Radical Religion
My brother lives at the beach, and he was out walking the dog late one afternoon when he spotted an unusual fellow walking along the beach. He was wearing a kind of Franciscan habit, sandals and was...
View ArticlePride, Prejudice and Rational Religion
In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Caroline says to Mr Bingley, I should like balls infinitely better, if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in...
View ArticleMy Peace I Give You
The wound at the foundation of all our other wounds is the deep wound at the heart of love. Put simply, we all long for total, overwhelming, unconditional love. It is as if the whole human race is...
View ArticleI’ll Fly Away Oh Glory!
Yesterday was the memorial of St Joseph Cupertino who is the patron saint of pilots and airline stewards and writers of children’s stories about people who fly. This is because he was known to...
View ArticleOn Morality and Martyrdom
A debate has been cooking amongst various bloggers who are atheists about whether there is such a thing as objective morality. I was interested in the observations that animals behave in a ‘moral’...
View ArticleSin or Sanctity?
Sin is monotonous. Sanctity is totally original. Underneath this observation lurks a deeper truth–that sin is boring. We believe in original sin, but there is nothing original about sin. This is...
View ArticleThe Strength of Kolbe
Here is a good post on the martyrdom of Maximillian Kolbe. I wrote last week about sanctity versus being good. The atheist will explain altruism in evolutionary terms: “Don’t you see that for the...
View ArticleIs Anybody There?…In Hell That Is.
In the current debate on hell (which is really a debate on universalism) there is some fuzzy thinking going on. Here is an excerpt from my book The Quest for the Creed which comes out next week. This...
View ArticleHoly Mary Mother of God and Mother of Me
I had a Southern Baptist friend who thought it was amusing, when visiting Catholic churches, to wave to the image of Mary and say, “Hi Mary!” When I challenged him on what seemed a mark of disrespect...
View ArticleProof of Heaven?
Can the existence of heaven be proved? Dr Eben Alexander thinks so. His book Proof of Heaven is an extraordinary story about a most extraordinary experience. Dr Alexander is a neurosurgeon, so he knows...
View ArticleHelp My Kids Still Aren’t Catholic!!
An earlier post this week with a similar title evoked the most passionate comments I’ve had on a post for a long time. I suggested that one of the reasons why Catholic kids leave the church is that our...
View ArticleThe Roots of Rage
This summer in America has erupted in racially charged protests about the verdict on the killing of Trayvon Martin. Yesterday I posted this video of an atheist who went berserk with rage. I’ve...
View ArticleDo Catholics Believe in Ghosts?
from Guest blogger Paul Thigpen. Paul Thigpen PhD. is an editor at TAN books and the author of hundreds of article and dozens of books on the Catholic faith. His book of prophetic prophecy–The Burden–...
View ArticleMedjugorje a Hoax?
Today’s big Catholic news is that the CDF have seemingly barred the faithful from participating in events which assume that the visions at Medjugorje are authentic. I went to to Medjugorge in the early...
View ArticleIs Religion All in Your Head?
I remember how they wired up the visionaries at Medjugorje while they were experiencing their apparitions. The scientists wanted to study what was going on in their brains as they “saw” the Blessed...
View ArticleDemonic Infection and Victory Over Sin
Is there a demonic element to seemingly ordinary human problems? Sometimes. While full blown demonic possession is rare, it is much more common for souls to be troubled by what might be called “demonic...
View Article10 Things to Remember About the Assumption of Mary
During the twenty years it took me to convert from a Bob Jones University student to a Catholic I considered many of the Marian dogmas to be pious opinions. It was okay for Catholics to believe them,...
View ArticlePowerful St Patrick
Some time ago I had a dream in which I saw a young boy swimming in a river. As he was swimming happily downstream I saw that around the bend was a large crocodile. I watched in terror as the boy swept...
View ArticleAngels, Elephants and Aliens
Here is my latest post at ZENIT…it discusses the fallacy that the apparent vast size of the cosmos must mean that there are extraterrestrials. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed a seemingly...
View ArticleFasting on Fridays and Spiritual Warfare
As a young priest I used to fast on Fridays. This was a complete fast. Nothing but water from after supper on Thursday until breakfast on Saturday. It took a couple of weeks to get used to it, but...
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