A sub-category of News.
I have a joke for you that goes like this: the head of the DDF—the office formerly known as Holy—and Joel Osteen walk into a bar and draft a document and it is called Fiducia Supplicans. I know you are rolling on the floor laughing; or more likely, you are wondering when I am going…
Above: Vatican City – April 16, 2015. Pope Francis meets with the bishops of Kenya who are on their ad limina visit in Rome, Italy. © L’Osservatore Romano. In the ongoing controversy regarding same-sex blessing, the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar has released a response to Pope Francis and Tucho “Spirituality and…
One of the expressions we hear most in recent years is “pastoral.” “Pastoral reasons” are used to justify some initiatives in the ecclesial sphere, as we have seen in Fiducia supplicans. “Pastoral motifs” are also behind many changes in liturgy and sacred music. It almost seems that pastoral care has become a sort of passepartout…
If the great tree of truth were suddenly to topple, taking down the beautiful and the good with it, what would be left? Once the three transcendentals have fallen to the ground, is there anywhere in the forest where hope might reappear? Or would that be the end of everything? Only if there is no…
It’s 2024, which means it’s an election year, which means…what exactly? The presidential primary season begins in less than two weeks, and the ridiculousness of this year’s cycle should not be overlooked. First, the primaries are foregone conclusions, met with all the enthusiasm of a parish singing “Be Not Afraid” for the 487th time in…
“…And what do you do with a liberal arts degree?” is something anyone who has attended or works at a small school like Wyoming Catholic College or Thomas Aquinas College is used to hearing. When someone asks: “what is your major?” you usually know that “liberal arts” won’t actually mean anything to them. This is…
“Christianity has died many times and risen again,” wrote G.K. Chesterton, “for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” These words ring true of history in general and especially perhaps of recent history. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, dispassionate observers might have considered that Christianity had died or…
The signature of our time is the betrayal of the small by the powerful. Bureau thugs with mammoth government backing surveil Catholic families; protestors fester in prison for years without a trial; bishops are stripped from their flock without canonical justification. And the man who should most have our backs, the man who has charge…
Modernity bombards us with opportunities to get angry. Televised news, social media, and digital journalism capture events from around the globe and tee them up to the public consciousness with seamless rapidity. It is no surprise that in a sinful world much of what we see on our phones and TVs would move us to…
At Christmastime, my older brother and I were remembering Stanley Wells, our grandfather who died in 1985 from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was he who was responsible, perhaps more than anyone, for the three generations of seventy or so Catholic family members gathered on Christmas night at our sister’s home. Specifically, we talked about what…
