In the Spring of 2019, 18 year old Kenrick Castillo, top left, charged an active shooter at his high school to block bullets from hitting his friends.  Kenrick had already taken his Catholic faith very seriously and was only 18 years old when he died from this heroic act.  A Catholic school teacher who knew him later recalled, “In a video from her class that she posted to Facebook, Kendrick [acted] out the part of Jesus, going to search for his apostles or to comfort a suffering person, blessing them with the sign of the cross and inviting them to join him."  Kenrick's father, John Castillo, said to local news about his [...]

Some Catholics hold their private beliefs as different from their public beliefs. It's starting to resemble the Muslim notion of taqiyah (in Arabic above in the featured image.) I thought for a long time that taqiyah was permission from Mohammed to lie about Islam precisely for the promotion of Islam. But the more I studied it, the more I realized that taqiyah is dialing down your own beliefs so as fit into a different culture (at least, until you constitute the majority of a population.) Taqiyah (Arabic: تقیة‎ ) is defined as "a precautionary dissimulation or denial of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution...dissimulation by silence or [...]

There are now six sections to my blog: Theology (default reading when you put in "pilgrim priest" or "padre peregrino" to the url); Talks (Please see the longer description at the bottom of this post); Life (I just started monthly stories about myself); Español (rarely updated); About Padre (my permanent bio with an ever-changing Twitter feed) and Donate(now seeking one-time and monthly donors.) You can find these six-sections at the top of your desktop or laptop screen: Or, if you read my blog on your phone, the pull-down menu bar is here: Then, select one of the six: TALKS:  My new teaching channel got delayed due to my commentaries on [...]

I've done missionary work in Central America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia.  After so much travel, I can say in very good confidence that we in the USA have the least corrupt police departments of anywhere in the world. Our cops sometimes do horrible things, as the George Floyd video demonstrates. But here's what anyone who has lived outside the United States already knows: In most third-world countries, the only people with physical protection are the rich who can afford private security guards for their families. The police in most third-world countries are so corrupt that they are frequently in cahoots with traffickers. If a woman loses her husband [...]