Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 5

Sam Rocha on the Stupid “Braveheart Freedom” that Kills People

Sam pens a corker of a little essay on the selfish and childish demands for “freedom” surging through the MAGA subculture as it writhes under the constraints of having to think, for the first time in its self-absorbed life, about somebody else during a Pandemic: This past summer we took a family vacation to a […]

Pope Francis Speaks the Truth

Right wing white American MAGA “prolife” zealots perpetually shout “but abortion” and brandish the unborn as human shields for the host of inhuman cruelties they defend. The Holy Father has their number, which is one of the reasons they piously spend their time doing what looks for all the world like hating the Holy Father’s […]

Sacraments are the Kisses of God

…not our sole access to God. It is vital to grasp this because there are those in the world telling us that if you cannot receive the sacraments then you are “cut off from grace”. So you hear people saying things like “The bishops are cutting us off from grace by denying us the sacraments […]

Pretty much every time the Church speaks…

about, say, war or poverty or racism or refugees or capital punishment or a living wage or gun violence or health care or the care of creation or a host of other issues, you can guarantee that a chorus will pipe up to say something like, “When is [Bergoglio/damn lib bishop X] going to speak […]

Resurrection, by John Donne

Moist with one drop of Thy blood, my dry soul Shall—though she now be in extreme degree Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly—be Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard or foul, And life by this death abled shall control Death, whom Thy death slew; nor shall to me Fear of first or […]

Sepulchre, by George Herbert

Oh blessed body! Whither art thou thrown? No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone? So many hearts on earth, and yet not one Receive thee? Sure there is room within our hearts good store; For they can lodge transgressions by the score: Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door They leave […]

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward by John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is, And as the other Spheares, by being growne Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne, And being by others hurried every day, Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey: Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit For their […]

Holy Thursday

We are meant to feel that his life was in that sense a sort of love affair with death, a romance of the pursuit of the ultimate sacrifice. From the moment when the star goes up like a birthday rocket, to the moment when the sun is extinguished like a funeral torch, the whole story […]

Two questions we must face on Spy Wednesday

“Who do you say I am?” – Jesus of Nazareth “What will you give me to betray him?” – Judas Iscariot Both are diagnostics of our deepest hearts.  Both should make us tremble.  They open up to us the reality that the universe is not a hobbit hole, but that every road leads, sooner or […]

Forgiveness (for Tuesday of Holy Week), by Friar David Hirt

Forgiveness, Lord’s a morsel dipped in wine and handed, sopping, to he who betrays you, who can’t see the gift of you that’s placed in hands that many times have compassed yours and shared your work and those of whom, though near you now, too soon will run when garden depths of olive peace are […]