Hugh Hefner Part II
My last blog post called How Many Will Be Saved? had a lot of shares but also a lot of critique. This makes for good Catholic dialogue. I want to respond in a short blog post to a few objections. St. Augustine wrote: "There are two things that kill the soul: Despair and false hope.”—St. Augustine, Sermo 87.8. Another word for “false hope” is presumption. The reason I included in my blog post all the saints’ quotes on hell was not to judge Hugh Hefner but to show how many American Catholics live in presumption of last-minute imperfect contrition. So, if someone were to read those saints’ quotes about hell [...]
How Many Will Be Saved?
"And a certain man said to him: 'Lord, are they few that are saved?' But He said to them: 'Strive to enter by the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able.'"—Luke 13:23-24. Hugh Hefner died today, and even bloggers like Fr. Dwight Longenecker at patheos are promoting a very different attitude towards Hefner than the tradition of the Catholic Church. I don't know where Hefner is any more than Fr. Longenecker, and I'm not saying Fr. Longenecker has a theology that is wrong, but his attitude towards heaven and hell is very, very different from that of Jesus Christ in the [...]
Leave Fr. James Martin Alone!
For the few of you who actually live human lives without social media, and don't know who Fr. James Martin SJ is, here you go: Fr. Martin is a highly influential Jesuit Catholic priest who is editor at large of America Magazine, located just off Columbus circle and Central Park in Manhattan. On 12 April 2017, Fr. Martin was also promoted as a consultor to the Vatican's Secretariat for Communications. Now, I rarely name people by name in my blog posts, but this priest has over half a million Facebook followers. Fr. Martin has a wide footprint in the social justice world, but the most controversial of his teachings is [...]
What Muslim Invaders Could Not Accomplish
I am rarely shocked by what I see in the media, but this one got me: https://youtu.be/npj5MqcNPJU This 60 second video is Dutch children learning to pray to Allah in a small mosque in the Netherlands. So, the full title of this blog post will be “What Muslim invaders could not do against Europe, Europe did to herself.” But it is actually a hopeful blog post with a strong resolution. I want to get a little into the world of Divine Providence to ask why God would allow this. I don’t know the mind of God, but I think I may have a decent answer. Let’s consider that the only [...]
The Conversion of Gloria Polo
On the 5th of May 1995, Gloria Polo, a dentist and mother, was struck by lightning just outside the University of Bogotá, Columbia. She died shortly afterwards in the trauma unit. She went before God and her sentence was hell. God gave her another chance, and this is the account she has given to millions of South Americans with the approbation of the South American Bishops. You will see while reading this rather-long but worthwhile blogpost why she was given another chance by God. Although not a word of this blog post is mine, it is the most important blog post I have ever produced. This is Gloria Polo’s conversion [...]
A Priest’s Thoughts on Cyberbullying
This subtitle is The 7 Hidden Dangers of Smartphones for Teens. The first of these seven is indeed cyberbullying. Simply read the first one if you were lured-in by the title of this blog post. Recently, I was at a large family’s home. The kids were all out back blowing bubbles. The older kids, being about 10 years old, twirled foot-long wands out of their dish soap to create bubbles about six inches in diameter. The youngest brother who was playing bubbles with them was only five years old. He simply couldn’t help himself from popping his older sisters' bubbles. I told him: "Just make your own." He looked at me with [...]
The Image of God in the Human Face
St. Louis De Montfort teaches that Lucifer and all the angels were given a preview that one day, a creature would contain more glory than the angels. That creature is the Blessed Virgin Mary. So infuriated was Satan that a creature would be higher than him, that Lucifer (now Satan) led a third of the angels to rebel against God. St. Michael ejected the rebel spirits to the earth. So, eons later, Satan went to pursue Mary and her child: "And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.”—Apocalypse 12:13 Both before and [...]
10 Years After Summorum Pontificum
Ten years ago this week, Pope Benedict XVi issued an apostolic letter called Summorum Pontificum that decreed that all Roman Catholic priests could offer "the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite," also known as "the Traditional Latin Mass" that preceded Vatican II. In fact, Pope John Paul II had encouraged bishops to allow their priests to do this, but Pope Benedict went a step further in saying that priests did not need permission from their bishop to do the old Mass in private. Restrictions were to be loosened for this Mass offered in public, too. The Roman Catholic priest was also given permission to give the old absolution in Latin [...]
The Over-Intellectualization of the Catholic Faith
I have only been a priest for seven years. About halfway through that period, I switched from the Novus Ordo to the Traditional Latin Mass and sacraments. It was also during this time that I stopped saying a line that I was famous for in seminary: “We do not have a crisis of sacraments. We have a crisis of catechesis.” I used to say this because I knew how many people received Holy Communion in this country without knowing Who they were receiving. In fact, I put my money where my mouth was: As a young priest, I taught a Eucharistic class just off-campus of Colorado State University, a school [...]
The Link Between Abortion and Trafficking
It is often believed that those who spend their time fighting abortion are of a different ilk than those who fight child sex-slavery. Indeed, all those seeking justice usually have time for only one area of total-expertise, but my blog today will attempt to show that both child-sex slavery and abortion feed each other in a vicious cycle. We must become abolitionists for both of these attacks on children. Indeed, besides the obvious link that slavery and abortion both harm innocent children, there are several important reasons why sex-slavery will continue to grow within the abortion and contraception empire. 1) The disproportionate number of unborn girls killed in China has [...]