The Catholic Thing podcast

#Society #Religion #News Talk #Christianity #News #Podcasting Education #Catholic Thing

30:55

A secret field that summons lightning. A massive spiral that disappears into a salt lake. A celestial observatory carved into a volcano. Meet the wild—and sometimes explosive—world of land art, where artists craft masterpieces with dynamite and bulldozers. In our Season 2 premiere, guest Dylan Thuras, cofounder of Atlas Obscura, takes us off road and into the minds of the artists who literally reshaped parts of the Southwest. These works aren’t meant to be easy to reach—or to explain—but they just might change how you see the world. Land art you’ll visit in this episode: - Double Negative and City by Michael Heizer (Garden Valley, Nevada) - Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson (Great Salt Lake, Utah) - Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt (Great Basin Desert, Utah) - Lightning Field by Walter De Maria (Catron County, New Mexico) - Roden Crater by James Turrell (Painted Desert, Arizona) Via Podcast is a production of AAA Mountain West Group.…

The Catholic Thing

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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

67 episodes

The Catholic Thing

updated about 14 hours ago

Series home•Feed

The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

67 episodes

#Society #Religion #News Talk #Christianity #News #Podcasting Education #Catholic Thing

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The Catholic Thing

1
tHidden Religion in Washington 6:54

14 hours ago6:54

6:54

By David G Bonagura, Jr. But first a note from Robert Royal: Friends, The Catholic Thing, like all things, lives and moves and has its being in the One True God. But its earthly survival depends on you. All of you. Generously giving together to keep things going. We only come to you twice a year with hat in hand - but now's the time again. Please take a minute to ensure that we will all be here for the rest of this year and for many years to come Now for today's column... In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which restricted child labor. Congress believed that children possessed an intrinsic value above monetary quantification. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which forbade discrimination on the grounds of race, color, or national origin. Congress believed that all human beings were created equal and therefore due equal treatment under the law. In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which forbade discrimination against those with disabilities. Congress believed that physical abilities, or lack of them, do not constitute the essence of a person. His essence, by extension, comes from some other source, and the government is not it. Religion, we often hear, should have no bearing on politics: the wall between church and state shall not be breached. Yet these three laws, to which we could add others, flow directly from a central Christian belief: that the human person is created by God. By fashioning all men and women in His image and likeness, God has endowed human beings with an innate dignity that no other person or entity may violate. We take it for granted today that the government's functions include protecting citizens' rights, many of which, including those protected in these three laws, are pre-political, that is, they are part of persons' nature, not grants of government privilege. We fail to realize that many of these rights are political expressions of the prior Christian belief that all persons are equal because they are all children of the one Father in Heaven. As a result, one person or group cannot be greater than any other, nor exploit any other. "Political problems," wrote Russell Kirk, "at bottom, are religious and moral problems." In other words, our beliefs and morals shape our politics, not the other way around. Beneath every hotly contested political topic of today or yesteryear - immigration, tariffs, welfare, health care, DEI, the Cold War, supply-side economic theory, segregation, slavery, westward expansion, independence from Britain - lie beliefs that shape the approach and policy. There is no such thing as a "neutral" politics devoid of prior beliefs and principles. Sometimes these beliefs are tenets of Christianity, such as the inherent dignity of the person, which has given rise to the push for legal equality. I doubt that vociferous secularists who decry any odor of religion in public life would reject equality because it is "tainted" by religion. Other beliefs are philosophical, such as certain economic and geopolitical theories. And sometimes beliefs come from a distinctly modern kind of religion that eschews traditional forms such as churches or hierarchies. These beliefs stem from ideologies, systems of ideas abstracted from various theories and harmonized into programs to direct a nation (or the world itself) toward preconceived ends. Like revealed religion, ideologies have dogmas and exist to save human beings from the sins of the world. Just as Christian beliefs lie hidden in Washington, modern ideologies lie hidden there, too. Expressive individualism, the belief that the individual and his sexual freedom are the most important considerations of society, drives abortion and family law. Gender ideology, the belief that gender is a construct of the mind divorced from nature, drives school curricula, medical laws, and cultural practices from library collections to the bizarre "drag queen story hour." Diversity, equity, and inclusion, th...…

