Watch Your Step, Sister!
I hadn’t heard of Maria Divine Mercy. That’s the moniker of an Irish woman, living in Dublin, who doesn’t reveal her real name but does reveal that she’s been receiving messages from the Trinity and...
View ArticleThe Riot That Never Was
After some years away from him, I’m back on a Ronald Knox jag. I’ve got several shelves of his books—nearly everything he wrote—and a few nights ago compared what I have to the listing of his works in...
View ArticleGarry Wills: Not as Smart as Stephen Colbert
Pitiful, just pitiful.That was my reaction on watching this five-minute clip from The Colbert Report, in which host Stephen Colbert talks with Garry Wills about his new book, Why Priests? A Failed...
View ArticleA Little Math Drives Out Demons
A friend of mine—who will remain unnamed—wrote this comment on a Facebook thread:“Last night on Coast to Coast AM, Richard C. Hoagland, who studies celestial events, said the confluence of the asteroid...
View ArticleNobody Expects the Modern Inquisition!
The Inquisition!The Holy Office!The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith!Whichever name it has used, this is the arm of the Vatican that oversees the doctrinal integrity of the Faith. It watches,...
View ArticleLet's Bring Back the Clerihew!
G. K. Chesterton dedicated his novel The Man Who Was Thursday to his friend Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956). By fans of detective fiction Bentley is remembered best as the author of Trent’s Last...
View ArticleI Might Donate, and It's Not Even My Diocese!
The Diocese of Madison consists of eleven counties in southcentral and southwestern Wisconsin. It was formed in 1946 from parts of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of La Crosse (which...
View ArticleLike Father, Like Son? I Hope Not
Under the Constitution, a president has full authority to issue pardons to those convicted of federal crimes. You might guess that particularly liberal presidents would issue particularly many pardons,...
View ArticlePrivate Manning Says, "Call Me Bambi"
Army private Bradley Manning, convicted of passing classified documents to WikiLeaks, has changed his mind again. Last week he said he considered himself to be a woman, wanted to be referred to as...
View ArticleYoga Bare
Yesterday was a balmy 103 degrees outside the Catholic Answers office, and today didn’t promise to be much cooler. If I wanted to exercise outdoors, it would have to be early, and so it was. Before...
View ArticleHyperbolic Traditionalists
After Catholic Answers Live aired, on August 12, its second two-hour program devoted to “radical Traditionalism,” a priest from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a religious society that...
View ArticleA New Solution to the Synoptic Problem
My friend Dennis Barton lives near Liverpool, England, and operates an apostolate called The Church in History Information Centre. Over the last several decades he has defended the Church from many...
View ArticleMyth Buster
The current issue of Catalyst, the newsletter of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, lists several myths regarding priestly sexual abuse, myths that the media repeat ad infinitum...
View ArticleIs Bill Gates Insane?
Over the last few days Catholic radar screens have picked up an interview Bill Gates had with Rolling Stone magazine. Here are the questions and answers that have some Catholics talking: RS: You’re a...
View ArticleWhat Not to Expect from Synods
I was in England for a couple of weeks in June (a working trip, not a vacation) and lodged in modest circumstances at the base of a hill. Halfway up the hill was a convent recently occupied by...
View ArticleFlorence in Flood
It is said that half of all the art in Europe is in Italy, and half of all the art in Italy is in Florence. That may not be arithmetically precise, but it can’t be far from the truth. When Florentine...
View ArticleThe Apologetics of 1915
This year marks the centenary of a rethinking of Catholic apologetics that most Catholic apologists have never heard of. Some Thoughts on Catholic Apologetics was published in London in 1915. The...
View Article10,000 Years Ago, Your Neighbor's Pet Was a T Rex
Three miles from the Catholic Answers office stands the Creation and Earth History Museum and Bookstore. It’s situated on a frontage road next to State Route 67. It’s easy to spot. It’s the only...
View ArticleWhere the Fault Lies for the Collapse of Marriage
Try answering this Gallup Poll question from 2011: “Just your best guess, what percentage of Americans would you say are gay or lesbian?” The possible answers range from “less than 5%,” to “more than...
View ArticleReading Dante in 100 Days
Dante’s Divine Comedy is a poem more known about than known. To the extent most Americans know about it at all, it’s in terms of Gustave Doré’s illustrations for the Inferno. Some will recognize...
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