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Send down, ye heavens from above, your rain Let righteousness rain down on mortal plains Forget Thy wrath, O Lord, be not enraged And our iniquities remember not Forever, for behold a desert made Is our holy city, to us lost Sion Mount deserted is, and bare A barren waste upon a barren plain Jerusalem…
In this essay about the relationship between C. S. Lewis and Roy Campbell, the “bearded poet” whom Lewis lampoons in The Pilgrim’s Regress, we will chart their troubled and mercurial relationship, which lurched, sometimes violently, between enmity and friendship. In the period between their initial meeting in Oxford as undergraduates at the end of World…
Yesterday the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Víctor Fernández, and with the approval of Pope Francis, released Fiducia Supplicans, which gives explicit approval for priests to impart a blessing on same-sex couples and couples in “irregular situations.” This declaration by the Vatican is another in a long line of shocking but…
Tucho “Heal Me with Your Mouth” Fernández shoots from the hip again. In a rapid-fire, frantic spray of responsa ad dubia, the Office Formerly Known as Holy has spewed forth another bunch of nonsense. Again, the Roman congregation cannot speak the Roman language, so the document named an official “declaration” is in various vernaculars. But…
This year, the Christmas season – whether one charts it from the first decorations going up in the stores before Halloween, and ending on December 26; keeps Advent religiously, beginning Christmas only with Midnight Mass and prolonging through the Twelve Days and in some sense to Candlemas on February 2; or else any combination of…
One may be tempted to believe that paganism is dead and buried in the ruins of Rome and the forests of Germany. However, paganism is, in fact, alive and well in the world today. It has been adapted to modernity, and it has disguised itself under new names and ideas. The mutability of human nature…
If I could only pick one or the other, I’d have to say I’m a Novus Ordo Catholic. It’s the Mass I’ve attended for most of my 65 years. My early childhood preceded the Novus Ordo, so I had nine years in the Latin Mass, but it was mostly prior to the age of reason….
This lovely liturgical season of Advent is more than a sentimental journey to the side of the manger with an ox and an ass and some straw strewn around for ambience. We Christians fast before our feasts with vigils and with whole seasons. Advent, dressed in violet and not white, is therefore penitential. We sing…
If the Office of Unity, symbolized by a sitting bishop, is necessary to the maintenance of faith—such has been the consuming preoccupation of St. Ignatius—holiness of life is the reason for it. And what is holiness? Nothing less than doing God’s will from moment to moment, to the very last breath; an oblation of self…
Now that the leaves have changed and Notre Dame has (regrettably) been eliminated from college football playoff consideration, many college seniors are putting together their law school applications for fall 2024. A short three years ago, I was in their shoes, trying to balance a busy academic schedule, social commitments, and a job with studying…
