Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
The death of Fr. Michael Scanlan, the University of Steubenville's long-time leader, has saddened many in the conservative Catholic world, if not refugees from covenant communities. It's an event that may not resonate with the majority of the Christian world, but for those of us with any involvement with the University of Steubenville, it's worth …
Continue reading "How Did We Get From Scanlan to #straightouttairondale?"
Something to consider, from Philo Judaeus, On the Unchangeableness of God XI: And this is what follows: "I will destroy," says God, " the man whom I have made from off the face of the earth, from man to beast, from creeping things to the fowls of the air, because I have considered and repent …
Not too long ago, while grading homework for a course I was teaching, I saw a "better than usual" performance from one of my students. I noted that, if she would consistently concentrate on what she was doing, she was capable of very good work. The response I got to this was as follows: …
One of pot shots that Hillary Clinton and her operatives made at conservative Catholics is that they used terms like “subsidiarity” that no one understood. Since they may be right about that, I think an illustration is in order. Many of you know that I teach Civil Engineering. Six years ago, my department head (who …
Which is what some of it, at least, has done: A similar crisis has shaken the philosophical estate within the church. Before 1970 philosophy enjoyed an enviable prominence in the curriculum of Catholic colleges. This Neo-Scholastic philosophy was certainly structured around the perennial questions—Does God exist? What is virtue?—but it was an odd, manual Thomism …
Continue reading "When Catholic Academia Bails on Philosophy, We're All in Trouble"
From Bossuet's Elevations on the Mysteries, IV, 8: To correct the abuse and distraction of our wandering and dissipated imagination, it is necessary to fill it with holy images. When our memory fills up, it will only take us to those religious ideas. The water wheel pushed by the flow of a river always goes, …
Continue reading ""Garbage In Garbage Out" Works for the Soul, Too"
As the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is doing: The Church’s wooing of the SNP is largely to blame. It started when Cardinal Winning clashed with the then Labour Executive over their social liberalism. Winning and many of the other people in charge convinced themselves that the nationalists were going to be more onside on issues like abortion. There was absolutely …
Continue reading "When the Social Justice Warriors Get in Their Own Way"
My mother used to tell her unretentive sons that geese "get up in a new world every morning." While I can't speak to geese, that's certainly a problem with our press: Pope Francis has created a commission to study the possibility of allowing women to serve as deacons in the Catholic church, following up on …
Continue reading "Women Deacons in the Catholic Church? Not the First Time They've Thought About It"
@timothypomalley is lachrymose for his party's call to repeal the Hyde Amendment: I had hoped for this. Until this week. Like many pro-life Democrats, I had been dispirited by the inclusion in the 2016 Democratic Party Platform of the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which has previously disallowed federal funds to pay for abortion except …
Continue reading "Pro-Life Democrats: If You Knew the Priorities…"
I've alluded to my years in the Catholic Students Association in pieces like this. Now you can get a little more flavour of what that was like in the following video. Thanks so much to Jeanne Geidel-Neal for the music for this video. As noted elsewhere, the "straight outta Irondale" folks won't like this, but …
Positive Infinity 