Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 17

On the victory of John Bel Edwards

Charlie Camosy talks about the recent victory of John Bel Edwards in the Louisiana governor’s race: Given our nation’s polarized abortion politics, it is hard to believe that a governor who dramatically expanded Medicaid in his state also signed a bill banning abortion after a heartbeat can be detected. Yet that’s precisely what Democrat John Bel […]

Mr. Rogers and Two Film Reviewers

It ought not to be necessary to defend the proposition that Fred Rogers was a wonderful human being, a fine Christian witness, and exactly the antidote for our dehumanizing age.  This should not be a claim that requires defense, but a claim that invites celebration.  His life and witness ought to be, especially in Christian […]

To close out this week of Where Peter Is Tussling with Ross Douthat

…I thought it would be good to take a look at Dan Amiri’s To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism.  It’s a fair-minded review and I encourage you to read the whole thing.  The part I want to focus on is here: Especially in American politics, there is a tendency to break […]

Where Peter Is on the charge of believing in “papal fiat”

Ever since a pope was elected who does not fit well with the American conservative agenda of selecting from the Magisterium to accessorize a now thoroughly demented right wing ideology that has metastasized into the Cult of Trump, the Right Wing Lie Machine in both secular and Catholic forms has worked overtime to discredit fidelity […]

Where Peter Is takes up the Douthat interview w/ Cardinal Burke

…and does their typical fair and judicious work.  The author, Mike Lewis, is (I think) very charitable to the Cardinal, remarking: [U]nlike many other Catholics who see Cardinal Burke as a Machiavellian and power-obsessed schemer, I actually believe he is sincere, not terribly political, and is following his conscience. Those who have met him, even […]

Ross Douthat recently mentioned Where Peter Is…

…in the pages of the New York Times, so they have officially hit the Big Time. Douthat, whose super-judicious and perceptive prudence about all things Catholic once moved him to write this encomium to documented white supremacist and aspiring ethnic cleanser Stephen Miller, is quoted and answered here: He mentions WPI while describing the second […]

Where Peter Is has been doing great work

Here, for instance, is Paul Fahey, strengthening the faithful against the single greatest enemy the Church faces in this hour: right wing Catholics in ceaseless war against the Holy Father and the Magisterium: In my spiritual formation as a young adult, the idea of a future schism–refusing to submit to the teaching of the pope–was […]

Historian Heather Cox Richardson on the Impeachment Hearings

vs. the dumb “Everything Should Entertain Me” mentality of minds begging for chains (she wrote this on 11/14/19): Last night, NBC News complained that the day’s impeachment hearings, featuring testimony from former Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor and diplomat George Kent, had been substantive but lacked “pizzazz,” so likely would not convince Americans to pay attention to Trump’s […]

Amazon Synod: Truth Cancer

Once upon a time, I wrote a piece about “Truth Cancer“: the odd way heresies have of mutating into their opposites. So, for instance, 17th century New England Calvinism, so passionate about the glory of God the Father, mutated into Boston Unitarianism, which is skeptical about the very existence of God and horrified at the […]

Amazon Synod: The Reactionary as Chesterton’s Madman

Heresy is not so much a lie as an infected, inflamed, and cancerous truth.  It takes one or two things out of the Tradition and then, like a metastasizing cancer attacking healthy tissue, attacks all the rest of the Catholic faith.  Chesterton, writing nearly a century ago, describes the process: Now, it was just here […]