Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 62

Talking with a reader about this Kairos Moment in the Church

She writes: I was struck by something as I read recently, and I have a question. Following the global outcry about what has been taking place recently on the US-Mexico border, the writer was bemoaning the loss of the US as a moral compass for the world, as the leader of the free world, He […]

A reader has a question about purgatory

He writes: I’ve read some of your stuff and listened to your journey from Protestant to Catholicism. Pleased to meet you! I myself am a non-denominational Christian and a youth pastor. My heart is for the One Universal Church to come together so that there is less division within Christianity. That is so beautiful. You […]

Part four of my series on the first line of the Creed

is up at The Catholic Weekly: To be sure, there are those who painstakingly make their way to belief in one God via the route of philosophical argument. Indeed, we meet some of these people in the pages of the New Testament, where they are known by the technical title of ‘God-fearer’ (cf. Acts 10:2; […]

The Death Penalty Kerfuffle

So there has been a lot of hysteria about the development of the Church’s teaching concerning a hoary and venerable institution that, up until practically yesterday, the Church had treated with tolerance and even spoken of favorably. I speak, of course, of slavery.  Who has not heard the hue and cry from advocates of slavery demanding […]

David Mills remarks on the War Crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Over on Facebook, David Mills remarks: ON HIROSHIMA AND EASY ANSWERS From a reflection on the twin questions of abortion and the bombing Hiroshima, whose 73rd anniversary we observe today. It illustrates the great challenge of living as Christians in a fallen world. The options are to face the challenge, to deny it, or to […]

Here’s a hopeful sign!

A guy named Jon Crane writes: I handle PR for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP). The nationwide trend of conservative Republicans re-thinking capital punishment continues and conservative Catholics are very involved. The most recent example comes from New Hampshire where both houses of the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a death penalty repeal bill […]

Bravo to Dr. Jeff Mirus!

He writes: It is already happening, and it gives us a bad name. Hearing of the widespread denunciation among our bishops of President Trump’s (now discarded) policy to separate children from their migrant parents at the Mexican border, a certain number of Catholics who read CatholicCulture.org are demanding to know where the bishops were when […]

Here is the new language of the Catechism on the death penalty

2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost […]

The Pope has just declared the death penalty inadmissible in all cases

This will be a challenge to Communists, Islamic despots, and white conservative “prolife” American Catholics at war with the Church’s social teaching. It is, of course, the visible-from-space right thing to do and an obvious development of the Church’s teaching on the dignity of the human person.  It will be interesting to see how Catholic […]

When Children at the Border are Drinking Toilet Water…

…and being sexually abused by their captors, the Christian makes war on this in the name of Jesus Christ with the weapons of the Spirit: prayer, fasting, and such works of mercy and justice as he has at his or her disposal to rescue them from this satanic system, because human life is sacred from […]