Things to Read

Ripperger, Exorcism, et al., Part 2

Catholic televangelism is not what it was when Fulton Sheen pioneered it. In the following clip from a 2023 segment of the Chris Stefanick Show, Ripperger appears authoritative, reasonable, and self-assured. It is the demeanor of a tenured prof holding forth in the faculty lounge. “Demons understand human psychology the same way St. Thomas does,” the prof intones. That ought to have been a howler. But no. Chris Stefanick is dazzled at Ripperger’s facile equivalence between Thomistic theology and “cutting edge psychology”—neither of which he demonstrates any acquaintance with. Continue Reading
Chad Ripperger: Cautionary Notes

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a publicity-conscious demonologist everything stinks of sulphur. Fr. Chad Ripperger is a celebrity exorcist with a vigorous following in certain Catholic circles. His disapproval of the Harry Potter series is well known among fellow traditionalists. He deems Harry Potter a wizard of dark magic, a caster of real spells and, consequently, a baneful influence. It is an odd stance for a man with a bent for soft-core spell casting himself. Prior to the 2020 election, Ripperger recommended two prayers for “breaking oppression and sending evil back before the election is called.”  Continue Reading
revival poster

There is no political cure for an ailing culture. Remedy either arises from within or the patient succumbs to the false panaceas of social justice, sustainability, environmentalism—the day’s menu of toxic enthusiasms. Yet at the same time, we are called to live our religious convictions in the face of political constraints and counterfeit pieties of the age—and place—in which we find ourselves. What to do? An affiliation of ministers in New York State’s Hudson Valley are doing what American evangelicals have done successfully twice before in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Continue Reading
303 Creative And One Notable Brief

The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is all the more splendid given the firepower aimed against Lorie Smith, owner of 303 Creative LLC. A heavily armed battery of adversaries filed amicus curiae briefs in support of Elenis. Most of these had a stake in state-enforced assent to homosexuality. Some were hostile to religious influence on the public square. Leading the offensive was the Department of Justice. The majority opinion in 303 Creative restated particular arguments applied in the 2018 case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Continue Reading
Relics: Lives and Legends

Fra Filippo’s resplendent Madonna della Cintola, in the previous post, sent me to a favorite passage in The Waning of the Middle Ages. Johan Huizinga‘s portrait of the linchpins of the medieval world—the ideas that bound together religion, art, and literature—has a few things to say about relics. The significance of them to the culture that embraced them is an integral part of medieval civilization.
The distinctly corporeal conception of the saints was accentuated by the veneration of their relics, not only permitted by the Church but forming an integral part of religion.
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