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The hosts of nations were arrayed against him. He was beset by anguish, sorrow, and betrayal. Karl von Habsburg was a king in exile, a father separated from his children, a man of peace in a time of war. The last years of his short life were a long Lent in which he, an emperor,…
I’m always leery of people who refer to writers as “prophetic.” For example, Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” which is indeed a great poem by perhaps the most widely-read poet of the 20th century, is often called a “prophecy.” But of what? I mean to say, if you predict something bad or evil is going…
“What is the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.” This slightly nasty joke exists in many languages, an indication of how the underlying issues are not limited to isolated pockets of the global Catholic Church. Similar jibes exist in other churches, mostly those affected by liturgical reforms comparable…
This year we enjoy a rather brief span of Epiphanytide, that verdant stretch of the liturgical year in which Holy Church lingers over the manifestations of the Lord’s divinity before the purple veil of Septuagesima descends. The calendar itself catechizes. Some years Epiphanytide is fleeting, almost abrupt, curtailed by an early Easter. In some years…
Above: traditional Vespers with Cardinal Sarah. Photo by Allison Girone. Without a doubt, God created the human soul to seek beauty, revere it with awe, and find peace in its presence. As we no longer place God at the center of the moral, social, and natural order, we neglect and entirely ignore His power upon…
There are some ideas so plainly preposterous, so spectacularly stupid, that only an astrophysicist of atheist persuasion could possibly believe them. And when will we stop listening to such people, I’d like to know—all these self-styled experts eager to tell us how little we know? Especially about the origins of the universe, concerning which they…
Above: a crowd greets Gandhi in London, 1931. Often when we speak with non-Christians, an objection is raised concerning the morality – good or bad – of non-Christians. Some point out examples of non-Christian heroes who had obvious virtue – like Gandhi, for instance – and contrast them with everyday Christians who act like pagans….
There is a meme that goes around social media in various forms that states, “Nothing ever happens.” This meme is posted when there is some supposed threat leveled by a foreign government or if a sitting politician vows to raise hell if the opposing party does X, Y, or Z. Basically, the idea is that…
President Trump wants Greenland. He wants it bad. He wants it so much that he’s threatened military action (although he backtracked on that threat earlier this week) and he is willing to upend relationships with longtime allies to achieve his goal. But the question on everyone’s mind is, Why? And the additional question that should…
As seen on the latest Mass of the Ages Discover Tradition travel show, when Americans arrive on the Old Continent, and especially Catholics, they express a peculiar fascination. Some attribute this to the historical and architectural condensation of the old world. Or, related to Spain, that the Peninsula is almost a world reduced in scale….
