The Catholic Frequency

A friend called the host a barbarian, then defended Western colonization of the New World as the spread of the Gospel. Catholics are trained to apologize first. The Great Commission is not a guilt pamphlet. Human sacrifice in the Aztec world was real, and so were Spanish sins. If the Gospel is true, bringing it west was mercy.

Time feels faster as we age because wonder thinned out. Chesterton: we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The cure is to become capable of wonder again.

George Bernard Shaw hated the idea of forming a child's mind. Chesterton's answer: then hang yourself, because someone is forming them anyway. There is no third job called leaving the soul alone.

Fulton Sheen in 1931: America is not drowning in bigots. It is overrun with the broadminded. Tolerate persons. Never error.

When a short man in a scarlet cloak stepped onto Ponte Sant’Angelo, Rome already knew someone was going to die. Mastro Titta was the pope’s executioner. The Church never taught that the innocent may be killed. She did teach that a lawful ruler may punish the guilty.

Lewis told librarians in 1952 that a far more serious attack on the fairy tale comes from those who do not wish children to be frightened. He had night terrors as a boy. Fairy tales did not invent them. Sanding the story does not protect the child.

Chesterton said the baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. Fairy tales do not invent bogey. They send Saint George. We keep the dragon and take the knight.

Psalm 23 is the psalm everybody thinks they know. David wrote it as a shepherd: green pastures in a dry country, still water you have to make, a rod against the wolf and a crook around a sheep's leg. Then Christ said He is that Shepherd, and He stayed in the valley.

Andrew Tate looks strong in a world of weak men. That is why boys hear him. He is not the disease. He is a symptom of a culture that unmade fatherhood, discipline, and the Cross.

Dante sews the envious shut on the second terrace of Purgatory. Envy is sadness at another person’s good. We call it fairness. Charity rejoices.