Cobra at Large

It takes an effort of imagination to realize that we are actually fragile living creatures surrounded by dangers and discomforts, dependent upon food and shelter for our survival.

This is how I prefer to think of my nation: a cutting of the English oak, transplanted across the sea and set in the wild, vast soil of the new continent, and fed with the added spores  of all other nations in their turn, until it became something vast and quite unique in human history.

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Most men don't want mercy so much as they want a mission. If the Church wishes to attract men back to the faith, she should emphasize the latter at least as much as the former.

Saint Joseph the Worker stands as an eternal reminder that it is in our daily duties and responsibilities, in caring for those under our care, and not in grand schemes of large-scale reform that we render service to God.

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As we celebrate St. George, martyr and warrior for Christ, we ought to seek his intercession for the battles ahead.

Coming in the midst of the Easter season, the Rogation Days are an ancient custom wherein the Church offers prayer and penance for protection from natural disasters and blessings on the crops. They are an excellent opportunity to recall our dependence on the natural world and to teach respect for her.

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Though an atheist, the great horror writer H.P. Lovecraft has much to offer the Catholic reader, most significantly a clear-eyed view of what a Godless universe would actually mean.

That God can never deceive or be deceive has certain consequences, and both the saving work of Christ and the threat of damnation stem from this supreme honesty.

"For all the original's surface-level simplicity and unpretentiousness, it is clearly the product of higher, more assured culture than our own; one that had a far greater sense of its own identity, values, and ideals, that was unafraid to take risks or to grapple with the thorny problems of life."

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