Pope Francis Wants to Humanize the Church, Instead of Helping Sinners Repent, Part 2
How humanism and therapy replaced sin and forgiveness For Part 1 of this essay, click here. Philip Rieff’s 1966 book The Triumph of the Therapeutic examined how the therapeutic mentality had swept through secular culture. What was less noted at the time was that the...
Pope Francis Wants to Humanize the Church Instead of Helping Sinners Repent, Part 1
How pop psychology replaced biblical theology. Among the many “outrages” that led to the excommunication of theologically conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was his claim that a coup d’etat had taken place in the Catholic Church. When we hear the word “coup”...
Archbishop Viganò and the Other ‘Rigged’ Election
The excommunication of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for “his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff” presents us with an opportunity to revisit Viganò’s claim that the pope is not valid. Among the many reasons Viganò offers for saying so is the...
Upside-Down Land
What happens when a civilization loses all of its reference points? I came across two stories recently that seem to be connected—if you look at them in the right way. By coincidence, the subject of the first story is…looking at things in the right way. A German...
What the Mexican War of the 1850s Can Teach Us Today About the Israeli-Hamas Conflict
In a recent article, Dennis Prager pointed out that although Israel’s claim to its land is as solid as any other country’s to their respective territories, anti-Zionists still deny that Israel’s claim is legitimate — and as Prager points out, “They don’t say this...
Campus Protestors Need to Do Some Homework
Recently, I was watching Fox News’s coverage of the campus protests when a slightly surreal scene appeared on the screen. About 35 Muslims were gathered somewhere on a campus lawn—the men in front and the women in the back — reciting evening prayers. The women were...
If Our Ancestors Were So Smart, How Come They’re Dead?
The tendency toward what C.S. Lewis termed "chronological snobbery" is probably more pronounced in our own age than at any time in history. Much has been made of the fact that an Arizona law that prohibits abortion was first enacted in 1864. In attacking it, both the...
Body and Soul
The Trouble with being Spiritual There’s nothing wrong with being spiritual, but there is something wrong with being solely spiritual since we are created as a combination of body and spirit. Nevertheless, Christians throughout history have been tempted to turn the...
Catholics and Protestants Slide Together into Gnostic Private Cults
The second of a two-part series. Until recently, Protestants were more likely than Catholics to succumb to the Gnostic temptation I described in a recent column. In a 2008 article for Modern Reformation, Philip J. Lee described how both Mainline and “born again”...
The Secret Religion of Our Elites Which Our Own Kids Are Joining: Gnosticism
Part 1 of a two-part series A 2023 Gallup poll found that the percentage of Americans who identify as spiritual rather than religious has increased. And among Democrats, more people now describe themselves as spiritual (41%) than as religious (37%). However, according...
