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A Book Review…. GKC And Seeking After God

March 5, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review…. GKC And Seeking After God

By JEFF MINICK Knight Of The Holy Ghost: A Short History of G.K. Chesterton, by Dale Ahlquist; Ignatius Press/Augustine Institute, 2018, 191 pages. Order at Ignatius.com. For admirers of wit and aphorism, reading Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) can be a dangerous pastime. Chesterton throws off one-liners as happily and as generously as a Santa Claus tossing peppermint candy to children during a Christmas parade. Indeed, two fat volumes — The Quotable Chesterton and More Quotable Chesterton — attest to this aphoristic talent. Every page in a Chesterton essay, many times every paragraph, tempts the reader to write down one or two of his shining sentences. Of course, the reader who yielded to that temptation would in essence become a Chestertonian…Continue Reading

Warrencare: A Brainwashing Babysitter

March 4, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Warrencare: A Brainwashing Babysitter

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY Were the United States of America transformed to conform to the vision that Sen. Elizabeth Warren embraces, many government agencies — such as those charged with enforcing the Green New Deal she co-sponsors — might resemble Big Brother. But the most insidious element would be a brainwashing babysitter. To Warren, parents who take care of their own preschool children are victims of a class war. “Right now, high quality child care is a privilege for the rich,” Warren said in a tweet last week. “I believe it should be a fundamental right for everyone.” “Child care should be a fundamental right. Period,” she said in a follow-up tweet. Do not be confused: Warren is not saying…Continue Reading

Parenting And The Principle Of Subsidiarity

March 3, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Parenting And The Principle Of Subsidiarity

By DONALD DeMARCO Pope Pius XI formulated the “principle of subsidiarity” in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931). This principle means that the state or lesser, intermediate organizations should never intervene to do for a lower group — including the family or even the individual — what that lower group can do for itself. Thus, subsidiarity means that the smallest level of communality should be employed to achieve its end while the state should be regarded as the last resort. The state may help the family, but should not hinder it. Society is built from the ground up. This explains why the family is the basic unit of society. Pius XI recognized this and honored it with his famous and widely…Continue Reading

Socialist Past Still Thwarts Argentina’s Potential

March 2, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Socialist Past Still Thwarts Argentina’s Potential

By JOHN J. METZLER BUENOS AIRES — Nobody strolling the streets or riding along the massive tree-lined avenues of this amazing city can fail to be impressed by the size, vitality, and the pulse of the Argentine capital. Moreover so much of Argentina conjures the word—Potential. Its Size, Resources, and Traditions. Yet modern Buenos Aires, evokes a strong nostalgia too, not so much of impressive architecture from a bygone age, but of something missing in the modern era where inflation, massive government debt, and anemic economic growth have endured as an albatross to this once thriving country of forty-four million people. Now as Argentina prepares for crucial presidential elections in October, this land of huge potential but striking contradictions, will…Continue Reading

Ambassador Brownback… Says Pakistan Willing To Improve Religious Freedom Record

March 1, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Ambassador Brownback… Says Pakistan Willing To Improve Religious Freedom Record

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNA) — The U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom has applauded Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates for showing a willingness to improve in the area of religious liberty, while recognizing that significant steps forward are still needed. Ambassador Sam Brownback told the Associated Press that he met with Pakistan’s foreign minister on a tour of the Middle East recently, discussing U.S. concerns about religious freedom in the nation. “They’ve had a lot of difficulties as a nation on this topic on religious freedom so what I was there for was to talk about changing,” Brownback said. He said the foreign minister intends to designate an official to take the lead on the concerns raised by…Continue Reading

What Does It Mean . . . To Be Laicized, Defrocked, Or Dismissed From The Clerical State?

February 28, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on What Does It Mean . . . To Be Laicized, Defrocked, Or Dismissed From The Clerical State?

By J.D. FLYNN DENVER (CNA) — Archbishop Theodore McCarrick was laicized this past week, after he was found guilty of sexual abuse and other canonical crimes. But what does it mean to be “laicized,” “defrocked,” or “dismissed from the clerical state?” Ordination, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “confers a gift of the Holy Spirit that permits the exercise of a ‘sacred power’ which can come only from Christ himself through his Church.” The Church says Ordination marks a person with an irremovable imprint, a character, which “configures them to Christ.” Ordination, in Catholic theology, makes a permanent change that the Church has no power to reverse. “You are a priest forever,” the Letter to the Hebrews says. This…Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . Enjoy The Adventures Of Prince Martin And Friends

February 27, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on A Book Review . . . Enjoy The Adventures Of Prince Martin And Friends

By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY Donal Anthony Foley reviews The Prince Martin books by Brandon Hale, illustrated by Jason Zimdars (Kindle, paperback, and hardback). Available at amazon.com. The Prince Martin books, which are primarily meant for young children, came about due to Brandon Hale being deployed overseas. As a way of maintaining contact with his young son, he started to tell him stories over the phone about a certain Prince Martin. His son found these stories so captivating that when the author returned home he decided, at his wife’s prompting, to turn the stories into a series of children’s books. There have been three books so far: Prince Martin Wins His Sword, Prince Martin and the Thieves, and Prince Martin and…Continue Reading

Is Pope Francis Now Hunting Down “Heresy Hunters”?

February 26, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Is Pope Francis Now Hunting Down “Heresy Hunters”?

By FR. BRIAN W. HARRISON, OS (Wanderer Editor’s Note: Fr. Harrison’s commentary below first appeared at LifeSiteNews on February 13, 2019 and is reprinted here with permission.) + + + On January 24, Pope Francis, in addressing the bishops of Central America during his trip to Panama, attacked a certain kind of Catholic journalism. Now, it was evidently not dissident, left-liberal publications such as the National Catholic Reporter or the London Tablet that had prompted the Holy Father’s grave concern. On the contrary, he was clearly lambasting precisely those media that make a point of upholding Catholic Tradition and orthodoxy. The Pope accused them of removing “the compassion of Christ” from its “central place in the Church” and excoriated their…Continue Reading

Classical Education Without Tears?

February 25, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Classical Education Without Tears?

By ARTHUR HIPPLER (Editor’s Note: Dr. Hippler is chairman of the religion department and teaches religion in the Upper School at Providence Academy, Plymouth, Minn.) + + + When I see T-shirts and bumper stickers that declare, “I survived Catholic schools,” I feel like making a T-shirt of my own: “I survived progressive education.” In the fourth grade, I was enrolled in the “Optional Program” in my public school. We had table and chairs, not rows of desks, and we often sat “Indian style” on the carpeted floor. We called our teacher by her first name (her name was “Silver” — no, I am not making that up) and we designed our own curriculums. I designed a program of studies…Continue Reading

Rights, Duties, And Inclinations

February 24, 2019 Featured Today Comments Off on Rights, Duties, And Inclinations

By DONALD DeMARCO Have you heard about the love story between Big Ben and the Leaning Tower of Pisa? He had the time and she had the inclination. The joke rests, so to speak, on the double meaning of the word inclination. The superficial meaning of the word is geometric. The Tower, as a matter of fact, leans southward at 3.99 degrees. This meaning is placed over the romantic meaning which connotes love. This deeper meaning was an important word (inclinatio) in the vocabulary of St. Thomas Aquinas which serves as the basis of his teaching on the natural law. But what does inclination in this second sense have to do with love? An explanation is surely in order. When…Continue Reading