Our Lord never despised the rich. Throughout his life, he moved among different classes of people with authority and ease. He converses with poor fishermen, but also with the scholars in the temple. He heals blind beggars, but also responds to the request of a centurion with a household full of servants. He was born … Read more
The Sebastiani family has been making and selling wine in California for more than one hundred years. One of its Napa Valley wines bears the intriguing label, “Aquinas,” in honor of the Catholic Church’s greatest philosopher/theologian. The choice of this label might raise some eyebrows. What is the “Angelic Doctor’s” name doing on a product that comes … Read more
Just as Mr. Darcy’s aunt, the overbearing Lady Catherine De Bourgh, held that if she’d ever been taught music she would have been a great proficient, I’ve sometimes had the chumpaciousness to think that if I’d ever learned to draw I’d have been a good cartoonist. These inflated thoughts generally occur when I’ve got a … Read more
Not for the first time in his own indispensable blog, Protect the Pope, Deacon Nick has drawn our attention to another attack on Catholic blogs, coming from a familiar prelatical source. In a homily given during the Diocese of Westminster’s recent Mass following the election of Pope Francis, Archbishop Nichols quoted the new Pope’s reflection … Read more
Humans are given to easy answers, especially when confronted with the dizzying intricacy of the world we inhabit. It is far simpler to attempt to account for complex causes with simple explanations, or to distill sophisticated historical and theological arguments into easily digested bits. Too often it seems that people think that St. Dominic swung … Read more
I recently had a brief conversation with a former colleague of mine who is Catholic, and who wanted to inquire about certain aspects of the faith that she was struggling with. She mentioned to me that, while she goes to Mass on Sundays and “has faith,” she nevertheless expressed a desire that there was more … Read more
Last year, Christopher Kaczor, professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, edited a magnificent book entitled O Rare Ralph McInerny: Stories and Reflections on a Legendary Notre Dame Professor. The book is a collection of essays written by former friends, colleagues, acquaintances, strangers, and novel-readers that knew the remarkable and beloved professor at Our Lady’s … Read more
Blogging is not typically a sphere of life that I prefer to tread into. More often than not, it seems that blogs have become merely an outlet for those who neither want nor seek genuine and fruitful intellectual discussion. This is, of course, not a denial that no good blogs exist, nor that good ones … Read more
The Second Reading for Sunday, August 26, is from St. Paul (Ephesians 5:21-32), in which Paul offers the instruction in 5:22, “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands, as to the Lord.” Following this Epistle, an optional alternative “shorter” epistle is offered; actually it is only a few lines shorter. This optional substitute reading is … Read more
When Ray Comfort comes forward with a documentary against abortion, he must be commended by his fellows in arms against the killing of children in the womb. He has done a service in the fight against the worst evil that the present generation faces. Accordingly, it is not the intention of this article to downplay … Read more
In his famous introductory chapter to A Guide for the Perplexed, the economist E. F. Schumacher talked of his “perplexity” at going to Oxford, perhaps the most famous university in the world. The title of Schumacher’s book was the same as that of a book of the medieval Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides. The perplexity of … Read more
Things in Heaven and Earth: Exploring the Supernatural, Harold Fickett, ed., Paraclete, 1998, 230 pages, $14. We are now living through a third Great Awakening. It is, of course, a far cry from anything Jonathan Edwards could have imagined. The television show, Brimstone, depicts a damned soul released from Hell with the mission of … Read more
Last week I was privileged to moderate a debate between two of the best writers on religion in the English-speaking world, Boston College philosopher Peter Kreeft and Jihadwatch director Robert Spencer. How was I able to land two eminent speakers on the same night? Easy: I was their editor. Both Kreeft and Spencer contributed eloquent … Read more
The Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) holds a central place in the tradition of Roman Catholic intellectual and spiritual life. The matrix of Aquinas’s own mystical experiences was the thirty-some years of Dominican ministry and community life that this Neapolitan nobleman began in 1244. We see Aquinas’s spiritual self-understanding reveal his deep personal love … Read more
Yesterday was the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose name I took on the day I was received into the Catholic Church almost 26 years ago. It’s hard for me to speak of the Angelic Doctor without gushing — I feel as if I know him personally, I have spent so many hours … Read more
St. Thomas Aquinas was once tricked by his fellow students who cried out, “Look! A flying ox!” Thomas dutifully went to the window to look, and his peers all laughed at him heartily. Thomas’s reply (and one of the many reasons he’s a saint): “I thought it more likely that an ox would fly than … Read more
One way I teach my students to work with language is by showing them how to play with it — just as a psych professor teaches future therapists and ex-wives how to play with people’s minds. Sometimes I combine the methods proper to both disciplines — for instance, when I keep a straight face explaining … Read more
Faith, Hope, and Charity are what the Church teaches, urbi et orbi, from day to day to cities and worlds embittering themselves by their attempts to deny Christ. But what first attracted me to Catholic teaching, from far off when I was young and still un-Christian, was the teaching on Reason. This wasn’t the church … Read more