Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 76

An interview with Catholic bioethicist Dr. Jacqueline Abernathy

…on the latest Connecting the Dots. We are discussing Alfie Evans and various end-of-life issues. Very interesting. This was recorded yesterday. Today, we receive the sad news of Alfie’s death. I can add nothing to the pope’s words, except my prayers for him, his family, his caregivers, and all who have sought to help him. […]

Marshall McLuhan interviewed by Fr. Patrick Peyton

Here’s something you don’t see everyday:

The Uses of Alfie Evans

There are, in this world, two ways in which the tragedy of Alfie Evans is approached. The first is to ask “What is the best way Alfie Evans can be helped in the remaining days of his life on earth?”  That is, I believe, the only question that matters and the guiding principle that should […]

Why Creeds?: Gaining my Religion

Part 4 of the Creed series over at The Catholic Weekly: Last time, in this space, I mentioned that, so far from “being spiritual, not religious”, I discovered that religion is not a bad thing but a good thing and even a biblical thing. James, for instance, remarks: If anyone thinks he is religious and does not […]

How I spent the an afternoon and how I never want to spend another afternoon

Reader: What do you think about Alfie Evans?   Me: I don’t know anything about the medical or legal issues. So I haven’t commented.   Reader: No. But really. What do you think?   Me: I just told you.   Reader; But don’t you think the doctors are all evil?   Me. I don’t think […]

My End is in My Beginning: the Final Days of the Great Shea Western Voyage of Discovery

And so it came to pass that, lo, we did awake in the rest area of Rifle, Colorado (named because some mapmaker in the 19th century made a temporary note on his cartography material that a member of the surveying party had lost his gun and the note was mistaken for the name of the […]

Why Creeds?: Adventures in Being Spiritual, Not Religious

In Part 3 of my series for the Catholic Weekly, we encounter the problem with being “spiritual, not religious”: namely that virtually everything wrong with the modern conception of the Christian life is demonstrated by those who do so.  Because “religion” means doing the stuff we say we believe and not just gassing on about […]

Not coincidentally….

The biggest consumers of Fake News are the Christianists and true believers who constitute the legion of FOX News and Talk Radio and Right Wing Noise Machine BS-spreaders. It is the faithful of the Party of Trump who are perpetually stampeded by panics du jour that are visible from space lies and fakery. Also, not […]

Today is the 19th Anniversary of the Massacre at Columbine

…and more than 200,000 students have experienced gun violence since then. Meanwhile, the only thing that has changed about the Gun Cult’s response to such slaughter is that it has perfected the art of smearing the victims with filthy lies that they are hoaxers who either never had children massacred at their schools, or that […]

Why Creeds? The Danger of Making the Church a Club

In part two of my series at the Catholic Weekly, we take a look at the danger, to which even the apostles sometimes succumbed, of turning the Church into a club: Last time, we discussed my old Evangelical church’s attempt to create a Statement of Faith and my inadvertent discovery that we were a club, […]