Thursday 2nd May 2024
By FR. MARVIN DEUTSCH, MM Webster’s Dictionary defines modernism as “any of several movements variously attempting to redefine Biblical and Christian dogma and traditional teachings in the light of modern science, historical research, etc. Modernism was condemned by Pope Pius X in 1907as a heresy.” This definition helps us to understand that modernism is not something new. It has been looming in the background and gnawing away at the faith and teaching of the Church for many, many years. This heresy should not be confused with modernism in general. The Church certainly is not against scientific development and the advance of technology. The concern here is the exaltation of human law over the divine, with science and a misguided humanism…Continue Reading
By DEXTER DUGGAN “We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed” — Thomas Jefferson + + + PHOENIX — You know those classic Western stories where the courageous sheriff and his deputy prepare to confront the bandits in the street. The law-abiding town has been taken over by criminals who must be defeated or else the decent settlement becomes uninhabitable for good people. The sheriff carefully reviews his options then declares, “What the heck. This is too dangerous for me. I’m headin’ for Canada. I hear there are some good welfare programs up there that I can retire on.” No, that’s not how the West was won, protected, or allowed to thrive. Tough…Continue Reading
By DEXTER DUGGAN A guaranteed prediction about this November’s elections: There’ll be a GOP wave. Whether a wave hello or a wave goodbye to additional Republican Party clout is the question. Waves don’t just stay at tsunami stage. They rise and fall. The GOP fantasy “front-runner” in the 2012 presidential contest, magisterial multimillionaire “moderate” Mitt Romney, couldn’t even defeat the worst president in the history of the nation, the glowering, nose-aloft radical Alinsky Democrat Barack Obama. By mid-September 2014, there was speculation aplenty about whether the Republicans actually would score stunning results with the voters in the mid-term elections on November 4, as had been expected earlier. They may not if they expect to win in the Romney way, holding…Continue Reading
By REY FLORES Hear ye! Hear ye! Chicago has a new shepherd coming and he is ready for the task, donning a Chicago Bears cap and scarf at a recent press conference. As if that were all that is needed to become a citizen of this much-troubled Midwest town. It’s going to take a lot more than some blue and orange Chicago Bears paraphernalia for Bishop Blase Cupich to take on the monumental task that is ahead of him. The old horror movie actor Lon Chaney was once called the “Man of 1,000 Faces” because of his incredible ability to portray a variety of characters, like the unforgettable Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Archdiocese…Continue Reading
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK I spent some time before writing this column looking for a modern way of stating the logical error of “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” reasoning. Considering the modern world’s disdain for Latin terms coined by medieval theologians, I was sure there would be some version in modern English, along the lines of the substitution of Common Era (CE) for Anno Domini (AD). But I didn’t find it. Writers and journalists seem content to use the old term “a post hoc error.” But whether English or Latin is used, it is important to introduce students to this faulty logic. Charlatans and demagogues have been known to employ it to make their case. You can count, for example,…Continue Reading
By JOHN F. KIPPLEY (Editor’s Note: John F. Kippley is the author of Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality and other books and articles. With his wife Sheila, he is a coauthor of Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach and cofounder of NFP International.) + + + Pope Francis was in the online news recently because of what he said about Islam in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. “Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalizations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” (n. 253). In this document of 288 numbered sections, there are…Continue Reading
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK The political satirist P.J. O’Rourke can be as funny and insightful as anyone on the scene these days. Not that he is Mark Twain, of course, but no one else is either. (If you want to laugh out loud over and over do a Google search of “Mark Twain quotations.”) Here are some of my favorite O’Rourke quips: “”You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.” “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” “Gossip is what you say about the object of flattery when they aren’t present.” Good stuff: concise wisecracks that make a serious point. Making a “serious point” is the key. O’Rourke tries…Continue Reading
By DEXTER DUGGAN PHOENIX — The uniqueness of the United States being founded on the concept of “God-given rights” could be the reason this nation won’t follow the historical pattern of other lands that went into irreversible decline, former presidential candidate Rick Santorum told a dinner of business executives here. “America was founded on principles that no other nation has” in its basic recognition of God, Santorum, a former Pennsylvania U.S. senator and 2012 Republican presidential candidate, told a September 10 dinner of the Phoenix chapter of Legatus, a national organization of Catholic business leaders. He added later that history shows a “pattern of ascendancy, then dominance, then decline” that never was reversed in nations that had become world leaders.…Continue Reading
By DEXTER DUGGAN Propaganda wars around the world seek victories by winning bystanders. Persuading spectators from afar to choose one side over the other can be as useful in a fight as battlefield victories. “You cannot imagine the pleasure you get from cutting off a baby’s head,” said a startling headline at the anti-Islamist website Jihad Watch on September 14, which was picked up by the religion-news aggregator PewSit ter.com. The bloodthirsty comment was attributed to a fighter with the Islamic State who described what he’d do when bursting in upon rival Muslims — death to the grandmother, the wife, then the baby. The description sounds credible these days in light of the Islamic State heavily publicizing its beheadings of…Continue Reading