Free Republic

Edit: in an official statement today at the National Catholic Register, professional Catholic, Mark Shea has been let go from his position because while his contributions to their paper met editorial expectations, his online presence elsewhere was not charitable. How about heretical? It's still a good move and we applaud the Register for finally seeing the light after many long years. Apparently, attacking John Zmirak, and slandering him was a bridge too far. https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/mark-shea-would-lie-to-attack-pro-lifers-but-not-to-save-anne-frank-or-babi Good job, Remnant, for giving him a platform to spew.

Many supposed "theological differences" between Catholics and Evangelicals are, I think, founded in semantics rather than in substantial disagreement. For example, when I was an Evangelical one of the periodic arguments I ran across against Catholic moral theology was that the concept of mortal and venial sin is unbiblical. Sin is sin, say Evangelicals, and there's no good in trying to make out some sins as "minor." To us Evangelicals such nice distinctions smelled a great deal like rationalization and looked like an escape clause from the commandment "Be holy, for I, the Lord, am Holy." After all, James wrote,...

Deacon Greg Kandra is impressed with Mark Shea's Blog post about Perry Lorenzo, a homosexual man who lived in the Seattle area. According to Deacon Kandra, "Mark Shea tackled a tough subject with a kind of grace and compassion that couldn't help but leave me impressed." Here's what Mark Shea wrote: "One of the people I admire most in the world, who I regard as an inspiration and, very likely, as a saint was a gay guy who lived here in Seattle named Perry Lorenzo. You can get something of a sense of the man from his blog. Dunno if...

G.K. Chesterton observed that when you reject the Big Laws, you don’t get freedom and you don’t even get anarchy.  You get the small laws. This phenomenon is on display in the growing conflict between the Left’s zeal for crushing free speech and the Right Wing Noise Machine’s tendency toward Bringin’ the Crazy.  So, for instance, the problem with stories like this is that you always have to keep in mind that one of the permanent itches of the Left’s Nanny State ideology is the constant desire to crush free speech and control public discourse.  Just look at the Tyranny...

  Last week, I chronicled something of the bafflement that ensued as I was confronted with the weirdly malleable term "neo-Catholic." Judging from the combox discussion that followed, many readers share the tremendous confusion surrounding the term. Did it denote converts or those who loathe converts? Was it code for "neocon" or for non-neocon? Was it meant to denote a political or theological group? Was it a floor cleaner or a dessert topping? So many questions!   In response to my bafflement over the meaning of the term, one of my readers finally replied:   In the past, when...

The Allegorical Sense of Scripture (excerpted from Chapter 7 of Making Senses Out of Scripture) This means something. This is important. - Roy Neary, contemplating his sculpted pile of mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As we mentioned in the last chapter, one of the standing temptations of the biblical student is to oversimplify by seizing on one truth and using it to discount other, equally important truths. One such oversimplification consists of the habit some modern people have of exalting the primacy of the literal sense of Scripture into a flat denial of the possibility of...

One would think it impossible to spill any more ink about the Blessed Virgin Mary, judging from the number of Marian titles on the shelf at a local Catholic bookstore. But when popular Catholic author Mark Shea was considering entering the Church, there were no comprehensive titles where he could address his concerns as an evangelical Protestant about Catholic Marian doctrine and devotion. Twenty years later, that book was still missing from the shelves, so Shea set out to write it. The result is Mary, Mother of the Son, a three-volume apologetics tool published by Catholic Answers. Shea is...

Prof. Douglas Kmiec, Mark Shea and Thomas Peters Denver, Jan 14, 2009 / 06:02 am (CNA).- Several leading Catholic bloggers have responded to Doug Kmiec’s criticism of “right-wing Catholic bloggers” whom he characterized as “online tormenters” who personally attacked him, distorted his position, and potentially poisoned the relationship between the Holy See and the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama. Kmiec, a law professor and a prominent pro-life Catholic supporter of the pro-abortion rights President-elect Obama, had written his essay “A Tangled Web: The Election & the Blogosphere” for Commonweal Magazine. In it, he assailed the “right-wing Catholic blogosphere”...

This made me laugh really hard in while still in cube-land, prior to lab-land. I hope you enjoy this description of a couple of apparent Defenders of the Faith. I found the link from Mark Shea's site. Thanks Mark and Father Robert!!! If only all priests looked like that! Check out the link to check out the pictures. The Ugly Underside of The Catholic Neo-Con Cabal Yesterday, Mark alluded to the fact that while he was here we did, in fact, do things other than eat and drink. And that's true. We did do "other" things, things that should strike...

People don't talk much about the deuterocanon these days. The folks who do are mostly Christians, and they usually fall into two general groupings: Catholics — who usually don't know their Bibles very well and, therefore, don't know much about the deuterocanonical books, and Protestants — who may know their Bibles a bit better, though their Bibles don't have the deuterocanonical books in them anyway, so they don't know anything about them either. With the stage thus set for informed ecumenical dialogue, it's no wonder most people think the deuterocanon is some sort of particle weapon recently perfected by...