big news from Ireland…a nearly 3000 page SUMMARY of a huge report on sex abuse in Catholic orphanages run by the Irish Christian Brothers, Sisters of Mercy, and a number of other religious orders over the past four or five decades. The Irish government was in cahoots failing to [...]