Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 48

Rebecca Hamilton is an American Patriot and Therefore Cannot Silent

Here is a guest column she asked me to run.  I do so with pride: President Trump is threatening to grant himself dictatorial powers. He is making repeated statements about declaring a national emergency at the border and overriding Congress so that he can build his wall. Let’s be clear about this. Whatever is happening […]

The Real Death Panel Party

As has now become obvious, the standard strategy of the GOP Christianist Cult of Trump is to its enemies of the very things it desires and intends itself. Back during the debate over universal health, a standard trope of the Cult was that people only advocated universal health care so that they could form “death […]

The response to Fr. McCloskey illustrates the failure of the conservative Catholic approach…

…to the sexual abuse crisis. For a brief moment this past summer things began to come into focus for us concerning sexual abuse in the Church. When the PA report came out, the focus was where it should be: on victims. It didn’t matter whether the victim was male or female, or whether the abuser […]

Media are betraying the public trust by covering Trump’s lying propaganda speech tonight

There is no crisis at the border and no need for wasting $5 billion on a wall to inflict sadistic punishment on refugees. There is no need for Trump’s sadistic and selfish shutdown of the government. None of this is necessary and everything Trump is saying to rationalize his stupid vanity project for the benefit […]

Fr. Frank Pavone, Apostle of the Living Trump

The central flaw of the American conservative Christianist “prolife” movement is that it has managed to transmogrify its mission from “saving the unborn” to “saving the GOP and using the unborn as tools, props, and human shields while doing that.” Similarly, millions of those Christians involved in that endeavor have fallen prey to a little […]

Happy Birthday, Professor Tolkien!

I offer a rousing toast and a deeply grateful word of thanks for your evangelization of my imagination when i was but a downy-faced youth starting out in life. Beyond this, Tolkien, more than any other man, helped to train my heart in a deep suspicion of the corrupting effects of power. I will be […]

Interesting attempt to figure out the nothingness at the heart of fascism

Paul speaks of the “mystery of evil”. And Augustine remarks that when a creature sins (something only a rational creature such and humans and angels can do), it “asserts its nothingness”. I think this is why fascism is ultimately impossible to analyze and the evil that it does, while having a certain internal logic, ultimately […]

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God and the Circumcision in the Temple

I like to meditate on the Presentation (when Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem forty days after his birth to complete Mary’s purification after childbirth, and to perform the redemption of the firstborn according to the Law of Moses) in conjunction with another incident involving the first time Jesus […]

Responding to Common Skeptical Commentary about the Infancy Narratives

Every Christmas there is a ritual kabuki that Catholics who take the New Testament seriously have to go through. First, is the response to the standard claim that Christmas is “really” just a warmed-over pagan feast. The short answer to that is to ask if the skeptic is “really” a worshipper of Saturn if he […]

Yes. The Holy Family were Refugees

Before Trump’s election, Republican Court Prophets like John Zmirak helped to stampede conservative Catholics with the fraud that Trump was Constantine and Clinton was Diocletian.  Vote for Trump or face persecution! My point then, as now, is that Jesus told his disciples to fear seduction, not persecution.  No.  Really: Do not fear those who kill […]