On July 29, 1997, a representative philosophe of our abortion culture, retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, was lavishly eulogized in St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where the Requiem Mass for President Kennedy had been sung in 1963. Richard Cardinal Cushing was relatively constrained back then, because liturgical depredations had not yet switched into … Read more
I am reading St. Augustine’s Confessions these days, for the second or third time. The whole thing is a great antidote for all that is confused and squalid about our own epoch, but more particularly for the sloth and folly that marks one’s own inner being. The book itself is an astonishing thing. You … Read more
The refugees returning to the Promised Land after 70 years of captivity in Babylon had a problem. He was a killjoy named Haggai, and he was chewing them out for rebuilding their houses. Well . . . that’s not exactly the case. His complaint wasn’t so much that they were building their houses as … Read more
My family was in England for the summer while I taught a law course at Cambridge University, and one afternoon my son and I happened upon an interesting program on the radio. It was a radio “play” featuring a self-confident young woman and Kenneth Lay, the now-deceased president of Enron who masterminded the company’s … Read more
According to tradition St. Thomas Aquinas once asked St. Bonaventure how he had acquired the deep theological wisdom he displayed in his writings. St. Bonaventure pointed to a crucifix and said that he had learned all he knew from contemplating it. If there are any prayerful Catholics in our pews with St. Bonaventure’s talents … Read more
Despite the evidence of my implausible last name — customer-service staff refuse to believe it, force me to repeat it two and three times, and sometimes even argue, “It can’t be spelled like that!” — the provenance of my Catholic faith is Irish American, courtesy of my catechetical mom. Whatever specifically Croatian quirks dad had … Read more
So glorious, so mysterious, the Holy Grail symbolizes an elusive object of desire. Although now usually identified as the chalice of the Last Supper sought by Arthurian heroes, the Grail has been pictured as a dish, a ciborium, and even a white stone. Indeed, for a long time, its name had a rather mundane … Read more
Our Father is not, according to Jesus, merely our Father. He is our Father “who art in heaven.” What does that mean? Getting at the answer to that in our present culture is harder than you’d think, not least because heaven, says C. S. Lewis, is an acquired taste. There are moments, he writes, … Read more
My first conversation with Archbishop Charles J. Chaput happened over dinner at a mom-and-pop Chinese restaurant in South Dakota in late 1990. He was the bishop of Rapid City; I was working for Catholic Answers and had been invited to conduct a weekend apologetics conference there. From that first meeting, I could tell immediately that … Read more
This past Sunday, as I attempted to get my wriggling, squeaking, squirming children settled in our pew for what usually amounts to a liturgical rodeo — see if you can keep them on their best behavior for eight seconds without getting thrown out of the church — I noticed the arrival of two women in … Read more
God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Penguin Press, 416 pages, $27.95 It was a commonplace of the late 1960s that religion was obsolete and that modern 20th-century people had no need of faith. “Is God Dead?” Time asked in 1966, and books … Read more
We all know the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the Temple (Lk 18:9-14). “But then the tax collector, aware of his own deep humility, looked upon the Pharisee and said: Lord, I thank thee that I am not such as this man, who fasts and prays and gives alms unto the … Read more
Boredom during the liturgy is something all Catholics have felt from time to time, and it’s never justifiable. No matter how mundane the architecture, how dull the homily, or how bad the music, what’s taking place on the altar is a miraculous sacrifice that gives us the grace for salvation. That reality should be … Read more
In Luke’s Gospel, the “Our Father,” like so much else in Jesus’ teaching, is occasioned by a request from His disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (Lk 11:1). This should get our attention, because it is typical of Jesus’ method of revelation that, instead of going around announcing, “Hey! I’m … Read more
Is Pope Benedict XVI an admirer of the seamless garment? Evidently he is, and at first sight that’s bad news for conservative Catholics. But hold on: The good news is that he understands seamless-garment thinking in a way that ought to lead conservatives to admire it, too. To be sure, in his new economic encyclical … Read more
If ever there were a time when Catholics should not trust the United States government, it is now. The president, his administration, and the congressional leadership are removing all the abortion restrictions put in place since Roe v. Wade. And yet, the bishops are backing a proposal to give the federal government complete control … Read more
This virtue business is a puzzler. If picking up the tab for a raging alcoholic, or keeping one’s gambling-addict grandma in bingo cards, doesn’t add up to Liberality, what does? Isn’t the New Testament full of admonitions like “Give till it hurts,” and “It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?” It’s … Read more
Rev. Simon Tugwell notes that the very first thing we should know about prayer, according to St. Paul, is that we do not know how to do it. Paul makes this fact clear when he tells the Romans that the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray … Read more
The 29th section of Caritas in Veritate concerns religious freedom. What is at stake here is not the usual “church and state” hassle. To clear the air, Pope Benedict XVI states that he is not concerned here with fanaticism, in which violence is used to promote the goals of religions. It is self-evident that this … Read more
It’s easy to make fun of twelve-step groups, given their curious jargon and the fact that there are so many different varieties of them filling church basements across the country with cigarette smoke and pamphlets. In case you didn’t know, the movement has gone far beyond offering hope to alcoholics and drug users, expanding to … Read more