You’ve no doubt heard about the “clock boy”—the 14-year-old Muslim student who brought a self-made clock to school to show to his teachers and was then detained by police on the suspicion that the clock might be a bomb. The media pounced on the story as a classic case of Islamophobia, the president complimented Ahmed … Read more
Hope is the thing with feathers, That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all… ∼ Emily Dickinson If hope is a virtue we cannot reach heaven without, where then is the handle we need to take hold of to get there? The answer is prayer, which is … Read more
Like the good German that he is, Cardinal Walter Kasper has a wonderful capacity of persistence. Like a dog with a bone, he is able to keep fighting against incredible odds long after a lesser man would have packed up his things and gone home. The case in point is, of course, the question of … Read more
Borrowing from C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Father Paul Scalia once wrote that the Devil can’t create. “The Devil is unable to create anything. He lacks the ability to create…. He can only take what is good and distort it a bit…. So the Devil takes the good things of God and he mimics … Read more
Let’s face it: The 2015 Synod on the Family is a mess. I was one who gave Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt. I now have my doubts about him. And I have no doubt at all that some of the men surrounding him are either heretics or lunatics or both. The real question … Read more
In September 1953, a group of 20-somethings and their young parish priest embarked on the first of what would be 26 annual kayaking trips into the wilderness near where they all lived and worked, taking time away from normal life to enjoy the water, the wilderness, and, most of all, a prayerful retreat with each other. This group—Środowisko, as … Read more
Conscience is one of those subjects about which numerous Catholics today are, alas, sadly misinformed. Despite great Catholic minds such as Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, and John Henry Newman discoursing at length on the question, some Catholics speak of it in ways that have little in common with the Church’s understanding of conscience. The latest … Read more
I recently stumbled upon a rare treasure: the Apocalypse Tapestry of Angers, France. Displayed in a special wing of a local chateau, the 400 foot long, double-wide fourteenth-century tapestry depicts more than 70 scenes from the Book of Revelation, the New Testament’s last book. Comprehensive depictions of the Apocalypse are not too common, so I … Read more
The Church gave us a wonderful grace in the midst of the fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops session on the theme of the vocation and mission of the family in the contemporary world with the canonization of Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse of Liseux. They are the … Read more
In a recent interview in America (October 12, 2015), in which the editor of the flagship Jesuit journal, Fr. Matt Malone, S.J., sat down with the vice president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden Jr., a series of soft balls were thrown and, to no one’s surprise, every blessed one was slammed right out … Read more
Rilene, Paul, and I went to Rome to give our testimonies at a conference and resource event titled “Living the Truth in Love.” This conference was scheduled two days prior to the start of the Synod, and was co-sponsored by Courage International, Ignatius Press, and the Napa Institute as a way to begin a dialogue … Read more
As we await the beginning of the Year of Mercy on December 8, I was asked to speak to fellow catechists regarding the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Of the two groups (each comprising seven acts or works) my fellow catechists were more familiar with the former. This is perhaps because of Christ’s words … Read more
Kim Davis is an innocent victim both of cowardice of churchmen and the smug eagerness of certain priests to put her in her place. First, a few largely uncontested facts: it was Vatican personnel who invited Davis to meet the pope in Washington DC. Neither Kim Davis nor anyone connected to her requested the meeting. … Read more
Voltaire, eighteenth-century French philosopher and well-known attacker of Catholicism, once wrote, “If you want to kill Christianity, you must abolish Sunday.” Where the Sabbath rest and worship is forgotten, a weak to nonexistent practice of Christianity can almost inevitably be found. Conversely, those who take their spiritual life seriously know that Sunday is the key … Read more
Like many bright but impressionable youngsters I was greatly taken-in by the charisma and bravura bombast of the late Christopher Hitchens. In fact, I became a Hitchens groupie. I even own a t-shirt with his likeness on it. His was the first book on atheism I ever read, after losing my fragile faith watching Dawkins … Read more
If every cloud has a silver lining, we can say that the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has—whatever his detractors may say—served some useful purposes. Those most critical of Trump speak of his followers as delirious, as if they were in the grip of some dreadful political fever. Nevertheless, a fever can be useful to … Read more
Although Poland remains one of the world’s most Catholic cultures, in recent years its government has pushed an agenda separating Catholicism from decision-making in public life, often at odds with Poland’s Constitution and society itself. However, this is now coming to an abrupt halt with the ascent of President Andrzej Duda: young, charismatic, media savvy, … Read more
Until 1947, few Americans knew about Thomas Jefferson’s comment, made in a private letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, that the First Amendment’s guarantee against a federally established church made a “wall of separation between church and state.” It was in that year, in the case of Everson v. Board of Education, that the Supreme Court … Read more
Although it is unpleasant to discuss, there is a medical disorder (sometimes called “pica”) in which a person desires to eat non-nutritive, non-food substances like glass, plastic, dirt, wood, and apparently almost anything else one could imagine. Besides their disordered desire to eat harmful things, people with pica otherwise seem to be normal and are … Read more
It is always a little sad when the miracle doesn’t happen. So, when the Supreme Court waved its magic gavel last summer and rhetorically ended the citizens’ debate over the newly discovered “right” to same-sex “marriage,” the decision was greeted with frustration and a deep sense of betrayal on the part of many faithful Catholics. … Read more