World Religions Part II: The Exclusive, All-Embracing Cross
Because this blog post will inevitably raise the question "Who can be saved?" I would like to give the two bookends within which all Catholic orthodox answers must fall. One the one end, Pope Pius IX wrote, "By Faith it is to be firmly held that outside the Apostolic Roman Church none can achieve salvation. This is the only ark of salvation. He who does not enter into it, will perish in the flood. Nevertheless equally certainly it is to be held that those who suffer from invincible ignorance of the true religion, are not, for this reason, guilty in the eyes of the Lord." (Denzinger 1647, Ott 312.) Invincible ignorance means a person is ignorant of Christ and never had the chance to learn about Christ. There is a small chance an ignorant pagan could be saved if he [...]
RomeCast 1
In today's first RomeCast podcast, we introduce our Tuesday co-host, Andromeda. She tells her family story and a little of her conversion. We then jump into the news. Both of us coincidentally chose news stories about secularists harassing pro-lifers in both Europe and the United States, the latter being the civil rights attorney Brian Sims publicly harassing children. That video is embedded below (not on any podcast app) but rather on my blog via Twitter. (We will definitely be shorter in the future, but this intro of Andromeda is well worth a first good, long RomeCast.) https://twitter.com/LilaGraceRose/status/1125517225757007872
Glad Trad 5: The Alexander House
This podcast is about a couple whose conversion led to a vasectomy-reversal which led to a marriage-restoration ranch in Texas that has saved 4,500 couples from divorce.
Harry Potter’s Effects on Children
I recently put up a FB post about JK Rowling's fictional character Cassandra Vablatsky. Vablatsky is the fictional character who wrote the textbook Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as mentioned in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Even Harry Potter's "fandom" website admits that Vablatsky was named after famous Russian Satanist, Helena Blavatsky. Under this FB post, I had 223 comments before publication of this blog post. One thing I later remarked is that it would be harder to pry from the hands of a Colorado teen his or her pot than Harry Potter novels! Such a disproportionate response shows some preternatural involvement. But what proves the preternatural (diabolical) side of Harry Potter is found in the words of modern-day exorcists. Fr. Ripperger, founder of a congregation of exorcists, spoke on this topic of exorcists and Harry Potter a few [...]
World Religions Part I: Three Options
CS Lewis once wrote, “Religion is man’s search for God, but Christianity is God’s search for man.” Whereas Divine Revelation only allows for one true religion, I believe that all of the current religions of the world can be boiled down to only three sustainable philosophies. Or, at least I believe that only three world philosophies could possibly coordinate to the desires of a post-modern man. Epicureanism is to live for pleasure, but the original Greek promoter of hedonism, Epicurus (4th century BC), was more like an LA pot-smoker than a fast-paced NYC coke addict (something we usually think of when we think of the word “hedonism.”) This is because Epicurus taught that living for hard-core pleasure actually made the desires of the human person go haywire. Indeed, it’s not a very pleasurable life to have your desires turn into [...]
RomeCast: Introduction
RomeCast is a new podcast series on Padre Peregrino that will include an analysis of Catholic and global news with my two new co-hosts every Tuesday and Thursday. Please have a listen to this 10 minute intro episode!
Glad Trad 4.2: Tim Gordon on a Catholic Community
In this podcast, Tim Gordon and I discuss the two directions Catholic community in America could take via Clint Eastwood’s movie “Gran Torino," namely love of society or love of the individual.
Glad Trad 4.1: Tim Gordon on a Catholic Republic
In this podcast, Tim Gordon discusses where politics meets religion in his new book, “Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome.” Gordon argues that “America is a republic wired Catholic, labeled Protestant and is currently functioning as a secular.”
Pro Divine Mercy From a Rad-Trad
Most "EWTN Catholics” (for lack of a better term) might be surprised to find that in the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) world, there is sharp divide down the middle between those who believe that the private revelations of Sr. Faustina Kowalska are authentic, versus those who do not. I am referring to the Divine Mercy Diary, a book of private revelation written by a Polish nun in the 1930s. A modern EWTN Catholic could, in an overly-facile manner, condemn traditionalists who are wary of the Divine Mercy message for just being “Jansenist” or “disobedient.” This would be too easy and not fair. Indeed, one must realize that many traditionalists have good reason to doubt what has come out of the human element of the Church since Sr. Lucia of Fatima explained that a “diabolical disorientation” that would infect a [...]
Why You Should Say No to Being an Organ-Donor
Edit: USA Today wrote a very important article following my blog post called Death by Donation: Euthanizing Patients for Organs. Although I am a Catholic priest, I am also an ex-paramedic and I graduated pre-health from Boston College. I am writing this blog post “Why you should say no to organ donation on your driver’s license” as a former paramedic, not as a priest. In other words, this blog post will be practical medical advice for all readers Catholic or non-Catholic. There will be no overt Catholic bioethics below, except these two sentences: The Catholic Church has no problem with organ donation per-se. The problem is that certain organs are always cut out of living people, effecting a homicide for "good reasons." Although a liver or a cornea could be harvested from a cadaver for organ donation from a dead [...]