Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 20

St. Thomas, Chesterton and the Transformation of the “Prolife” Movement into an In-Group

One of the saddest parts of the transformation of the “prolife” movement into a club for conservative Christianists is that, nearly all the time, that club no longer even bothers to attempt to speak to or about people on their terms in order to persuade. The purpose of the “prolife” movement is to provide Unit […]

Since it’s Saturday Morning, Cartoons are the Thing

My sincerest apologies to Stephen Herreid

He writes: On October 7th, you published a piece (here) that included an image of a tweet of mine. In that tweet (which can still be found here), I mentioned “genocidal white racism.” “White racism” here clearly refers to racism on the part of whites AGAINST non-whites. But you indicated that my tweet was a […]

A little tip on good and bad evangelism for a Friday

So the other day I ran across a tweet from Jaden Smith on the Catholic Memes FB page: Accompanying it was this comment: Jaden Smith out here being breathtakingly oblivious. Love it. That’s tiny sample of how not to evangelize. The term for that comment is “smug”. They are the words of somebody who sees […]

I hear fairly often from victims of divorce–usually women

One of them sent me this link to a piece called “The Casserole Rules“: When my husband of 27 years suddenly and unexpectedly left, it was weeks before my large-church-pastors noticed I was missing from Sunday morning services.  And even weeks more before someone called to check in. I can’t blame them. I didn’t reach […]

Bart Simpson and the Congenital Inability of Conservatives to Ever Take Responsibility

A while back, I posted a piece on Fr. Matthew Schneider tweeting to protest Alt-Right Nazi Richard Spencer and getting deluged with defenses of Nazis from Good Conservative Catholics and various other white conservative Christians (and some pagans too). One of the comments I promptly received in response to this bizarro Freak Show that is […]

I don’t buy all of this, but….

…at least the author is trying to read Pope Francis sympathetically and not search for any ammo and any excuse to destroy him: At the risk of overgeneralizing, I would say that those most frustrated by Pope Francis tend to be Catholics steeped in Church history and tradition and, significantly, the writings of St. Thomas […]

A good compendium of every lie the Gun Cult tells

What is always striking about these critiques of the Christianist antichrist lie machine is that the supposed “unbeliever” is, in fact, begging and pleading for self-proclaimed Real Christians[TM] to actually behave like Jesus while the Christianist spits in their face and declares that anything not compatible with Trump Freak Show dogma is worthless. Jesus says […]

The More You Know: Star Trek edition

Something educational for a Saturday morning: It is, however, my painful duty to inform you that KIRK NEVER FALLS IN LOVE WITH a VULCAN.  AMERICAN EDUCATION IS A SHAMBLES. Deacon Steve Greydanus had a Latin teacher at seminary who said Western Civilization ended on September 6, 1966 when James T. Kirk ruined all grammar by […]

Weighed Down by Irony

Some time back, I saw an ad for the Flat Earth Society on Facebook which announced, “The Flat Earth Society has members around the globe.” Some wag commented, “Say that again, but slower.” I thought of that when Planned Parenthood sent this out: Say that again, but slower: I am reminded again of my favorite […]