An Open Letter to Ted Cruz: Stop Your Calumny Against Catholics!

I follow a writer on Substack, Radical Fidelity, whose posts are always informative and interesting. Recently Ted Cruz promoted a vicious anti-Catholic diatribe by a woman who calls herself Insurrection Barbie. I imagine she channels this babe:

I started to read her screed and decided it wasn't worth the time. Her accusations completely miss the target for the most part. It's like she's aiming her bow at the moon in the middle of the night calling it the sun. But hey, what can you expect from somebody who takes a brainless bimbo for her moniker?

There are NO HOMEOWNERS in the United States

Will this be the only home you can afford? Move over, chickens!

Do you think of yourself as a homeowner because you bought a house? When you first  purchased a home, you probably thought, "Well, the bank and I own it until I pay off the mortgage in 20 or 30 years." Did you celebrate when you "paid it off?"

Think again. Even after you "pay off" the mortgage, you are a renter. It doesn't matter how long you've lived in your home or whether you've reached the end of the 30 year mortgage; you are a renter. The real homeowner is the government. You'll find out pretty quickly if you don't pay the PROPERTY TAXES who owns your house. The government does. 

Guest Post: THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME: THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS

 by James M. Thunder  

published in The Narthex, blog of New Oxford Review, in four parts Feb. 24, March 8, 11 and 13
Part 1: Notre Dame: The Good News & the Bad News | New Oxford Review

Folks, the good news out of Notre Dame is shockingly good. The bad news out of Notre Dame is shockingly bad. I’ll start with the bad.

On January 8, 2026, Notre Dame issued a press release announcing that a professor, Susan Ostermann, was being appointed, effective July 1, as director of the Liu Institute. Because of her public and persistent pro-abortion views, this appointment has been met with objections by:

How Many Young People Can Afford Homes? Are We Seeing the Death of the American Dream?

I was talking to my sister-in-law the other day about the financial situation of our children and grandchildren. Today many families need two jobs just to survive. She described how thankful she was that she was raising her children when it was possible to be a stay-at-home mom. The reality of the problem hit home as I was reading an article in Chronicles by Ryan Neuhaus, America's Affordability Crisis. It's sad and sobering:

We have built a country in which a young person can do well in school, take on debt to get a degree, work full-time, delay gratification, even postpone marriage, and still fail to secure a middle-class life. That kind of change doesn’t just happen. It’s a reflection of how the country has been governed for decades, and the truth beneath all the charts and numbers being thrown around today is that the affordability crisis is a governing crisis: a failure to use power to deliver outcomes that make ordinary life better.

Beauty Touches the Heart!

Celebrating a pontifical high Mass in Croatia, Archbishop Cordileone said this in a talk before the liturgy:

Five R's for Lent -- Remember, Reflect, Repent, Return, Rejoice

Several years ago I did a post on five R words that I kept coming across in my spiritual reading. Sometimes things that repeat become like a hymn that buries itself in your soul like a precious memory. That's the case with these R words for me. So I'm repeating the post with some changes and will be watching for these words every day when I pray the Mass.

The first is remember and we hear it from the very first day of Lent in the Ash Wednesday admonition. "Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." A sobering thought upon which we do well to reflect again and again. We need to remember everything God has done for us from the beginning of creation. We also need to remember how we have sinned against him which gives us the next words -- reflect and repent.  

How's Your Blood Pressure? Lower it from the Knees!

Reading the headlines these days is enough to send your blood pressure through the roof. The war in Iran is showing signs, not of de-escalation, but a strategy of horizontal escalation that gives a weaker power the ability to respond to a stronger power. [See Why Escalation Favors Iran.] Reading about it definitely gives one pause about the wisdom of starting the fight. Did we learn anything from Vietnam? And now Hezbollah has joined Iran with coordinated, simultaneous missile attacks.

Lent and the Number 40

I keep coming across the number 40 this Lent. Today was another reminder. It's the feast of the 40 martyrs of Sebaste. Since I hate the winter cold, this story strikes me particularly hard. I think of the poor soul who failed to persevere and died in the warm bath. Is he in an even hotter place now? It's hard to imagine that, under such torture, a person gives full consent of the will to the evil act. I'm praying for him today. I hope he is in the company of his fellow soldiers today glorifying God.

A Saint for Homemakers: St. Frances of Rome, Pray for Us!

Today is the feast of St. Frances of Rome who lived during the Great Western Schism (1378-1417) when there were two competing clerics claiming to be pope. Frances was a wife and mother, married at thirteen to a good man who never tried to curb her austerities and service to the poor. She was charming and kind and well loved, especially by the poor.

One of the amazing things about St. Frances were her visions and mystical experiences.  They included being escorted through hell and seeing the punishments inflicted on those who broke the commandments. 

The Bible tells us that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and reading her words and the descriptions of her visions will certainly immerse you in the fear of the Lord! It's better to serve God out of great love for Him than out of fear, of course, but often that begins with recognizing his power and judgment of sin. And don't we acknowledge that when we pray the act of contrition?

Fake and Fatal Empathy -- The Left Doesn't Care! about Anybody!

Innocent people are being killed because authorities won't support law enforcement. These videos peg the disaster we are facing both in Virginia and in the country. The Democrats in the executive and legislative branches hate us and they don't even care about their own supporters! The activists they trigger are deliberately put in harms way. And the Americans raped and killed by illegals get a shrug. If they didn't hate us, they wouldn't be facilitating murderers and rapists attacking us. Women and children are the ones most vulnerable to the evil. Face the facts. No comment from the Lieutenant Governor on Stephanie Minter's murder, no message of consolation to her family. The governor signing sanctuary legislation hours after Minter's heinous murder. These people are "far left lunatics." And, yes, they hate us.