Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 22

Because I am re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring

and because it’s Saturday and because it is practically the anniversary of the arrival of the Hobbits at the Prancing Pony and Frodo’s disastrous performance, I give you this awesomeness:

Aquinas 101

So this looks pretty cool–and it’s free! Click on the image to go sign up.

The Harmony of Amoris Laetitia and Veritatis Splendor

Over at Where Peter Is, Brian Killian has a nice piece dealing with the Right Wing Panic Machine lie pitting Francis against the Tradition: You often find the charge among critics of Pope Francis that his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, is opposed to Pope John Paul’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor. The differences between the two are […]

Prayer Request

A reader writes: Please pray for Em. tl;dr version: – DV relationship – pregnant – husband wants abortion – she wants out of relationship – pregnancy probably ectopic (Also: She gets the radiology results today.) Please also ask your readers for prayers Father, hear our prayer that your wisdom, guidance, healing, and love will prevail […]

Texas Recently Murdered a Man for a Crime Experts Say He Did Not Commit

Larry Swearingen was put to death for a murder and a rape that the science says he did not do. His last words were those of Jesus Christ. Pious Catholic barbarians say things like, “Oh well!  La di dah!  If he’s innocent then he’ll to heaven!  No harm done!  Let’s kill some more because of […]

A Canadian reader is worried about some developments and has some questions

They write: Green burial laws might not respect bodies With what is going on nowadays, my imagination is coming up with worrying scenarios. A year or two ago, a right-wing Canadian think-tank called the Fraser Institute came up with the report of a study about the savings for our health system that euthanasia might allow… […]

If You are Not Against Trump, You are for Him

Stalin once remarked that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic.  Our brains tend to zone out when deluged with information.  Trump’s outrages are so numerous that it is hard to take them in.  You get numb.  So I will simply point to one tiny example of the ugliness of […]

How to deploy the unborn as human shields for the cruelty you love

From an actual and utterly typical conversation between a Whole Life Catholic and a a couple of people right wing “prolife” Catholics: WLC: New Trump administration rules stand to block the public from knowing anything about the treatment of migrant children in detention facilities. They don’t want you to know what they’re doing to children. […]

Fun with Readers’ Names

I have many readers about whom I know nothing except their names, and I sometimes like to fantasize personal narratives for them based only on that one fact. Megan Marie Grefenstette is a fave of mine. I choose to believe she is the Fourth Baronness of Alpenheim, dissolute expatriate Austrian Royal. FrNic Ventura, on the […]

A Sonnet for Summer’s Ending

I love this time of swan song summer days when autumn is not quite here but her red fingers, fresh with new paint, like a child, plays at tinging the leaves’ edges overhead. I love the silver-pearled webs appearing here and there and the bare hint of cool breath of dawn giving up the ghost […]