Chief Communications Officer @ArlingtonChurch. PhD Candidate, Politics @CatholicUniv. President @MtNittany. Husband, father, eighth-generation Pennsylvanian.
Alexandria, VA
Joined July 2007
- Tweets5K
- Following1.4K
- Followers5K
- Likes57.4K
Tom Shakely retweeted
SECRETARY RUBIO: The Greek philosophers’ search for the structure of the universe was inherited by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.
The hunger for new knowledge gave birth to Magellan’s first expedition around the world; to Columbus’ discovery of the Americas; and ultimately, to Apollo 11’s journey to the moon. The qualities that led Alexander to conquer the entire known world reappeared in Caesar, Charlemagne, and Cortes.
Tom Shakely retweeted
Hac intellegentiae artificialis aetate, urgens fit humanam artem ab iis distinguere, quae machinis efficiuntur. Ars enim et ea, quae machina ex innumeris alienis imaginibus statisticae ope computationis generare potest, ontologice, prius etiam quam aesthetice, inter se differunt. Algorithmis humani deest favilla. Quapropter Ecclesia cum artificibus et humani cultus institutis foedus renovare cupit: foedus scilicet ad humanum custodiendum.
Tom Shakely retweeted
Pope Leo XIV at Lourdes preaches on sin, repentance, penance and conversion:
“Indeed I promise you that eternal life is a firm and certain promise that the Lord makes to us. He has already won for us the victory in His death and resurrection, through the grace of Baptism He brings this eternal life to fulfilment in each day. It is within our reach but we must firmly welcome it, take hold of it and not stand in its way.
For the obstacles to grace and eternal life, the only obstacle to love is sin, by where we turn in upon ourselves, refusing God and shutting ourselves up in our own darkness. Our personal responsibility therefore comes in to play, and great responsibility it is: God has made us free, since freedom is necessary for love no one can be forced to love, we must therefore use our freedom to say yes to Christ, relying on His grace as Mary did. This is the yes that we renew until our final breath, now and at the hour of our death, as we always say in the Hail Mary.
We hear the same urgent call to conversion in the words which Mary spoke right here: “Penance, penance, penance!” She repeats the three times and she asks Bernadette to perform certain acts of penance. Why? Are we slow to understand, do we too easily think of ourselves without sin? Do we not practice penance enough? The Virgin asks us to do penance not only for ourselves because we do need it, but also for sinners and for a world that is going astray. How can our hearts not be moved by the conflicts that are spreading and destroying so many innocent lives. Yet the evil of our times comes from the human heart. God is not responsible for this. It therefore the human heart that must change.”
Tom Shakely retweeted
A quarter century after the attacks of September 11th in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, we remember the fallen and the heroism of so many, and pray to God for all affected that day and even now.
vaticannews.va/en/church/new…
Tom Shakely retweeted
A top policy priority for Vice President JD Vance, the new family benefit would apply only to married couples and tap a fund intended to provide federal child care subsidies to working parent. nytimes.com/2026/09/05/us/po…
A Sacred Art Studio comes to northern Virginia. I was present for this. Our world needs beauty and now many will be formed to contribute to an aesthetic and sacred renewal.
🎨 Bishop Burbidge blessed a new Sacred Art Studio in Falls Church, where artist Dony Mac Manus is using beauty and faith to draw others toward Christ.
bit.ly/4zA4mTI
Tom Shakely retweeted
You know, Lord, the heart of the city: its lights and shadows, its noise and loneliness. Lord, may our urban communities be open and welcoming homes, places where hope is shared, where no one feels invisible, and where the joy of your Gospel shines in the hidden lives of so many brothers and sisters. Let’s #PrayTogether at popesprayer.va/praywiththepo…
Tom Shakely retweeted
I finally have all 1.2 million raw image files from my latest mission to ISS! Here is a sample of one of my favorite Milky Way photos, taken from the Cupola with Nikon Z9, Arri Zeiss 15mm lens, T1.8 with custom sidereal drive that cancelled out star motion relative to our orbit.
Tom Shakely retweeted
Here are the six common goods that the Framers identified, and the people affirmed, as the proper goals of the federal government.
Identifying the common goods that the federal government ought to secure is not "a hard but not impossible task at a high level [of] abstraction and basically an impossible task at the ground level."
It is the very principle of our Constitution. It is the common sense of the philosophical, theological, legal, and historical traditions of the two millennia preceding the Founding—our federal adaptation of Aristotle's "common advantage" for the entire polis, as opposed to the "partial advantage" of its ruling class. It is the goal for the federal government that the American people affirmed when they ratified the Constitution. It stands as the public standard by which citizens ought to judge the federal government. It is the end for which everything else in the Constitution is the means.
"Common good talk" is so far from being a sign of "loss of intellectual humility and policy skepticism"—it is a sign that, after generations wandering in the wilderness, we might finally recover the first principle for our citizen body to reason about our form of government.
My problem, well my chief problem, with the common good talk on the New Right is that it is shot through with question-begging. They assume that once you know what the common good is this awareness grants the constitutional authority, the policy skill, the economic and personnel resources and the political mandate to impose it. The knowledge problem just evaporates once they get the gnostic insight into what the common good is. (By the way,
I think defining the common good is a hard but not impossible task at a high level abstraction and basically an impossible task at the ground level).
