Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 68

Film Noir… et Blanc: Morality at the Movies:

My article this week at Imaginative Conservative is a discussion of morality in movies–using two examples of film noir to show how good and evil can be treated in filmic storytelling. The smart thing about film noir is that we identify with an ordinary good character who is drawn into evil. We are thrilled as we share his [Read More...]

Hell. Will Lots of People Go There?

Yesterday’s post on universalism deserves a follow up. If there is such a place as hell, and we are assured by the gospel and by common sense that there is, who will go there and why? Does God send people to suffer for all eternity in hell? Why would he do that if he is [Read More...]

Universalism: Christianity’s Killer

“Catholic” means “universal” but “Catholicism” does not mean “Universalism”. Universalism is the false doctrine that everybody will be saved. This is a sentimental belief held by people who are so cushioned from the realities of life that they don’t know anybody who deserves hell and they think God is just as nice and polite as [Read More...]

Is Mercy is Always Mushy?

  My article for Aleteia this week considers the matter of mercy. Too often mercy is no more than soft sentimentality. It’s like marshmallows: soft, fluffy, sweet and lacking in nutrition. “The mushy bits” were the soft, sweet, sentimental parts of the story. Those were the bits for the girls and the boys felt obliged [Read More...]

Abortion Leads to War

It was Mother Teresa who said, I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is ‘Abortion’, because it is a war against the child… A direct killing of the innocent child, ‘Murder’ by the mother herself… And if we can accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other [Read More...]

Earth is Moving for New Our Lady of the Rosary Church

Did you help by donating to the campaign I ran last Fall to help build our new church? Thanks to you we have now had the ground breaking ceremony and the earth movers have begun their work. Joseph Pronechen has written a great article about the new church at National Catholic Register here. Today they [Read More...]

Virginia Gun Violence: Symptom of Society’s Sickness

From what we know so far a “disgruntled employee” Bryce Williams walks up and shoots dead twenty four year old Alison Parker and twenty seven year old Adam Ward. This continues a stream of mindless violence in our society that seems to be surging. Social engineers will say, “People respond like this because they’re poor. [Read More...]

Ten Commandments for Protestants Considering Catholicism

Working in the Bible Belt we Catholics often come across Protestants who are being led to the Catholic Church. However, their path seems to be littered with land mines. There seem to be so many obstacles and one of the things which a Catholic finds curious is how the enquiring Protestant usually doesn’t have a [Read More...]

Did Archbishop Cupich Really Call for “Mercy for Nontraditional Families”?

I wrote a hastily and ill  informed blog post about Archbishop Cupich yesterday in the midst of my travels back from Arizona. I took the post down and stopped to do what I should have done first, and that  is to read not just the headlines but the article, and not just the article, but the [Read More...]

Women Priests and Married Priests: What’s the Difference?

In many of the discussions about women’s ordination in the Catholic Church the question is linked to the idea of married priests. Catholic progressives almost invariably link the two issues. “Priests should be allowed to marry and women should be ordained as priests.” It’s understandable that people with a shallow grasp of their faith would [Read More...]