The Holy Father dedicated this millennial year, 2000, to the Trinity. How do we grasp this theme? In my memory, I associate the Trinity with Frank Sheed, who wrote so well about it. I recall two addresses Sheed gave, one at Catholic University of America in the 50s and the other at the University of … Read more
A short but curious 1780 passage in Boswell reads, “Of a certain noble Lord, he [Samuel Johnson] said, ‘Respect him, you could not; for he had no mind of his own. Love him you could not; for that which you could do with him, everyone else could.’” No doubt, this lack of respect or love … Read more
On finishing my annual eight-day retreat at lovely Georgetown Preparatory School on Rockville Pike, I returned to my room. Checking over e-mail, I noticed an unfamiliar source. It was entitled, “Possible Useful Information.” I am rather a sucker for possible useless information. This particular citation was about natural law. Its Web site address was www. … Read more
“Original sin is called ‘sin’ only in an analogous sense: it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’—a state and not an act,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Chesterton, in a famous passage, quipped that original sin is the one doctrine of the Church that we do not have to “believe.” He … Read more
What is the one word that best describes what we are to ourselves from the hands of God? The answer is gifts. We do not come to be because God owes either Himself or us something. Neither we nor the world is necessary. This primary understanding of gifts means that everything is full, not of … Read more
Ogden Nash has a poem that begins, “A man could be granted to live a dozen lives/And he still wouldn’t be understood by daughters and wives.” We probably wouldn’t want a world in which it were otherwise, a world in which absolutely everything could be understood by husbands and wives. I do not intend to … Read more
In Acts 10, Peter tells Cornelius that “they killed Him [Christ] by hanging Him to a tree; yet three days afterward God raised Him to life and allowed Him to be seen, not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses God had chosen beforehand.” On reading this passage, the obvious question is, how … Read more
On November 17, 1999, three new Chinese orchestral pieces, composed respectively by Ping Hu, N.Y. Yates (pseudonym of a Chinese composer), and Xiao Hu, were played at the Kennedy Center, under the direction of William Hudson. Normally, this would be in the province of my friend, Robert Reilly, the music reviewer for Crisis. Reilly could … Read more
Before anything begins, God is. That is, God stands outside of nothingness. God is all-complete, existing with an inner Trinitarian life that needs no world, no man, no angel. If anything but God exists, it is not because something is deficient or lonely in God. What is not God cannot explain itself to itself without … Read more
At the European Synod, the bishop of Rotterdam urged us “to reduce substantially the egotistical consumption of the earth’s goods in the first world.” Such appeals are common in religious and humanitarian circles. What is at issue? The assumption behind this statement is that the consumption in the first world is the cause of the … Read more
Cicero, the Roman orator and philosopher, was concerned with this moral question: How can one be honorable and virtuous in a corrupt regime? He was not upset by the immorality of individuals but by the corruption of institutions designed to check and counteract these individual disorders of soul. When these institutions are corrupt and overlook … Read more
Someone sent me a column from The Washington Post (Reuters, August 15) about legislation for pet owners in San Francisco, knowing how much the confusion of human beings and animals annoys me. According to the article, a group called, no less, In Defense of Animals objects to the idea that pets are property. It believes … Read more
Early on the morning of the eleventh Sunday of the year, I said Mass. As I read the last words of the Gospel that day, Matthew 10:8, I said to myself, “that doesn’t sound right.” Unfamiliar wording unexpectedly distracted me. I was using the new 1998 American Lectionary. After years of saying Mass and reading … Read more
The eighth commandment forbids lying. A federal judge in Arkansas formally stated that the president of the United States lied in her court in an official proceeding. Presidential lawyers sometimes quibble about intention, about legal lying and real lying. The judge maintained that because of the lie, justice was not done to a party whose … Read more
Jean Guitton, the 97-year-old French writer and philosopher, died in Paris on March 27, 1999. In his New York Times obituary, Eric Pace writes, “After imbibing basic religious and ethical principles, Professor Guitton was able to square his Catholic faith with the teachings of science and history in his day” One cannot help but be … Read more
In July and August of 1939, just before World War II began, Msgr. Ronald Knox gave five sermons on the “Our Father”—my edition of his Pastoral Sermons does not indicate where, probably at Oxford. Some 60 years later, the pope asks us to devote this final year of the 20th century to God the Father. … Read more
To describe a political regime, we must also describe the souls of the citizens. Regimes do not take to unfavorable descriptions of their way of life, no matter how justified. And no correlation need exist between what a regime says it is and what it actually is. Regimes with written constitutions announce the standards by … Read more
In Oscar Cullmann’s book, The State in the New Testament, he remarked that in the Book of Revelation, the primary embodiment of the anti-Christ would not merely be an individual but an individual claiming and autonomously exercising political power, with no standards but his own. Stated in such graphic terms, we assume that we ourselves … Read more
The pervasive relativism in our culture would understand the phrase “the ultimate truth about human life” to be either unknown, unknowable, or merely an expression of “personal choice” ungrounded in anything but our will and therefore not expressive of one truth. The phrase itself is found in John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio (#2). At … Read more
Currently, suggestions multiply that, in the United States, two Catholic churches now exist, something we, especially the bishops, are reluctant to acknowledge. This observation is so frequent that I want to spell the question out, if only for my own clarification. The two churches can exist in every diocese and religious order; but clearly one … Read more