Cry the Beloved Country

By Charlie Johnston One of the things that this Corona Virus business has illuminated, but is rarely commented on, is that there are reasonable precautions we could have and should have been taking all along to defend vulnerable populations from the ravages of ordinary flu seasons. In the aftermath of all of this, I seriously […]

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A Great Battle

By Charlie Johnston Our announcement Wednesday on the site concerning Fr. Michel Rodrigue prompted Mark Mallett to contact me with a cry of foul. Beckita had talked with me several days before publishing the announcement and I concurred with her judgment. Mark copied me on a note he sent to a reader who was concerned […]

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Corona Madness

(I have posted less these last few weeks than normal. When confronted with major new phenomena, I like to examine and ponder minutely. It is perhaps a bit of vanity that I want what I write to hold up over time, so knowing that I will get some things wrong, I try hard to get […]

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The Never-Ending Story

By Charlie Johnston As things get crazier, living prudent and calm discernment becomes more, not less important. As Abraham Lincoln said in his House Divided Speech in 1858, just over two years before the American Civil War broke out, “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then […]

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Good Friday – Epitaph Revisited

Ecce Homo – Antonio Ciseri I repeat today my little story from the original Holy Week What follows is fiction. I used the literary device of an archaeological find, but it is fiction entirely from my meditation on the Crowning of Thorns. This is NOT definitely what happened with Pilate, but merely my meditation on […]

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Lockdown Ruminations

By Charlie Johnston Sometimes I am glad people know so little about history. Quite frankly, it is horrifying – mostly an unending tale of brutality, cruelty and strife. Thomas Hobbes was just being frank when he said, in his Leviathan, that life is “nasty, brutish and short.” At other times, it pains me, for if people knew […]

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Just a Couple of Things…

By Charlie Johnston Over a decade ago I was running two Congressional campaigns at opposite ends of the state. I would bounce back and forth. On a Monday morning when I was opening a weekly meeting at the western one, I was furious at some things that had been bobbled over the weekend – several […]

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