The Sebastiani family has been making and selling wine in California for more than one hundred years. One of its Napa Valley wines bears the intriguing label, “Aquinas,” in honor of the Catholic Church’s greatest philosopher/theologian. The choice of this label might raise some eyebrows. What is the “Angelic Doctor’s” name doing on a product that comes … Read more
Baseball, it should never be forgotten, is a game. But it is not just a game. Because of the way it employs life and death metaphors, its analogy with human drama is compelling if not totally convincing. A runner may “die” on third, but not literally. A batter may stay “alive” if he fouls off … Read more
During his Apostolic Visit to the United States, on April 16, 2008, which was also his birthday, Pope Benedict XVI was welcomed to the White House by President George W. Bush. The Pope expressed the hope that his visit would be a source of renewal to the Church in the United States. Early in his remarks, … Read more
The Culture of Death in Poetry We are all familiar with Blessed John Paul II’s description of the Culture of Death in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. The good Pope, of course, was not the first to notice and give expression to this phenomenon. In 1922, T. S. Eliot released to the world his account … Read more
While perusing a secular newspaper this morning, my eyes fell upon an opinion piece entitled, “Who will teach our boys to become men?” The author bemoaned the plague of gun violence among boys, but he did not suggest a way in which this type of violence could be mitigated. This is not surprising for a … Read more
Stan Musial passed away on January 19, 2013 at 92 years of age. His wife of nearly 72 years died the previous year. Thousands of friends filed through the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis during the six-hour public visitation. The funeral Mass for the man who played 22 years in a Cardinal uniform was presided … Read more
A most remarkable scene unfolds in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s great drama, Faust, in which Dr. Faustus labors to translate the opening sentence of St. John’s Gospel. It is important to note that at this juncture of the play the translator’s mind is in a state of confusion. Faust has rejected the true meaning of the … Read more
In Matthew 2:1, we read the following: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, Magi came from the East to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East and have come to worship … Read more
It is commonly asserted, especially among atheists, that belief in an afterlife cools one’s enthusiasms for this life on earth. This God-centered or theocentric view allegedly prevents human beings from truly being themselves and living up to their full potential. As a consequence, they fail to appreciate fully the richness and rewards of this world. … Read more
Two recent incidents have received a great deal of media attention in Canada, raising the question, once again, as to whether secular feminism takes precedence over every other religion. Ontario’s Minister of Education, Laurel Broten, has declared that Catholic teaching is “misogynistic” inasmuch as it opposes woman’s choice for abortion. According to Ms. Broten, “taking … Read more
For reasons that are both unfathomable as well as perplexing, the vast majority of young Canadians are champions of Barack Obama. I was informed that when a certain teacher asked her students who preferred Obama to Romney, all hands shot up. The entire class expressed unhesitating enthusiasm for the now re-elected President. Yet, no student, … Read more
Winston Churchill deserves the credit for replacing the word “lies” with the “fabrication of terminological inexactitudes.” No one wants to be accused of telling a lie. Churchill’s ingenious phrase may mean the same thing as a lie, but it has considerably less sting. By the time the accused figures out what these words mean, the … Read more
I grew up in an Italian neighborhood, so my first understanding of bigotry was that it referred to a very large tree (“Hey, dat’s a big-a tree!”). Now, many years later, I know that it really means supporting traditional marriage. Like President Obama, I have “evolved.” I have advanced on the semantic spectrum from being … Read more
I do not enjoy cartoons. I did when I was a child, but that was long ago. If I am surfing the channels and Bugs Bunny pops up, I keep going. Nonetheless, strange as it may seem, when there is a child on my lap, I happily revisit my nearly forgotten days of yore. My … Read more
It did not happen. But it could have happened. It is a matter of historical record that Plato was born in Ancient Greece, Aquinas in the Middle Ages, and Jean-Paul Sartre in the Twentieth Century. Yet it would not have been impossible, in the lottery of life, for all three of these talented thinkers to … Read more
The term “deconstruction,” which has its roots in Heidegger and Derrida, is now sufficiently emancipated from its philosophical moorings that it not only has entered the American vernacular, but has assumed enough trendiness to make it a bona fide “sign of the times” in our postmodern world. Examples are legion. A bookstore in the university … Read more