The Catholic Thing

1
Conclave Haste? 7:11

1 day ago7:11

7:11

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza. But first a note from Robert Royal: We're off to a strong start for our mid-year fundraiser, which began yesterday. But if you didn't see our initial request, today is a good day as well to make your contribution. The need is obvious, the means clear. If you value strong reporting and analysis of what's going on in the Church and the world - and faithful encouragement of what should be going on - TCT is your "thing." We're lean, tough (not mean), and always appropriately serene. Help keep this vital work of ours going. Click the button. Do a good deed today. Support TCT. Now for today's column... Conclave 2025 was not, by historical standards, exceptionally short. But it was short. It was the third straight Conclave to conclude on its first full day. Is that a cause for concern? No one really knows except those who were in the Sistine Chapel. They are sworn to secrecy. Only Pope Leo XIV is completely free to ask them about their experience, and only the Holy Father can make any necessary modifications in future Conclave practice. It's too early to be thinking about the next Conclave, but it would be advisable for Leo to take informal soundings now, while memories are still fresh, even if there is no urgency to act. There are not many Cardinals who have broad experience of Conclaves. Only five have taken part in three Conclaves (2005, 2013 and 2025), and twenty more were part of two (2013, 2025). They are the ones who could offer some comparison of their experiences. The strict seclusion and secrecy of the Conclave is intended to preserve the freedom of the Cardinals to act without exterior influence, to protect them from external pressure. They are not able to follow what is going on outside, and no one will ever know how an individual elector voted. That permits, for example, Cardinal Stephen Chow of Hong Kong - should he be minded to do so - to vote for a candidate that would defy the Chinese Communist Party. Or to vote for one who would capitulate. He is free to vote his conscience. Yet the digital age may create another kind of pressure. I asked several Cardinals after the 2013 Conclave whether there was pressure to come to a quick conclusion, to produce a result for an impatient instant-communication world. Their answer was yes, that there was a sense that a "deadlocked" Conclave - even just proceeding to a third day - might signal division and disunity. The pressure in times gone by was real; indeed, Catholic sovereigns would send a Cardinal from their territories to carry their "veto" into the conclave. The last time that was done was in 1903, when the Cardinal from Kraków exercised the veto of the Habsburg emperor. St. Pius X eliminated that almost immediately. Potential pressure today comes not from one regime against a particular papabile. It's not really from anyone but from everyone, from a digital world unimagined when St. John Paul the Great wrote the current rules for the conclave in 1996. The pressure for a quick resolution may well impinge on the freedom of the electors. I did not report on this Conclave, but many of those who did wrote in advance that, given the large number of Cardinals, many of whom were rather unknown to each other, the voting might take longer. To the contrary, it seems that the result was clear before pranzo on the first full day. It is possible that a new kind of external pressure is felt; to paraphrase Jesus at the Last Supper: what is to be done should be done quickly. Again, one does not know. It may well be that today's speed of travel means that Conclaves actually "begin" much earlier, in the formal daily meetings ("general congregations") and the many informal gatherings which precede the conclave itself. It's plausible that what had previously been sorted out in the first series of ballots is now already done before the Cardinals actually begin voting. The recent 24-hour Conclaves may not actually have been conducted in undue haste. Still, the elec...…

