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When my father lay dying, I remember that one of the losses I began to grieve was that he was the keeper of so many family stories. He was the one who could look at an old family photograph, identify all the people, and tell you something about each one. As I saw him lying there, no longer able to talk much, I thought of all the memories stored up in his mind, all the stories, all the people he once knew and had spoken of so vividly. And it was not just the family stories he held; he was also a great historian and a great wellspring of the classics. He had read all of the “Great Books,” all of Shakespeare, all of Sacred Scripture, and so many other worthy writings. And he had memorized many lengthy quotes from each. Such an encyclopedic mind! He was full of vivid thoughts and vivid memorie...

Jordan Peterson is recovering from a severe addiction to benzodiazepine tranquilizers and was recently near death in an induced coma, his daughter Mikhaila said. He is being treated at a clinic in Russia after being repeatedly misdiagnosed at several hospitals in North America, she said. The University of Toronto psychologist who became an intellectual hero to a global audience by aligning self-help theory with anti-progressive politics was first prescribed the medication a few years ago to treat anxiety after what Mikhaila described as an autoimmune reaction to food. His physical dependence on it became apparent to his family last April, when his wife Tammy was diagnosed with cancer. The last year, which saw him retreat from public life after swiftly becoming one of the most famous author...

By Tom Hoopes, February 6, 2020 “You are accountable not only for your own life but also for that of the entire world.” That is how St. John Christendom sums up what Jesus says in the Gospel for the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, Year A. Jesus calls Christians “the salt of the earth,” and “the light of the world” — showing what he respects and what he expects. Take salt, first. Food feels tasteless without it, but eating salt alone is unpleasant. Thus, as St. John Chrysostom puts it, “It is not for [a Christian] then to flatter and deal smoothly with men, but, on the contrary, to be rough and biting as salt is.” That’s why, “If salt loses its taste,” says Jesus, “it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” And in fact we see this all around us. If eve...

A type of black fungus that eats radiation was discovered inside the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. In 1991, the strange fungus was found growing up the walls of the reactor, which baffled scientists due to the extreme, radiation-heavy environment. Researchers eventually realized that not only was the fungi impervious to the deadly radiation, it seemed to be attracted to it. A decade later, researchers tested some of the fungi and determined that it had a large amount of the pigment melanin — which is also found, among other places, in the skin of humans. INCREDIBLE NASA VIDEO SHOWS WHAT EARTH WOULD LOOK LIKE IF OCEANS DISAPPEARED Ruined reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in in 2016 (iStock) SKELETON UNEARTHED ON TINY ISLAND MAY BE 18TH-CENTURY ROYAL NAVY SAILOR...

Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, Israel The Readings for this Sunday remind me of the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, which I’ve had the privilege of visiting a couple of times.  This beautiful church is built on a hillside and is easily visible from much of the modern city of Nazareth.  The architect designed the dome of the basilica to look like a lighthouse, symbolizing the light of Christ going out to all Nazareth and the rest of the Galilee region, in keeping with the theme of last week’s Gospel, “Those walking in darkness have seen a great light.” The theme of light continues in this Sunday’s Readings, in which Jesus calls the people of God, the Church, to be a kind of lighthouse or beacon calling the whole world to the safe harbor with God. 1. The First ...

One benefit of doing academic work in accounting ethics, as I have done, is that one gets a sense of the high standards of truthfulness that public companies must meet in their disclosures. I want to take those high standards and apply them to what theologian David Bentley Hart has written about Basil the Great. Theologians, of course, should be held to even higher standards, because what theologians teach affects people’s lives and souls. But the public company standard suffices to make the point. Let’s examine what Hart says in his recent book, That All Shall Be Saved, as if it were a public company disclosure: The great fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea (c. 329-379) once observed that, in his time, a large majority of his fellow Christians (at least, in the Greek-speaking E...

A correspondent writes: I am wondering, how do Catholics regard textual criticism? What is the Catholic position on the canonicity of various New Testament passages like the Pericope Adulterae, the Comma Johanneum, and the Longer Ending of Mark, for example? What Textual Criticism Is For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, textual criticism involves the study of how texts change over time—how bits get added, deleted, or altered. Some variation in texts was inevitable before the invention of the printing press, since all texts were hand-copied and scribes sometimes made mistakes. Accidental textual variations even occur now that we have the printing press, though not as much. Also, some textual variations are intentional. This happens on both the smaller level—as when a scribe or a p...

The sordid life of Jeffrey Epstein serves to highlight the decadence of the deplorable epoch in which we find ourselves, as do the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. The web of vice and viciousness that he had spun was widespread, serving to entrap not only underage girls but also the rich and famous who preyed upon them. Using the allure of underage sex to lure his wealthy associates into his web, Epstein secretly filmed them in the act of sexually abusing minors, thereby turning his “associates” into his blackmail victims. Epstein seems to have believed that the powerful people whom he’d entrapped in his “insurance policy” would have a vested interest in keeping him safe from the law, a strategy which worked for a while. In 2008, Epstein was convicted in Florida of sexually ...

By Phil Lawler ( bio – articles – email ) | Feb 04, 2020 In case you missed the announcement, despite Brexit the Catholic bishops of the United Kingdom will continue to participate in COMECE. COMECE, in case you’ve forgotten (or never knew) is the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union. So the bishops of the UK—which is not a member of the EU—will remain active in an umbrella organization for bishops of countries in the EU. There are precedents for this, actually. For example, the bishops of Northern Ireland are members of the Irish Bishops’ Conference, although Northern Ireland is politically separate from Ireland. This odd sort of arrangement usually reflects a tacit belief among Catholics (or at least among Catholic bishops) that the political boundarie...

A terrible thing happened recently.  A young priest, almost certainly reacting badly to medication, committed suicide.  Fr. Evan Harkins, of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph, had been on medication for an ailment.  It seems to have affected him in a profoundly negative way. I know I can count on you readers to pray for him and for his family and friends. There is a lesson that comes from this.   Medications can do really strange things to your mind. In the wake of Fr. Harkins’ death, the Abbess of Gower – you will remember the great consecration of the Abbey and Abbess – sent out a letter which described the bad experience of some of the sisters who had some medication.  HERE  She writes about how medications for other things induced in her sisters...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Jan 28, 2020 The ways of God in the formation of saints are indeed mysterious. This was impressed upon me again by an article on Rose Hawthorne by Patricia Snow in the January issue of First Things. Under the title Hawthorne’s Daughter, Snow explores what she calls the “shadow” hanging over Rose Hawthorne’s cause for canonization. That shadow is the set of circumstances under which she left her husband, George, who had converted to Catholicism with Rose in 1891. (Perhaps most readers already know that Rose was the daughter of the great American novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne.) In time, Rose felt a strong call to serve the poor who were suffering from cancer. Her only child had died at the age of five and, after a period of depressio...

Here is a ZENIT translation of the address Pope Francis gave today, before and after praying the midday Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square. * * * Before the Angelus:  Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning! Today we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, when the newborn Jesus was presented in the Temple by the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph. Observed on this date also is the World Day of Consecrated Life, which recalls the treasure in the Church of those that follow the Lord closely, professing the evangelical counsels. The Gospel (Cf. Luke 2:22-40) recounts that forty days after His birth, Jesus’ parents took Him to Jerusalem to consecrate Him to God, as prescribed by the Jewish Law. And, while describing a rite provided by the tradition, this episode cal...