A sub-category of News.
After years of enduring Pride and Prejudice marathons—those BBC adaptations my wife and daughters adore with a fervor that could power a small nation—I’m calling it. Jane Austen’s masterpiece, for all its wit and charm, has been hijacked by a culture that has traded grit for gossip, purpose for pining, and covenant for curated vibes….
If you shut your eyes so that you never have to see the stars, refusing ever to stand enraptured beneath the heavens, you might as well be dead. In fact, you may already be dead, only the coroner hasn’t come round yet to confirm it. “There was a time when I gazed upon the stars…
For many Catholics, the Covid era was regarded as an illumination of sorts. Churches were shuttered, government slipped on an iron glove, and separations began to ensue. These could be seen as contractions, if you will, prior to the more serious birth pangs foretold in Matthew 24: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against…
Just like any other attempt to convene a pan-Orthodox synod (i.e., council) of the Eastern national Churches, the so-called “Pan-Orthodox Council of Constantinople” (held in Istanbul from May 10 to June 8, 1923 and pictured above) was doomed to fail from the very beginning.[1] For among the most important invited churches, several were absent: the…
During His earthly ministry, Our Lord taught His disciples the parable of the tares and wheat, using the symbolism of how they grow together and must be left thus until the harvest, lest uprooting the tares also uproot the wheat. Only at the harvest would they be celebrated. When asked to explain it, Christ declared…
One hundred years ago, no one thought birth control was okay. In 1920, the Anglican Communion declared, By 1930, they had changed their tune to: “The Conference believes that the conditions of modern life call for a fresh statement from the Christian Church on the subject of sex” (Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 9). Ominous words….
Pope Leo XIII, who made the newest Doctor of the Church, St. John Henry Newman, a cardinal in 1879, established the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed dehumanizing labor conditions in the face of the industrial revolution, unchecked capitalism, and socialism. Pope Leo XIV took the name Leo…
Hang out on social media for any length of time, and you’ll encounter a Troll: an account that exists solely to annoy and attack others, to derail conversations, and to generally be as unpleasant as possible. Dealing with Trolls seems to be the cost of doing business on social media. Trolls aren’t the only problem…
Pius Parsch noted that the 11th, 12th, and 13th Sundays after Pentecost form a triad on sacramental grace: baptism, healing, and gratitude for purification. The context of summer, with its harvests, provides the natural analogy. Just as zucchini overflow gardens with comic abundance, so grace superabounds. The cycle of Sundays after Pentecost is like a…
Were one to conduct a survey of modern-day Americans, taken at random, it is likely that not one in a hundred would have heard of the poet Richard Crashaw. Were one to cross the Atlantic and conduct a similar experiment with modern-day Englishmen, it is likely that the result would be the same. This neglect…