The Catholic Thing

1
Overcoming the Crisis of a Church Divided 7:04

3 days ago7:04

7:04

By Robert Royal. The word I hear most from Catholics as we approach the end of the first month under our American-born pope is "relief." Serious tensions had accumulated within the Church under Pope Francis, who sometimes seemed to be deliberately - or haphazardly - exacerbating divisions. Openness, dialogue, and listening towards liberals well beyond the borders of the Faith, but exclusion, peremptory fiats, and ignoring of traditional Catholics. And yet, the progressives, too, felt dissatisfied: Francis died without allowing deaconesses (let alone women priests), pulled away the football after repeatedly teeing it up in front of the LGBT+ crowd, dithered over the runaway German "synodal" way. And in the end, he even kicked the can down the road for his own synodal path by removing the "hot-button" issues from consideration by assigning them to ten "study groups" (reports due this month) and scheduling an "ecclesial assembly" (whatever that is) three years from now, when he almost certainly knew he would not be around. So, it's no surprise that many Catholics are, at least for the moment, enjoying a breath of fresh air in the Church. With the possible exception of Robert Prevost, Pope Leo XIV himself, whose job it now is to be pontifex maximus, the supreme bridge-builder, in the midst of it all. He's receiving granular scrutiny already for what he may or may not be signaling about the direction of his papacy. And that, too, is a concerning factor: Like everyone else in our social-media age, whatever he does or says (and sometimes things invented about him) is instantly transmitted and judged, not so much by the standards of the Gospel as by the most superficial and overheated modes of our times. Jesus famously left us the saying: "every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." (Matthew 12:25) (It's telling that if you Google "a house divided," it returns a TV series of that name, and only further down the Gospel reference.) And given our media environment, Pope Leo XIV was right to tell the assembled journalists after his election that, whether they are aware of it or not, they have a high calling, and an especially difficult one today: "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9). This is a Beatitude that challenges all of us, but it is particularly relevant to you, calling each one of you to strive for a different kind of communication, one that does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it. Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others. In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say "no" to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war. That's easier said - though well said - than done, especially since journalists themselves have for years been drawn into a different "paradigm" of their profession. With a few noble exceptions, they often now think of themselves as social justice warriors instead of reporters. They serve up, or fail to cover, stories already intended to produce partisan outcomes (and online clicks) rather than information and context by which people can make responsible judgments. Leo rightly added: "let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice. Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world. Disarmed and disarming communication allows us to share a different view of the world and to act in a manner consistent with our human dignity." [emphasis added] Here at The Catholic Thing we have not shied away from controversy or recalling hard truths. But controversy is something different than combat...…

The Catholic Thing

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Two Reflections on the Visitation 13:36

5 days ago13:36

13:36

Elizabeth's Faith as Shown in the Visitation By Michael Pakaluk Mary travelled "with haste" to visit Elizabeth. The trip of 90 miles can be done in under four days by a fit person walking quickly. Conception takes place in the fallopian tube, and after that, for about six days, the embryo travels down the tube to implant in the uterus. Therefore, the Lord was an embryo in the blastula stage in one of Mary's fallopian tubes, not even implanted, when Mary greeted Elizabeth. Elizabeth, five months earlier, when she had discovered she was pregnant, had placed herself in seclusion. She would not go to the market and share her joy with her neighbors. Apparently, she was overwhelmed by God's mercy and wished to devote the time of her pregnancy, silently, to prayer and contemplation. This was truly the first "novena," the first nine-unit time of prayer (it was not, as people sometimes say, the gathering of the Apostles between the Ascension and Pentecost). Elizabeth, therefore, teaches all Christian moms that the nine months of pregnancy are a time ordained by nature's God for more intense prayer. It was because she was in seclusion that even her kinswoman, Mary, had not heard of her pregnancy and needed to be told about it by the angel Gabriel. What did Elizabeth contemplate in her seclusion? No doubt, Scriptures about the Messiah, and about the woman who would be the mother of the Messiah and the New Eve. But she also, doubtless, dwelt on the angel's words to Zechariah, which her husband had written down for her on wax tablets, just as he later wrote down, "His name is John." Elizabeth knew that if her son was to be the forerunner of the Messiah, then the mother of the Messiah was to be a contemporary or a near contemporary. She could infer that just as she, an old woman and barren, had conceived the Messiah's forerunner, so it would be a Virgin who would conceive the Messiah himself, as Scripture foretold, in its authoritative interpretation at the time: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel." (Isaiah chapter 7:14) Would it be Elizabeth's role to be the forerunner of the Mother of the Messiah, just as her son was to be the forerunner of the Messiah? Certainly, in her mind, contemplating this woman, so like her, she would have already regarded her as the most blessed of all women. In spirit, she would have given this title to this woman well before Mary's visit. Luke tells us that Mary entered the home of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth specifically. Zechariah is not mentioned in his own home, for the reason that he was not with Elizabeth, as Elizabeth was maintaining seclusion. In any case, he was mute. Mary is apparently the first person Elizabeth has associated with in five months. Elizabeth recognizes that just as the sound of Mary's greeting reaches her ears, the baby in her womb jumped. She says in fact that it jumped for joy: and since she is the mom, her interpretation must be taken as decisive. Likewise, she interprets this joy as joy at encountering the Messiah. Remember, she has been in seclusion. News could not have travelled that fast, in any case. Mary has not had time to speak. It is solely inference: from the fact that her baby jumps, she infers that the Messiah is present. He cannot be Mary. Therefore, Mary is carrying Him. Filled with the Holy Spirit, she expresses in a loud voice - recognition. "It is you - you are the woman I have been contemplating who is blessed among women." And then she affirms the presence of the Lord, "blessed is the fruit of your womb." Elizabeth thereby witnesses to the Lordship, and the divine and human nature, of the blastula floating within Mary. Did Mary have any subjective experience when she conceived Jesus, so that she recognized the moment when "the power of the Most High" overshadowed her? Normally, conception is not perceived. If she had no subjective ex...…

