Scenario 1: You’re discussing Divine Providence with your friends over a bottle of wine and mention that, in a strict sense, the Holocaust was “God’s will.” Your Jewish friend stuffs the cork up your nose. Scenario 2: An unchurched fellow wanders into the local revival meeting where he hears the preacher say, “You could have … Read more
There’s big money to be made in undermining traditional Christianity. We saw it first in the phenomenal success of The Da Vinci Code, the film version of which will be in theaters later this month. You’re already no doubt familiar with the book’s unrelenting attack on the Church. And the movie looks to be no … Read more
I have just returned from Rome, where a senior member of the Curia asked me to tell readers of The Window the following story. You may have already heard its beginning, but in all likelihood not its end. On Sunday, February 5, 2006, while praying in his church, an Italian priest by the name of … Read more
Faced with the lurid, tragic landscape of the Catholic Church’s child sex-abuse scandal, some of the laity have posed the question: Where were the nuns when this was going on? Playwright John Patrick Shanley offers a rich, multi-layered response to this and many other related matters — theological, psychological, and moral — in Doubt, a … Read more
Much has been made of pro-abortion politicians flaunting their Catholic identity and receiving the Eucharist. The U.S. bishops, in their June statement “Catholics in Political Life” and at their November meeting in Washington, D.C., backed away from confronting wayward Catholics like Senator John Kerry and Senator Ted Kennedy who clearly ought to remain seated at … Read more
Aizawl, Mizoram State, on the India-Burma border: It was dusk as we made our way down the mountainside to the headquarters of the Chin National Front (CNF). We were a motley crew—a deputy speaker of the British House of Lords, a retired surgeon, a British doctor living in Australia, a journalist-turned-human-rights advocate, a bearded, beer-drinking … Read more
On September 29, 2003, a frustrated Rev. David Mullen sent a letter to newly installed Archbishop Sean O’Malley of Boston, pleading for help. “Talking About Touching” (TAT), a controversial safety education program designed for children in kindergarten to fourth grade, had just been accepted in the Archdiocese of Boston. He wrote: I am most … Read more
Imagine a rash of fires, lit by fire chiefs, in certain ghettos of Eastern Europe during the 1930s. A synagogue burns to the ground in Kraków, another in Prague, a Jewish community house in Danzig, the Beth-salem Orphanage in Leipzig, and yet another synagogue in Bratislava. All are destroyed. Imagine that half of the leaders … Read more
“The Grail,” Langdon said, “is symbolic of the lost goddess. When Christianity came along, the old pagan religions did not die easily. Legends of chivalric quests for the Holy Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be “searching for the chalice” were speaking in … Read more
Lately, I have been hearing a lot about how the primitive Church was not Roman Catholic. I don’t know why it is, but this information keeps bursting upon me in the most unlikely settings—a lunch party near the sand dunes, cocktails on the upper east side—where a kindly soul informs me between sips of … Read more
“Pro-choice” Catholic politicians support abortion mostly for political reasons. The U.S. bishops say this is unacceptable. So why do they accept it? “Do you know what the Negro is?” Leander H. Perez once asked in 1965. “Animals right out [of] the jungle. Passion. Welfare. Easy life. That’s the Negro.” As a state judge and … Read more
"Jesus came to give us moral guidance, and to prove he meant business, he let himself be killed and seen after death, so we would listen and be good." Not being raised in any particular religion myself, it wasn’t until later that I discovered that this view of Jesus’ death and resurrection (which I heard … Read more
When I was 13, I considered entering the Jesuits, but they told me when I inquired that they did not take candidates until they had completed high school. So I went back to a choice that was attractive to me for other reasons, the Congregation of Holy Cross at Notre Dame, Indiana, whose spirituality … Read more
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Garry Wills is a remarkably learned man. Graced with a powerful and confident mind and an elegant style, Wills is a forceful writer, with a clarity of conviction that is all too rare nowadays. Devoted to the rosary, the Mass, and the creed, he is deeply pious. But, above all, he … Read more
One of the sources of the atheism that plagues modern society is, according to Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, our alleged sense of being in control of things. But surely this is a mood, not a conviction. A stroll to the corner is usually sufficient reminder of one’s contingency. When are we not open to … Read more
In May 1964, in the middle of the Second Vatican Council, I published a book, The Open Church, an optimistic assessment of the changes in the Catholic Church that I believed the council would produce. I had written it in white-hot haste in my room at the Pensione Baldoni in Rome during a six-week period … Read more
Rudy Kos, former Catholic priest and convicted molester of altar boys, just spent another hot summer in the unair-conditioned Texas prison where he is serving four life sentences for hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse of minors during the 1980s and early 1990s. While Kos, 56, was hardly the first Catholic priest to sexually abuse … Read more
The Jesus Seminar, so-called, has been running out of steam. Its two flagship projects on the words of Jesus and the deeds of Jesus recently have been completed. The chairman, Robert Funk, has great agendas for reconstructing the whole of the first five centuries of Christianity, showing that the creeds and theology of St. Paul … Read more
When Robert Funk announced the founding of the Jesus Seminar in 1985, he made a point of saying that all its work would be above-board. “We are going to carry out our work in full public view,” the New Testament scholar told a gathering of scholars in Berkley, California. “We will not only honor the … Read more
Biblical scholarship is usually granted instant credibility today because it is considered “scientific.” Thus, the findings of the Jesus Seminar, however ill-founded, nevertheless quickly become front-page news. The assumption is that “science” has once again exploded claims about the Jesus found in the New Testament and preached by the Church. On the other hand, the … Read more