We live in a humorless world overrun by political distemper, with growing divisions forming between a camp endorsing wholesale collective reengineering along fault lines of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, and those who favor the preservation of the civic order and institutions and the inherent dignity of the individual. The result of this discord is … Read more
Upon entering St. Peter’s Basilica, facing the visitor, like some sunburst, is the Great Altar. It is spaced majestically beneath Bernini’s massive baldachin, held up by four thick, twisted columns, identical to the ones in Solomon’s Temple—clearly a sign that the typological figures of the Old Testament had come to fulfillment in the immolation of … Read more
This morning, I looked out the dining room window at my rows of tiny carrots in the garden. The parable of the weeds and the crops jumped to mind. Remember how it goes? At night, the landowner’s enemy sowed weeds among the newly planted wheat. When the landowner’s servants discover this, they ask their master … Read more
A serious, even existential, threat to Catholicism looms on the horizon, and it’s hidden all around us. It could very well decimate the ranks of the Church, and perhaps is already doing so. It is insidiously dangerous because it upends the very foundations of Catholicism. I’m not talking about the abuse crisis, or the lack … Read more
An error regarding vocations has become common among Catholics. Specifically, people have begun claiming there exists a call to the single life apart from a religious vocation. While there is no evidence of this “new” vocation in the Magisterium of the Church, it has persisted in its growth and usage due to the increasing number … Read more
In his classic Aphorisms, Hippocrates once declared, “For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.” Today, we say, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” But do desperate measures justify perceived desperate times? Last year, we saw firsthand how “extreme methods of cure” were unnecessarily imposed on our world and Church, … Read more
We’re all familiar with the term “conspiracy theory.” For some, it’s used as a pejorative—a way to discredit information or something useful to calumniate someone who is not like-minded. For others, it’s an annoying word that they’re sick of hearing from those who never give them the benefit of the doubt. However you have heard … Read more
Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one on intellectual amputation. If thy head offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, … Read more
Let’s admit it: the Solemnity of the Ascension is a practically marginal feast for Western Catholics. In many Western countries and much of the United States, it’s even been rendered ahistorical, shunted off from the fortieth day of Easter to the nearest Sunday. The dirty little secret is that the feast is so irrelevant to … Read more
Which is better for your own sake, to think that most people will treat you well, even if that is not quite true, or to think that most people will treat you badly? If it is the former, then people who discourage you do not have your best interest in mind. Why would they do … Read more
Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option advocates a simple response to modernity: retreat, re-arm, and renew. Basing his battle plan on that of the sixth century founder of Western monasticism, Dreher argued that, just as St. Benedict abandoned the decadence of a declining Roman Empire, so Christians today should respond to a society crumbling into … Read more
Let me begin with a plain fact: the sacred liturgy is where most Catholics most of the time encounter the Church and her teaching. “The Church” and “the Magisterium” might well seem like abstractions until they take on concrete form in the liturgical rites—the texts, music, ceremonies, and other elements of worship—by which the Faith … Read more
Something momentous has happened recently that has gone under the radar for most Christians. While the pandemic raged across the globe and a U.S. Presidential election turned into political turmoil, a wall that stood as an impenetrable fortress against the Christian Faith for 1400 years was breached. The very platform of the Tech giants, one … Read more
I’ll never forget the look in that engineer’s eyes when he interrupted the professor. “Wow,” he exclaimed, “I get it, I get it!” I know what he was feeling because I felt it too. It was as if the final nail in a bridge between islands in my mind had been hammered home. The class … Read more
There was once a thriving little town in Central Europe where almost everyone was Jewish and they all had a job. The single exception, it seems, was the Village Idiot who, when offered work, refused to take it. What was the job? It was to wait at the outskirts of the village for the arrival … Read more
The topic of “discerning a vocation” is a commonplace yet difficult one with young Catholics. In order to make a generous choice of a state in life (usually, in the Roman Rite, between marriage and consecrated religious life and/or priesthood), young men and women in the Church must listen to and grapple with every aspect … Read more
A home is not the same as a house. You can live or stay in a house and it is not a home. You can possibly live in a house many years and yet it never becomes a home. Home, the ancient expression goes, is where the heart is. While that might have become rather … Read more
To celebrate Easter properly, we should probably recall Luca Signorelli’s 1499 masterpiece The Sermon and Deeds of the Anti-Christ. It now hangs in the Chapel of San Brizio in Orvieto. Upon first glance, it appears that Christ stands in the foreground. Then the observer realizes that it is not Christ at all. It is an … Read more
I grew up near Los Angeles and now I live in Washington, D.C. So I have had my fair share of city experiences. Last year, I was on the Washington metro with a friend when a fight broke out, and we were caught in the middle. I’ve been on a train where two men have … Read more
The story of Holy Week recounts the historical events surrounding Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection; but it also pinpoints common failures of humanity while providing the antidote that ultimately saves us. A suffering world needs to dive into the causes of darkness that surround it and investigate deep within itself to ask how we ought … Read more