Imitate Him

By Charlie Johnston I am repeating my traditional story of Good Friday today, “Epitaph.” But first I want to recall one of the two most odd Easter Masses I have ever participated in. It was 20 years ago at a parish in the far north suburbs of Chicago, a different one than I would usually […]

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A Year of Reckoning for Islam

By Charlie Johnston I first posted the following article on November 20, 2015. I wrote the first version of this particular introduction to it in late 2023, right after the Hamas massacre of Israeli concert-goers. I caught a lot of flack for it, despite a certain delicacy in my candor. We were long governed by […]

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Cast Out Into the Deep

By Charlie Johnston It is a peculiarity of modern life that a lot of people have a very superficial knowledge about many things, but no depth of knowledge on anything. Then we have cohorts who have extreme depth of knowledge on certain niche subjects (usually technology) but little general knowledge beyond that. Weirdly, this combination […]

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Prepare For a Great Blessing

By Charlie Johnston Long ago I saw that, at a decisive moment, our technology would fail. I’m no Luddite. I do not regard technology as either intrinsically evil or intrinsically good. It is just a tool which, like any other tool, can be wielded by its user for either good or evil. But we withhold […]

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Woe to the USCCB (Matthew 23:4)

By Charlie Johnston Well, the USCCB, which could not bring itself to making a loud, full-throated call to support life, oppose transgender ideology, promote the traditional family and Biblical definition of marriage, has finally found something it can be full-throated about: demanding that American taxpayers cover all expenses for illegal aliens and quit the “indiscriminate […]

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The Vine and the Branches

By Charlie Johnston I have written obliquely before of how disturbed I am at the rise of antisemitism in some quarters of the right and the traditionalist Catholic community. I’m going to be more blunt now. If you are afflicted with this, you have welcomed a demon into your counsels. Keep nurturing it and the […]

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We Are God’s Beloved

By Charlie Johnston There was a fellow I collaborated on five or six big campaigns with. It was a great partnership most of the time. He loved the administrative duties – which often weary me. I loved strategy and the field, meeting people, exhorting them, unifying them, laughing with them and fighting together with them. […]

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Spooking the Horses

By Charlie Johnston “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!” – Galatians 1:8 When an organization is fractured by deep divisions, I usually encourage a “Don’t spook the horses” policy for about a year. That […]

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