Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 19

The Saint Monica Club

Here’s a new book from Maggie Green: In the fourth century, a young man named Augustine turned his back on the Church, plunging into a frenzied life of lust and dissipation. His renunciation left Monica, his pious Catholic mother, weeping and praying for his salvation . . . for more than a decade! Like so […]

A nice little horror story for Halloween…

…is reviewed by reader Laura Freeburn over at her blog.  It’s called The Black Spider.  Here is a taste of the review: And why not do evil that good may come? – as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just. (Romans 3:8) Die schwarze Spinne is an unsettling tale that dramatizes the […]

Amazon Synod: Of Gnats and Camels

I closed yesterday by noting of the people having hysterics over Our Lady of the Amazon that just an ounce of charity would have prevented this whole ridiculous Panic du Jour. A reader replies: You make a lot of good points. But why can’t you (among others) admit that the problem here is not all […]

Amazon Synod: Of Indefectibility, Infallibility, Prudence, and Panic

People ask me if I believe in organized religion.  I always reply: “No.  I am a Catholic.”  I subscribe heartily to Hilaire Belloc’s remark: The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human […]

Amazon Synod: On Images, Symbols, and Polyvalence

Quick question: What is this?: The answer depends far more on the way that you see than on what your eyes register.  Here are just some of the perfectly true answers to that question. It is photons hitting your eye. It is a jpg file. It is silicates. It is a big stone building. It […]

Interesting Video Chat with David Greenwalt

He’s a Hollywood writer, director, and producer who is most notably known for his work on major television network series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Grimm. He is also a convert to Catholicism and is featured in the new Evangelization & Culture Journal. Here he is on the writing process, good story-telling, […]

The Amazon Synod: Fortress Katolicus vs. the Church’s Mission

Yesterday, I gave some background on the Amazon Synod and the bizarre spectacle of vigilante Catholics throwing a statue called “Our Lady of the Amazon” in the Tiber. You can learn the basic purpose of the synod there. Some, who suckle solely at the teat of Right Wing Lie Machine media, immediately declared that “nobody” […]

So What’s the Deal with the Amazon Synod?

Now that the Amazon Synod is breaking on the consciousness of people who are not total Catholics nerds, due to the vigilante violence of goons cosplaying as destroyers of idols, I thought I should give a little background to Outsiders as to what is going on with the synod–and with the strange little sect of […]

A defense of Bishop James Ussher

Ussher famously dated the moment of creation to noon on October 23, 4004 BC.  Snooty people who imagine they are smarter than their ancestors because they watch the Discovery Channel–but who could not, if their lives depended on it, give a coherent explanation (other than an appeal to authority) for how we know the earth […]

Yesterday, we talked about meeting pro-choice people on their terms, not ours

I used the example of Bernie Sanders since his Jewish tradition has a lot of room for a pro-choice position and it is idle to demand he accept Catholic moral premisses when he is not Catholic. The same thing applies to secularists.  That does not mean no argument can be made.  It means–as always–that if […]