Abraham's Journey
By Charlie Johnston “Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this son of York” -Richard III, William Shakespeare This Advent Season is pregnant both with expectation of the birth of Christ and with the fearful expectation of great dysfunctions to come. In almost every major area, we have had greater and […]
Read More The Season BeginsBy Charlie Johnston Things are speeding up yet again. The runaway train our culture, politics and formal religion has become shows no sign of applying the brakes in time to avoid a crash. If it is now unlikely that anyone driving this dysfunctional train can get things back under stable control, panic can cause those […]
Read More Leaving the ShireBy Charlie Johnston Everyone knows that we have entered uncharted waters that are very choppy – both in the Church and in the world. My whole life has been a journey through choppy, uncharted waters. The choices I made led me to the Catholic Church, animated by an unshakeable faith in the existence and providence […]
Read More My Hierarchy of First ThingsBy Charlie Johnston The title to this piece is a shout-out to our French readers. It means the same thing as the English idiom, “The die is cast,” though I think the literal translation of the French provides a more vivid and clear picture than the English idiom. Literally, the French idiom says “The bets […]
Read More Les Jeux Sont FaitsBy Desmond A. Birch As previously stated, numerous voices are now commonly heard to proclaim or hint that St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI knew about the depth of the clerical abuse all along – and chose to do nothing. Recently, I was asked if I knew whether this was true. After […]
Read More TO KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE – PART IIBy Charlie Johnston Orangevale, California – When I was in my 20’s, while visiting family in Alabama, I spent an afternoon with a distant cousin (almost every time I am there, I discover relatives I have never previously heard of). He had one of the weirdest things I have ever seen: a glass gallon jar […]
Read More L’Chaim, To Life!First Council of Nicea By Desmond A. Birch (As Desmond noted about the image, the painting forces one to eventually focus on Emperor Constantine – who thought HE was running the Council – sitting with crown in the foreground. Also to be noted is how the painter took creative license as Constantine actually wore […]
Read More To Kill Two Birds with One Stone – Part IBy Charlie Johnston Monday, Sept. 23, marked the second anniversary of what I consider the most important sign in the skies of my lifetime: The Revelation 12 sign. Earlier that year, a total solar eclipse moved diagonally across North America from the northwest to the southeast. It caught my attention both because of the unusual […]
Read More Lurching Towards Gomorrah(I have not posted for a while. I have been working on a rather complicated piece, thinking each day I will get it done, so not posting anything else. Today, though, I post this repeat from earlier in the year just after Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned. It is an ominously weird time. The […]
Read More The Sound of Distant Thunder Draws NearBy Charlie Johnston When something unexpected comes out of left field that utterly confounds conventional analysis, it is called a “Black Swan Event.” In unstable times of great tumult, black swan events become more frequent. Our last two election cycles were marked by significant black swan events. In 2016, for the first time in American […]
Read More A Bevy of Black Swans
A Sign of Hope 