The Patristic Institute Augustinianum wrote to correct me. There will be no conference of European cosmetic surgeons at the Vatican’s Patristic Institute Augustinianum. It was a hoax. And I fell for it. Mea maxima culpa. I am chagrined for having let myself be taken in. Now I really am blushing. I allowed my distaste for […]

Many are called but few are chosen. There are sayings of Christ which suggest that the Church he came to establish will always be a minority affair. (Edward Norman) Edward Norman has been on my mind recently. At seventy eight, he belongs to that generation of scholar-priests we cannot afford to lose. Not now. Better […]

The touted Year of Mercy has just begun and already I am tired of it. Not of mercy itself—never that. I am just bone-weary of the hawking of this self-conscious, arbitrary, lumbering thing. Suddenly forgiveness is on discount, a high quality item available at bargain prices for a limited time only. For twelve months, the […]

The descent of my Church into spectacle is a sorrow to behold. Nothing is more unedifying—repellent, really—than the lust of this pontificate for circus. We are under the Roman big top now, led by the Man in White and his retinue of jiggling dromedaries on the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. One menagerie follows […]