The Catholic Thing

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The Blessed Virgin and the Holy Spirit 6:32

6 days ago6:32

6:32

by Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas. In these last days of May, we pray the novena to the Holy Spirit (May 30-June 7), in preparation for Pentecost. And it's useful to reflect on what the Holy Spirit did for the Blessed Virgin Mary, making her both Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church. By this approach, we cap our honoring of Mary during her month of May. We honor the Holy Spirit, and we honor also all Christians who have taken seriously the work of the Holy Spirit after the example of Mary. All of Mary's greatness as a Christian is owing to the fact that the Holy Spirit came upon her, and that she lived in the presence of God, continuously aware of His presence in her life. Our Lady cooperated with the Spirit's promptings in loving obedience to God's Word; she daily renewed her fiat at the Annunciation. Mary the Virgin heeded the Lord's plan for her and thus became fruitful. Mary's life was an ongoing Magnificat; she was a woman of peace and joy because she gave the Spirit of God free rein in her life. When she experienced the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, she did not keep Him to herself; she immediately went forth to share that experience and its meaning, for she realized that a life in the Spirit necessarily involves service to others. So, not considering her own precarious situation, she went through the rough hill country to tend to her elderly and unexpectedly pregnant cousin, Elizabeth. What does all this have to do with you and me? A great deal, for what happened in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary can and must happen in our own lives. Each of us has received the Holy Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation. Have we done anything with the Spirit? Are we more peaceful, more loving, more joyous for having received those sacraments? If not, we have not activated the power of the Spirit in our lives. Here's a test to see whether you are a Spirit-filled person. It's very simple: What have you done with the gifts the Spirit of God has given to you? Jesus said, "By their fruits you will know them" (Matthew 7:16). We know the fruit Our Lady brought forth, for every day we say: "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." Are you possessed by God's Spirit? Have you brought forth Christ to the world in which you live? We have also celebrated Mother's Day this month. Christian mothers find their inspiration and example in the Blessed Mother. In an era when motherhood is denigrated, it's well to affirm the irreplaceability of the vocation of motherhood and thus the debt owed to each and every mother, not just our own. "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world!" One of the great recent confessors of the faith, Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty, confronting the depersonalization and utilitarianism of Communism, felt compelled to write a paean to mothers, worth recalling in our own day, which has replicated that self-same depersonalization and utilitarianism: The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral - a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby's body. The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God's creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creatures. God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation. What on God's good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother? The great Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, composed a grand work, "The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe." Interestingly, in Hebrew, ruach has a number of meanings: breath, wind, spirit - all of which come into play in Pentecost. Hopkins brings all this together in this sampling of his verses: WILD air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere, That each eyelash or hair Girdles; goes home betwixt The fleeciest, frailest-flixed Snowflake; that's fairly mixed ...…

The Catholic Thing

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What the Ascension Means 6:12

