Saturday 20th April 2024
By DEXTER DUGGAN Now that we’re mostly told or ordered to stay home because of the coronavirus, in nations around the world, what if the next step is that our Internet, phone, and social-media connections somehow go down? What was more or less tolerable confinement, keeping company with our electronic connections, becomes more or less imprisonment without them. What if our ability to keep in touch with acquaintances and local and national developments becomes lost? The springtime of liberation represented by Easter was being reversed by seeing the stone rolled back into place to seal the tomb all over again. The most joyous celebration of the Christian calendar seemed more likely to be celebrated behind closed doors, although not yet…Continue Reading
By CHRISTOPHER MANION “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” — President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933. + + + Responding to calls for panic from the usual suspects, our old friend Dr. Angelo Codevilla channels Machiavelli. “Whoever controls the people’s fears becomes master of their souls,” said power’s most able advocate. A century later, Thomas Hobbes upped the ante. A people obsessed with fear of an untimely death must surrender all their rights to an all-powerful Leviathan, who would then protect them — maybe. A people afraid? Maybe somebody else, but not us, right? Not even with the Wuhan Virus breathing down our necks? Well, some thirty years ago Russell Kirk…Continue Reading
By REY FLORES How many of us took our Holy Mass for granted? Not only the Mass, but all of the sacraments, and even sacramentals like holy water. Here yesterday, gone yesterday. Yes, even holy water. I hope that most of you keep a stash of sacramentals in your homes, things like holy water, blessed salt, and beeswax candles, because there’s no telling when all of this Chinese Wuhan virus mess will be over. How many of you are actually “attending” either a televised or online Mass during this current situation? I have been. It’s obviously not the same, but at least society can use technology for something other than celebrity gossip, video games, and pornography. Thankfully many Catholic parishes…Continue Reading
By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — In a full-page feature in his tabloid-size diocesan newspaper, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix strongly denounced the claim that “Protecting Abortion Access is a Catholic Value.” “This is a lie. This is a damned lie,” Bishop Thomas Olmsted wrote in the March issue of The Catholic Sun, putting “damned lie” in italics. His column was headlined, “‘Damned Lies, and Living the Gospel of Life’.” Olmsted said that “such a twisting of the truth, one of many produced by a culture of death, can only come from the pit of hell.” He also denounced any Catholic political candidate who believes in this attitude as “a Judas of our day.” Accompanying his monthly column…Continue Reading
By JAMES MONTI The story has been told countless times for a century. As sunset descended upon London on Monday, August 3, 1914, just a day before England’s entry into World War I, two friends were gazing out the window of the British Foreign office contemplating the tranquil scene of the lamps in Saint James Park being set alight. One of these two men, the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, wistfully remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time” (Sir Edward Grey, Twenty-Five Years: 1892-1916, volume 2, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1925, p. 20). It was in the midst of the deepening confrontation between our Lord and the…Continue Reading
BY JOE SIXPACK During a desperate battle on Guadalcanal in World War II, an American soldier threw himself on a Japanese grenade that landed among his mortar crew. The soldier survived the blast, but was horribly wounded and maimed. The chaplain visited the young man in an army hospital and asked him, “Why did you take that million to one chance and risk your life that way?” The soldier smiled and replied, “It was like this, Father: I had gone to Confession that morning, so I was ready to die, but I didn’t know if the other guys were ready.” This great American hero drives home a point about death and our need for Confession perfectly. Death is the most…Continue Reading
By MOST REV. JOSEPH STRICKLAND Pope St. John Paul wrote in his seminal encyclical on life, “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin’ ( John 8:34).” We are called to stand in solidarity with those who have no voice. To accept legalized abortion in the law and purport to “privately oppose it” is a perversion which promotes a counterfeit notion of freedom. In the Joy of the Gospel…Continue Reading
By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD One of the difficulties in writing a weekly column is the lag time between writing and actual publishing. As I write today the coronavirus has almost totally shut down the entire world — especially my little part of it. What it will be like when this is published is anyone’s guess, but it appears that the virus and its continued effects will only grow worse, God help us! There are some bright spots, however. Here in Iowa, and many other places, Sunday and daily Masses have been suspended “for the duration” — whatever that means. I can no longer do hospital visits since only patients and authorized hospital workers are allowed admittance. Through all of…Continue Reading
By DEXTER DUGGAN Before the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth began His final journey to Jerusalem, neither His friends nor foes forecast what was to become the astounding first Easter. A tortured dead man soon rising up in full good health? Despite having seen the miracles this rabbi had worked, most of His closest friends, rather than putting on their best optimistic faces for coming good events while dreary Good Friday dragged by, fled in fear and despair. Two millennia later, as Easter draws near, more fear and despair. None of the countries around the world appears in danger of its own extinction from the COVID-19 pandemic, even though many residents have died or soon will from it, in addition to…Continue Reading