One of the disappointments of the post-Vatican II period has been the glacial pace of the growth in Catholic biblical literacy the Council hoped to inspire. Why the slow-down? Several reasons suggest themselves. The hegemony of the historical-critical method of biblical study has taught two generations of Catholics that the Bible is too complicated for … Read more
One of the things I have always found most delightful about the Catholic Church is nuns. Protestants have fearsome and holy women, but they don’t have nuns. There is something feisty and admirable about a nun. Especially a nun with a ruler. How the whining ex Catholics love to whimper about the hatchet faced nuns … Read more
The irrepressibly effervescent personality of Cardinal Timothy Dolan may tempt some to think of the archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as the latest in a line of glad-handing Irish-American prelates, long on blarney and short on depth. Succumbing to that temptation would be a very serious mistake. … Read more
There are many good arguments against quickly convening a Third Vatican Council—a notion beloved of Catholics who occupy the portside cabins on the Barque of Peter. The most obvious is that Catholicism has barely begun to digest the teaching of Vatican II on the nature of the Church, the universal call to holiness, and the … Read more
Two volumes recently published by Encounter Books address key issues in the New Evangelization. The first, Marcello Pera’s Why We Must Call Ourselves Christians, is another effort by a distinguished public intellectual to call our civilization back to its foundational senses. Pera, a philosopher of science, is also an Italian legislator who served for several … Read more
Which pope said the following? The family is a kind of school of deeper humanity. But if it is to achieve the full flowering of its life and mission, it needs the kindly communion of minds and the joint deliberation of spouses, as well as the painstaking cooperation of parents in the education of … Read more
Continuity and change are complementary principles in the Catholic Church, just as they are generally. In a living entity, it’s impossible to have one without the other. Continuity is a principle of identity. It’s what keeps a person or thing the same person or thing in the face of passing time and shifting circumstance. Change … Read more
Catholics once had an intuitive understanding of sacred space: To enter a church, especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, was to enter a different kind of environment, one of the hallmarks of which was a reverent silence. Some of that intuition remains. But much of it has been lost. Thus, within the past … Read more
Like the comic, I still think of Epiphany as January 6. And yes, to me, the words “Ascension” and “Thursday” go together. (Pretty funny, given that not only was I born after Vatican II, but I didn’t even come into the Church until 1996!) I was just marveling earlier today that I perhaps am a … Read more
Lest there be any confusion, let me begin by admitting I am no liturgical expert. I have gone to some length to avoid becoming one, trying to shut controversies over the wording of the Mass out of my head while at prayer. As a convert from Anglicanism — and very High Anglicanism at that, with … Read more
Thanks to Father Z for putting me on to “Rev. Know-It-All” — the nom-de-blog of Father Richard Simon of Skokie, IL — and his recent thoughts on celebrating parts of the Mass ad orientem. He explains, first of all, why he wanted to try it: I did it as an experiment. I suspect that the … Read more
A friend of mine, a cradle Catholic who doubts her faith, asked me what she should teach her four-year old about religion. “Everything,” I said, “heaven, hell, God, angels, sin, grace, forgiveness, don’t leave anything out.” “How can I do that,” she responded, “when I’m not sure myself?” Such attempts at parental honesty can leave … Read more
The 20th, worst of centuries — if you reckon such things by as blunt an instrument as the number of civilians murdered by their own governments — was bloodied by that deadliest of things: bad philosophy. The intellectual errors of previous centuries had festered slowly in thick French and German books, still restrained by the … Read more
I am writing this on the Sunday still called Pentecost, on the very eve of “Ordinary Time.” It is the great gift of post-Vatican II — the desert that howls before us. I have been a Catholic now for six years, four months, and 23 days, and am still fumbling through what used to be … Read more
Last week, the Holy See gave the formal recognitio, or official approval, to the new English translation of the third edition of the Roman Missal, the book that contains the prayers and rubrics of the Mass. The third edition of the Roman Missal was itself approved by Pope John Paul II in 2000.While the approval of … Read more
Napoleon Bonaparte was a man who liked having things his way. To that end, you might say, he set about remaking the face of Europe. Another of the things he liked having his way was the Catholic Church, and to that end he set about remaking the hierarchy in France. In negotiating a concordat … Read more
On the third day of the conclave — October 28, 1958 — the white smoke signaled to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square the election of a new pope, Angelo Cardinal Roncalli, patriarch of Venice, who took the name of John XXIII. The Roman crowd was momentarily silenced; it could not put a face to … Read more
Last week, I chronicled something of the bafflement that ensued as I was confronted with the weirdly malleable term “neo-Catholic.” Judging from the combox discussion that followed, many readers share the tremendous confusion surrounding the term. Did it denote converts or those who loathe converts? Was it code for “neocon” or for non-neocon? Was it … Read more
In this Crisis Magazine classic, Russell Shaw explains why Catholic dissenters got so far so fast in the years following the council. The Second Vatican Council closed just over 40 years ago, on December 8, 1965. For most people, the postconciliar era had begun. But for me, that troubled time in recent Catholic … Read more
Sunday, April 19, 2009, marks the fourth anniversary of the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. Although he is now 82, a career theologian, and a former professor, Benedict’s pontificate has been anything but dull. His decisions have brought joy to conservatives and consternation to liberals. He has inspired young people and the … Read more
