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alarms and discursions

Select a Category Advent/Christmas alarms and discursions American history appreciations and criticisms Arts and entertainment Catholic Church G.K. Chesterton Illinois J.R.R Tolkien Lent Nazi watch politics religion Uncategorized

Select a Month July 2021 June 2021 January 2021 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 August 2019 July 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018

July 2021

July 13, 2021

The bishop vs the president

My bishop is at it again. Thomas John Paprocki, bishop of the Diocese of Springfield...

January 2021

January 07, 2021

Blood cries out: the Confederate flag in the U.S. Capitol

Take a good, hard look at the photo that accompanies this article. That flag. Carried...

November 2020

November 21, 2020

Dale Ahlquist is on a mission – sadly, it’s the wrong mission

Joe Biden won. Donald Trump, who once mocked the president-elect as “sleepy Joe…hiding in his...

August 2020

August 09, 2020

Listen to the Church, not LifeSite, when casting your vote

LifeSite News, the allegedly Catholic pro-life webpage, wants you to vote Republican this fall; to...

February 2020

February 23, 2020

Fr. Frank Pavone’s Satanic Beatitudes

It is common for Christian conservatives to tout the Ten Commandments as their ideal roadmap...

February 12, 2020

Bishop Thomas John Paprocki

Meet Bishop Thomas John Paprocki, ordinary of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois. He is...

January 2020

January 18, 2020

Donald Trump in one day

In the morning, I usually see some item about President Trump that looks like it...

August 2019

August 28, 2019

The deplorable state of Catholic journalism

What follows is neither an endorsement nor a condemnation of Planned Parenthood. That’s not the...

July 2019

July 13, 2019

Archbishop Chaput, I see you

I’ll give Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput one thing: he knows how to cover his tracks....

April 2019

April 30, 2019

Repeal the Second Amendment

I published the below post last May. I am republishing it because Tuesday, April 30...

April 18, 2019

James V. Schall S.J., 1928–2019: rest in peace

One of the great joys of editing Gilbert! for fourteen years was editing James V....

March 2019

March 18, 2019

The press vs the Presidency: old war, new battles

Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign for president started as a snowball. It is...

March 05, 2019

AOC, climate change, abortion, and me

I woke up Sunday morning to the below comment on Facebook, in response to the...

March 01, 2019

Beware of unqualified people – UPDATED

Updated to add additional information I did not know existed when I published this -...

February 2019

February 12, 2019

The new ‘Tolkien’ biopic: keeping an open mind

Fox Searchlight on Tuesday released the first official trailer from its upcoming film, Tolkien, which hits...

January 2019

January 20, 2019

MAGA at the March for Life — UPDATE

NB: I have updated this post because of new information available today. --SPD Want media...

January 10, 2019

Fr. C. John McCloskey, Opus Dei, and me

In late January, 2009, I made a retreat at Opus Dei’s Shellbourne Conference Center, outside...

November 2018

November 04, 2018

A hard life; a good life

The week of October 22, as I wrote here, one of President Trump’s supporters mailed...

October 2018

October 30, 2018

We must keep rising up

America: terror nation. After last week, the week of October 22, twenty-one months into the...

September 2018

September 10, 2018

A Nasty Bit of Backstabbing

Pope Francis and President Donald Trump do not have much in common, but one characteristic...

September 05, 2018

A constitutional crisis

I’d like to say a few words about Wednesday’s anonymous op-ed in the New York...

June 2018

June 20, 2018

U.S.-Mexico border crisis: follow-up

First, Deborah Piroch of Human Life International, sends this follow-up comment to my Wednesday piece:...

June 20, 2018

Pro-life and pro-family movements: coming up short

“Thanks for contacting Human Life International,” spokeswoman Deborah M. Piroch replied when I contacted HLI...

June 08, 2018

“Who is my neighbor?”

“Lord, who is my neighbor?” This is a thornier question than it appears on the...

May 2018

May 19, 2018

Let’s politicize this

I am going to politicize a tragedy. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has gotten...

May 14, 2018

Alfie Evans, part II: parental rights and more

In Part I we discussed whether Alfie Evans’ death was murder. Here, we delve more...

May 11, 2018

Alfie Evans, part I: no, it was not murder

Quoting G.K. Chesterton is always dangerous, but especially if you quote him to serve a...