Modern popular culture prizes the role of the therapist, whose services, we are assured, can aid a troubled marriage, heal an addicted psyche or get an unruly (almost always male) child to behave better. The saint whose feast-day falls on August 20 was the greatest Christian psychologist of the Middle Ages. In St Bernard of … Read more
I was in Kraków, and I knew I would go to Auschwitz sometime, but I didn’t know when. It was inevitable but unplanned—you can’t plan to visit Auschwitz like you plan to visit the Wieliczka Salt Mines. Then I was wandering around the streets of Kraków one morning and suddenly I hailed a cab. After … Read more
Too often academics are impressed with novelty as it appears in history, preferring to emphasize what they see as discontinuities and divergences, rather than attempting to study development rightly understood. This is for two reasons. The first is that the long shadow of a whiggish progressivism is still upon them. Lurking in the back of … Read more
Her life bore such eloquence of pain that when she left it—August 3, 1964—her friend Thomas Merton could recall no other writer of the last century to compare her with. Rather, he said, she summoned the voice of Sophocles: an artist whose vision had likewise reached into the dark places of the human heart, there … Read more
In London, at a public place called Guildhall, Catholic prisoners were being examined. The chief interrogator, proceeding methodically, asked one of the prisoners if he recognized that Elizabeth was the Queen of England, even though she had been excommunicated by the pope. The prisoner, carefully weighing his words, admitted that Elizabeth was the Queen, and, … Read more
When asked by a puzzled journalist how she ended up running a home for impoverished cancer victims in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop simply noted that she had taken St. Vincent de Paul’s motto as her own: “I am for God and the poor.” The writer was curious because he knew that Rose … Read more
Tomorrow, July 11, is the feast of St. Benedict and the anniversary of the refounding of St. Peter’s Abbey of Solesmes, France in 1833 by Ven. Dom Prosper Guéranger and five other priests. Apart from the Benedictines, you may wonder why this event has significance. Solesmes became a great center of renewal for the entire … Read more
In his last moments on earth, Jesus commissioned His apostles, “Go … and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19), and he promised that they would be witnesses “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). In the latter half of the eighteenth century, few places were geographically farther from Judea than Alta, California, and … Read more
A French-speaking, enslaved man of African descent, he rubbed shoulders with the white New York elite as a ladies’ hairdresser. Possessed of the means to purchase his own liberty, he instead chose to provide for those around him—including the woman who owned him—and sought the liberty of other slaves. Once rudely refused entrance to a … Read more
The great reform movement within western Christendom that began in the late eleventh century had as one of its primary targets a Church subservient to the State. Reformers sought to secure ecclesiastical freedom—not a firm separation from the State, but a proper clarification of roles. The ultimate purpose of that freedom was to allow for … Read more
At the heart of every religion worth its salt lies the problem of evil. The intractable issue of pain, disorder, suffering, and moral turpitude manifests itself infallibly in every genuine human spiritual longing. This problem is compounded in the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. How can an omnipotent and omniscient God—creator of both … Read more
Mark Twain considered his biography of Saint Joan of Arc, whose feast we celebrate Friday, to be his best work. He called the Maid of Orleans “easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced.” The story of St. Joan is well known by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, but we … Read more
Every year on the Feast of the Assumption, Catholics of native descent hold a powwow at Idaho’s oldest building, Sacred Heart Mission in Cataldo. For more than 150 years the Coeur d’Alenes have handed down the story of the Jesuit missionary who healed their chief’s daughter and brought the gospel to their people. This annual … Read more
In an unmarked grave in those now silent fields of Flanders lies the body of an Irish priest. Like so many caught up in the conflict that came to be known as the Great War, he was buried where he fell, without marker or tombstone; one more casualty amongst the millions. That should have been … Read more
Between Geneva and Milan lies a stunning valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains, containing the city of Aosta. This tiny Italian alpine region is one of the crossroads of Europe, bordering Switzerland and France, and containing two of the most important passes from northern countries into Italy. Today it is a bilingual place, with French and … Read more
Let us read the words of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (26:26-28), adding the words of the other sacred authors on the same subject: Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and when he had given thanks (1 Cor. 11:24), broke it, and gave … Read more
The life of John Gerard, an English Catholic and Jesuit missionary priest, well illustrates what is at stake when the power of the state is enlisted against the Catholic faith and church. The persecutions of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I meant that the English government hunted down John Gerard as though he were … Read more
In the so-called Age of Enlightenment, philosophes like Voltaire worked zealously to destroy Christianity among the elite of society, at the same time, not caring one whit for “enlightening” the lower classes. In a letter to Diderot, the famous wit wrote, “Whatever you do, keep your eye on the wretch. It must be destroyed among … Read more
Saint Augustine once observed that the “New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.” In his early years as a Manichean, St. Augustine had trouble interpreting the Bible. Subsequently, he would acknowledge the role of his intellectual pride complicit in his prior difficulty with Scripture. After his … Read more
An anomaly both then and now, Andrea Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ, c. 1480, has often been called a tour-de-force of perspective. This small tempera painting was found by Mantegna’s son in the artist’s personal collection at his death. The Early Renaissance masterpiece likely disturbed its viewers with its strangeness—the composition, the point of … Read more