7 days ago6:12

6:12

by Stephen P. White. but first a note : Be sure to tune in to EWTN tonight - Thursday, May 29th at 8 PM Eastern - Host Raymond Arroyo interviews TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal about his new book Martyrs of the New Millennium: Global Persecution of Christians in the 21st Century. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel. now for today's column... It is easy to think of Heaven as a merely spiritual reality in which we are free from the physical toil and sorrow of this earthly life. But we never ought to forget that Heaven is for bodies, too. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Today's feast of the Ascension is a particular reminder that we ought to see our own bodies - and use our bodies - with such an eye toward higher things. We humans don't make any sense without our bodies. Sure, we can imagine ourselves (and unfortunately many people today do so imagine themselves) as a mind or spirit or "consciousness" trapped in a meat-machine. Our bodies, we tell ourselves, have no more intrinsic meaning than any of the rest of vibrating matter that makes up our world. All this stuff only has so much meaning as we give to it. Accordingly, we imagine ourselves at liberty to manipulate and use all this mere stuff within such ever-expanding limits our technology, or the market, will allow. The misery caused by this way of seeing ourselves and our world is incalculable. This sort of disembodied ethos even crops up in certain corners of Catholic moral theology wherein the concrete nature of acts is diminished or denied and all that we are left with for distinguishing good from evil is intention. It is a tempting path, one which grows more tempting by the day as our power to manipulate the material world increases. It is also tempting in that it requires no up-front disavowal of God or spiritual realities, only a denial that matter comes with its own built-in meaning. Deny the Creator or deny the nature of his Creation; it's all more or less the same to the Devil, who really doesn't care so much if you're actually an atheist so long as you act like one. "The truth," as we read in Gaudium et Spes, "is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light." This mystery of the incarnate Word includes more than the moment the Word became flesh in the womb of Mary. It encompasses more, even, than the birth, life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Ascension, too, is part of the mystery of the incarnate Word. In the words of St. Augustine, "The Resurrection of our Lord is our hope; the Ascension of our Lord is our glorification." If the mystery of man takes on light only in the mystery of the Incarnate word, then the Ascension tells us something fundamental about our own humanity and our own bodies. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, retains the fullness of his human nature. Yes, Christ's body is resurrected and glorified. But the body that rose from the grave, the body that still bears the marks of the Crucifixion, this same body ascends into Heaven. Christ takes his place at the right hand of the Father, not by shedding his body, but with that same body. In the words of Pope St. John Paul II, "For all eternity Christ takes his place as the firstborn among many brethren: our nature is with God in Christ. And as man, the Lord Jesus lives forever to intercede for us with the Father. At the same time, from His throne of glory, Jesus sends out to the whole Church a message of hope and a call to holiness." Because Christ, who shares our nature, sits on the throne of glory, the horizon against which we understand our own lives and our own bodies, has been irrevocably altered. That is the Church's "message of hope"- a share in Christ's own glory - but how is it, as John Paul II said, "a call to holiness?" Does he simply mean that holiness is the condition and pat...…

The Catholic Thing

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Slumming as Only Pharisees Can Do 5:32

