Standing on My Head

Luke Skywalker - Orphan Hero

My family were attending a High School football game, and were sitting high up in the bleachers. My little sister Denise--a skinny little thing--was seven years old. When the home team scored a touchdown everyone stood up and cheered. She did too, and as she did, she slipped through the narrow gap between the seat

It's sweet that Blessed Carlo Acutis' relics were put on display for veneration today on the Memorial of St Therese of Lisieux. She taught the little way of spiritual childhood and Bl. Carlo's simple, child like devotion to miracles and the Blessed Sacrament was a similarly child-like example of trust and faith. Pope Benedict XVI wrote,

Readers of a certain age might remember the silly TV show The Flying Nun...religious brothers and sisters who take flight are nothing new. When we lived in Wiltshire in England we learned the delightful story from the Middle Ages about Eilmer  a Benedictine monk of Malmesbury Abbey  who, in the eleventh century, jumped

Two quirks haunt human nature. They are connected in a sick symbiosis, feeding off each other like the proverbial snakes gorging in mutual cannibalism. One quirk is the desire for paradise. The second is the demands of paranoia. One is a sweet sickness and the other sour. The desire for paradise seems

The Mystery Cults

On her birthday I would like to explain why this is one of my favorite images of the Blessed Virgin Mary. First of all, I should explain where it comes from. It is by the nineteenth century Russia painter Victor Vasnetsov. One gigantic, full length version

I had met James during my seminary days in Oxford and he and I were ordained as Anglican priests at the same time and went to nearby parishes in Sussex. I have always had to have my arm twisted to take vacations, and this was no exception. James was planning a trip

Here's a little list: Twelve Things I Like About St Gregory the Great He was a Benedictine monk. I'm a Benedictine oblate and the monk in me will always hanker for the cell, the cloister and the bell. He was a scholar. You got to love a Pope who is brainy. He got things done. He

I'm reading the splendid collection of Flannery O'Connor's letters, and the dry wit and sparkling, eccentric intelligence of the woman is refreshing. Here is a writer with no pretense and no posing. She has fled the New York elitist writer's colony to live in her mom's farmhouse in North Georgia. She writes for three hours a

The statistics on Catholic Church commitment continue to cause shock and dismay. The chart illustrating this post comes from Professor Stephen Bullivant the author of Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and USA Since Vatican 2 While it is commonplace to blame the Second Vatican Council for the Catholic Church's decline and fall in the West,

James Cone's "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" is a passionate and excellent contribution to the discussion of race and religion from the perspective of African-American believers and should help white Christians to see the world from the viewpoint of their black brothers and sisters. The Cross and

Think about taking part in my new six part live online video course which looks at the last 500 years of church history in order to understand where we've come from, and more importantly, where we're going. In this video I explain a bit more about it, and you can learn more here. The course costs

Let's face it squarely. The Catholic Church is in crisis. The largest denomination in America is former Catholics. Numbers of priests, nuns and brothers have plummeted drastically. The priests we do have are old and ready to retire and to replace them we are importing priests from the developing world--from countries that have their own

I'm often surprised at the number of good, faithful Catholics who are well informed about their faith, who do not understand the doctrine of transubstantiation. In my experience they fall into two categories. The first do not believe the Eucharist is anything more than a symbol. The second believe the bread and wine become the  Body

The chaos of 2020 has spawned a pandemic of its own: a pandemic of conspiracy theories: COVID-19 is caused by 5G technology not really caused by it but the radiation makes you weaker and it was all fake in the first place put there by the mainstream media who are controlled by globalists and jews and

Today is the feast day of the Apostle St James, and it's worth remembering this piece from the archives which undermines the modernist Biblical scholars' attempts to put the dating of the New Testament as late as possible. Bible scholars piece together details of evidence to build up a full picture of the New Testament authorship and