Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 42

The Mysterious Case of Scalia’s Priest

I have to confess, I am fond of conspiracy theories. I like to ponder who really killed JFK. Why was the Bush clan so close to the Hinckley family whose son tried to assassinate Reagan when Bush Sr was VP? Is Jimmy Carter really one of the Kennedy boys and is Bill Clinton really a Rockefeller? [Read More...]

Mercy is Free….But It Ain’t Cheap

Go here to read my article at National Catholic Register on the price of mercy. I can remember an old gospel preacher saying, “Mercy is free, but it ain’t cheap.” Like so many of the old-timers, he understood God’s unlimited, unmerited and unconditional mercy, but he also understood that it comes at a price. The [Read More...]

An Unholy Trinity: The Three Great Temptations

Jesus’ battle in the wilderness is the battle with the three great temptations: the flesh, the world and the devil. The first is the temptation of the flesh. Jesus is fasting in the great tradition of forty days and nights. The great flood was forty days. Moses on Sinai fasted forty days. Elijah on the [Read More...]

Virtue and Sleaze in Politics

My latest article for Aleteia discusses the need for personal virtue in public life. What is most disturbing is not that some politicians are crooked, scheming, corrupt and wicked but that so many of the electorate don’t seem to care. When issues of personal integrity are raised, the people shrug. When candidates are challenged on [Read More...]

The Most Revealing Trump Moment…

…at Saturday’s debate I saw the most horrible Trump moment. It was not his vulgarity, his coarse language, his sexist attacks, or his crude aggressive name calling. It was not his lies, mendacity, manipulation and innate dishonesty. It was not his fake tan, fake teeth, fake hair and fake face. It was not his history [Read More...]

Is Health Care a Pro Life Issue?

There are some Catholic  bloggers and commentators saying that it is okay to vote for Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton because, even though they are pro abortion, they are “pro life” on other issues. Health care is a “life” issue, they argue. A living wage is a “life” issue. Good treatment of immigrants is a “life” [Read More...]

Our Presidents and Ozymandias

This article from Smithsonian informs you about an extraordinary place in Virginia where huge busts of American presidents stand broken and decaying in a farmer’s field. The whole thing was inspired by Mt Rushmore (see above). You have to go to the article to see the amazing pictures. The story is that of a failed [Read More...]

T.S.Eliot’s Long Lent

My essay for The Imaginative Conservative this week considers Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday and looks at his penitential life. Ash Wednesday was composed at the climax of Eliot’s disastrous relationship with Vivienne, and it clearly indicates that with his religious conversion he had also decided to embark on a new life which would be free of Vivienne. Ash Wednesday echoes [Read More...]

Catholics, Evangelicals and Politics in Greenville

Embed from Getty Images Like the Nazgul descending on Middle Earth, the six remaining Republican candidates are here in the state of South Carolina. Yesterday some of them were at a Family Forum at my alma mater Bob Jones University–just down the road from our home. Tonight their debate comes from the Peace Center–our downtown [Read More...]

Lent Series from the Suburban Hermit

Follow my daily (I hope) short readings from Thomas Merton’s The Living Bread over at my Suburban Hermit blog The short reading from Merton’s book will  be followed by a few of my thoughts on his work. Go here to read today’s entry. A second post at Suburban Hermit asks What is True Contrition?