A vast amount of common good talk strikes me more as an attempt to seize more and more power for a right wing faction that has utterly lost any intellectual humility and policy skepticism. That’s why most of the common good talk is simply the right wing version of the left’s “social justice” rhetoric. “How dare anyone oppose the common good/social justice!?”
Tom Shakely retweeted
Firmly rooted in the Word of Jesus, reading the Gospel every day, never stop dreaming of a land where there is peace and fraternity, nor stop looking at the world with wonder, nor stop facing the future with the light of hope. Do not let anything or anyone steal your hope.
Tom Shakely retweeted
When a man with dirty clothes comes closer to the light, he sees those stains more clearly precisely because he is closer to the light. So too, the closer we come to the light who is Christ, the more we become aware of our sinfulness, even though we are closer to Christ than before.
Becoming a saint is a humiliating journey, and it does not feel like a triumphal procession. Yet there is something beautiful about realizing that, with all our sins, we are cherished by the Lord. So do not run from the light on account of your sins, do not say “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” Rather, run to the physician, you who are sick; run to the fount of mercy, you who need mercy.
-Fr. Sebastian Walshe
Tom Shakely retweeted
Parents who raise their kids on realistic content are performing a kind of soul circumcision without anesthesia, and they do it proudly. they buy the little books about sharing and recycling and how divorce is okay, sensible books, vetted books, books approved by some committee of childless phds who decided that dragons are psychologically destabilizing. and then this denuded little creature grows up and wanders out into a world that is absolutely crawling with dragons, real ones, humans who feed on humiliation, women who collect men like scalps, landlords, banks, algorithms, addictions, each one an ancient monster. and the kid has nothing, no stored narrative of the small weak thing prevailing, no memory of stones becoming bread or dead girls waking up. his parents gave him nutritious facts and he stands there starving in front of his first real giant with a stomach full of information. meanwhile some other kid whose grandmother filled him with absolute garbage, nonsense talking wolves, magic beans, boys made of wood, walks up to the same giant and something old activates in him. he knows somewhere deep in the meat of him that giants are a problem with a known solution, that has been handled before, by smaller people than him, with worse weapons
Tom Shakely retweeted
Some thoughts on this weekend’s Parable of the Sower.
The four soils aren’t four fixed classes of people—and we practicing Catholics shouldn’t assume that we’re automatically the good soil.
Consider:
• A soul can hear Scripture, listen to preaching, and read spiritual books, yet never allow the Word to sink deeply within.
• Religious enthusiasm can be sincere and still remain shallow.
• Concern for the Church, the country, or the culture can become thorns when anxiety crowds out Christ. Even concern about genuinely important things can become excessive and disordered.
• Every heart may contain all four kinds of soil.
• Hardened ground can be broken open. Stones can be removed. Thorns can be cut back.
• Good soil doesn’t produce the fruit by itself. The fruit comes from the seed—from what Christ has planted.
The parable begins not with our receptivity, but with the astonishing generosity of the Sower. Every kind of ground can be cultivated by Christ—even ground that presently seems barren.
And so the question isn’t simply, “Which soil am I?”
It’s: “Where has the Word taken root in me, and where do I still resist the work of the Sower?”
Christ is still sowing the seed.
Tom Shakely retweeted
We need a bit more shame.
People used to avoid certain self-interested behaviors to avoid shame, private and public. Law and customs assumed this.
Now, 38% of Stanford students claim to be disabled. 40% of young women (under 35) claim mental illness, and SSI disability payments have gone up 400% in a single generation.
It isn't good for anyone, least of all people who are actually disabled, when everyone looks the other way as friends and family and peers con the system with a level of shamelessness no architect of our safety net ever imagined could be possible in America. When everyone is disabled, nobody is.
Tom Shakely retweeted
In his remarkable 1755 publication Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Ben Franklin put on his demographer hat and foretold the rise of America to superpower status some 21 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
🧵, please share!
"In the Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae, my predecessor Pope Leo XIII wrote that 'no better citizen is there... than the Christian who is mindful of his duty.' In fact, faith - far from standing in opposition to the responsibilities of citizenship - lends new vigor to the pursuit of justice, peace and the common good, bringing to perfection every natural gift bestowed by the Creator."
On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, @Pontifex has addressed a letter to the American people.
Tom Shakely retweeted
Remark from Pope Leo just now during live video message in Philadelphia:
“…all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While couched in the language of 🧵
Tom Shakely retweeted
God cares about politics. This is why Christians are called to faithful citizenship, to order the nation to God and all that is right and just. As America commemorates its Semiquincentennial, it's a special time to grow by God's grace as Christian citizens.
"Christian Citizenship and the Virtue of Patriotism," 🇺🇸 the latest course from Porta Fidei, is now available on 𝕏 for the first time. Join @ccpecknold to reflect on the nature and responsibilities of Christian citizenship and discover why patriotism is a virtue.
Stream or bookmark the course ⬇️
Tom Shakely retweeted
Connecting young people to digital networks serves no purpose if they remain disconnected from themselves, others, and their own interiority. We must help young people rediscover silence, reflection, the ability to ask questions, the depth of relationships, and openness to transcendence. To listen to the soul, we must lend an ear, because the soul's voice is not a shout, but a whisper.