While young people today have no trouble broadcasting their dark secrets all over social media, they aren’t willing to tell them to the one person who could shine upon them a true light.
A lesson from Alex Honnold and the spiritual life.
I would say that even for those Catholics who regularly frequent the sacrament of penance, there is a tendency to obscure what’s actually taking place in the confessional.
The sacrament of reconciliation is the ‘Clavis David’ in opening up heaven to the repentant sinner, but waiting for the hour of death is like playing a game of Russian Roulette with your soul.
Invoking the sex abuse scandal as a reason to keep children from Confession is an argument that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
The logic behind not scheduling confessions in the Paschal Triduum is based on an anachronistic reading of liturgical history irrelevant to contemporary pastoral practice and needs.
The pope said priests can “never deny absolution.” Is this true? Absolutely not.
Penitents do not have an absolute right to absolution: they must meet what the sacrament itself requires for the forgiveness of sins.
The boiling frog never marks that first millisecond, when the water in his pot becomes just a half-degree warmer. And so, Catholics living in America circa 2019 couldn’t possibly appreciate the magnitude of what happened this week in Australia. Yet I have no doubt my grandsons will. Here are the facts. In December of 2018, … Read more
Months ago, I somehow got in an online argument defending the sacrifices Roman Catholic priests make for their parishioners. At one point, I mentioned the amount of time devoted to hearing confessions. At this point, a woman on the thread as much as laughed at me through the computer. She insisted that Roman Catholic priests … Read more
Though I have written several articles about Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (AL), I am repeatedly struck anew, as time goes on, by its inexorably destructive implications. Despite AL’s generally good summary of Catholic teaching on marriage and the family, its moral subjectivism ultimately undermines not only the truths affirmed in the document, … Read more
Vainly do men of our time seek remedies for the cultural maladies affecting us. Each exertion of the political elite or the bien pensant only seem to deepen their woes. Faced with such existential crisis modern men seek corrupting escapes or the violence of bankrupt political extremism. Indeed, these things assume the kind of devotion … Read more
In the midst of moral and sacramental debates in the Church, it is easy to focus on ecclesial politics and to look there for solutions. Without denying the importance of such debates, it is also helpful to take a step back and to examine the roots of the crisis. The Church’s Cross: A Crisis of … Read more
Two stories come to mind when thinking about a Christian’s protracted struggle with sin. One is about a woman who goes to Confession, and, with frustration tells her priest, “Well, Father, I feel a little bit embarrassed. I’m here again to confess the same three sins.” Without pausing the good reverend replies, “Would you feel … Read more
There was a Victorian member of the Royal Academy who boasted that his paintings were the best because they were the biggest. More perceptively, Cicero and Pascal and Madame Recamier and Mark Twain made opposite apologies: each had written a long letter because they did not have the time to write a short one. Not only is verbosity … Read more
Abortion has long sat in the middle of a three-street ecclesial intersection, namely, those of Sin, Crime, and Sanction. The meeting of any two of these factors would make for a perilous perch but the confluence of all three is fraught with opportunities for confusion. At the risk of serious over-simplification, let me sketch the … Read more
We humans can be a bit fickle sometimes. What we choose to do with our time often depends directly on how the people and places with which we associate ourselves make us feel. If we don’t feel welcome in a place, we probably don’t stay long. If we try a place or organization out on the … Read more
Growing up Catholic at a time when everything you needed to know to save your soul was presumptively understood by everybody, there was never any excuse for those of us who fell short or missed the mark. Having been carefully coached by legions of dedicated priests and nuns, where would the wiggle room be when … Read more
When asked once about a sermon he’d just heard, the legendarily laconic Calvin Coolidge managed to summarize its theme in a single word: “Sin.” Pressed for details concerning the preacher’s views on the subject, President Coolidge added four more: “He was against it.” Where Coolidge himself stood on the matter, the record does not show. … Read more
One of the many forms of self-promotion, at my old mater ferox, was a regular bulletin called “Princeton in the Nation’s Service,” detailing the many ways in which Princetonians past and present were making the world a better, that is a more Princetonian, place to live. I suspect that, after the ordinary fashion of human … Read more