8 days ago5:32

5:32

By Anthony Esolen. "Tony," said a high school friend to me, and he meant it, "you've got the brains and the good looks, but you don't know how to dress." That was in our Catholic school, and the boys all wore jackets and ties, and kept themselves clean-shaved, too, or else our good and wise Dean, Mr. Buzad, would call them into his office where they could perform that operation with an old razor and cold water. That came just at the end of a time when boys and girls took some care to dress in a somewhat formal way, at all appropriate occasions, lest they embarrass themselves. I see now that it was far more important than I knew. These proprieties, in school, were small acts of submission to something greater than us, and acts of charity toward one another. Among the boys, because everyone wore a jacket and tie, no one stood out as obnoxious or aggressive in dress; and what we wore was a sign that we were at school, not on the ballfield, not at the pool hall, not at the beach. Among the girls, because everyone wore the uniform, and because they were forbidden to turn it into a miniskirt, there was no costly and distracting competition; no one's uniform said, "I am richer than you are," much less, "I am more willing than you are." Yet this sense of propriety, or of the goodness of ceremony, was being attacked incessantly in popular culture - or I should say by the engines of mass entertainment, crushing true human culture to rubble. Nor did the Church put up enough resistance. Many a religious order and many a priest went along with the times, mistaking informality for fellowship, and permissiveness for love. That was not only incorrect. It hurt people, even when they were a part of the demolition crew and so were not aware of the loss. But that crew was led by the elites, not by the poor or the working class. For ordinary human beings are attracted to ceremony, as they are attracted to music and art: ceremony is the music of human gesture, extended to a congregation, an assembly, a platoon, a school, in the service of what is beyond them all, and that means, though it may be but implicit or as secret in their souls as a pearl in a box, in the service of the divine. Ceremony has a power to unite that is unlike anything else in our experience. I recall here one morning at Saint John the Evangelist Church, in Stamford, Connecticut. I had given a lecture the evening before, and stayed overnight in the rectory. Before breakfast that day, some men of the parish came together, as was their custom once a week, for morning prayer. I joined them. We knelt on the hard marble floor - it was a men's group, you see. We prayed, and then we sat down to hear a lesson on the day's reading, given by the shrewd Msgr. Di Giovanni, who had organized the group and knew what he was about. Then came breakfast. Among those in attendance were men of all ages and ethnicities and from all walks of life: the stockbroker, kneeling on that same floor next to the construction worker, equal before the word of God. Now, if you asked people simply to show up for an informal talk, I doubt that the Hispanic man with his marked accent would have felt nearly as comfortable doing so. I doubt then that the strong friendships I saw quite clearly, across what otherwise divides us, would have developed. It is precisely the ceremony that sweeps such differences aside, just as, when I was a boy, the men in military uniform, marching to our town's cemeteries early in the morning on Memorial Day to fire a 21-gun salute in honor of the deceased veterans, were visible not by what they did for a living nor by what each individual chose to wear, but by their common submission to the national honor. When I am on the road and I attend Mass at a church I don't know, the more informal it is, the more the chatter, the less comfortable I feel, because behind that informality and chatter is the message, "This is how we celebrate Mass here, because we like it this way." And you eithe...…

The Catholic Thing

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How Do People Even Do It? 5:24

9 days ago5:24

5:24

by Randall Smith. "How do people even do it?" she asked. "How do people who don't believe in God get through this?" My friend was applying to graduate schools. "These decisions are in the hands of people I don't know and who don't know me. And they will affect the rest of my life - whom I meet, I marry, my children, my career. If you didn't believe a provident God was watching over all this," she exclaimed, "it would just be depressing." I know what she means. So many things in life are outside our control. But there's also this even more depressing reality. I am burdened with sin. This should come as no surprise, certainly not to people who know me. I'm not making a public confession here (although that reminds me; I should probably go). I mean, it's not like I've killed millions of people or anything. But that's a low bar, and I would prefer to set it higher. Let's just say that if the Biblical measure is being forgiven seven times seventy-seven times, I maxed that out a long time ago. And if you challenged me about some horrible sin with the question: "Are you saying that it never entered your mind?" I probably wouldn't be able to say no - not without committing another sin. There's something wonderful about Confession, but there's also something depressing about confessing the same sins repeatedly, week after week. I won't say that God's grace hasn't brought about some improvement. But fighting sin is a little like playing Whack-a-Mole. You knock one sin down and another one pops up somewhere else. Where did you come from? When people say, "You're a terrible human being," or "You're an ignorant fool," I can only reply: "Oh my, you have no idea!" And to be honest, I have no idea. As C.S. Lewis points out, sin blinds you to your own sinfulness. When the saints say, "I am a sinner," they're not just being modest. Only saints have the purity of soul and clarity of vision to see the extent of their own sinfulness. For most of the rest of us, following the admonition to "know thyself" is like looking into a dark abyss. There might be some scattered candle lights, but you know there are some nasty orcs living down there, and you'd prefer not to face them, let alone fight them. Given this grim reality, it's hard for me to hear that "the measure with which I measure is the measure with which I shall be measured." Or that I am supposed to "forgive as I have been forgiven." Not only do I sin and want forgiveness, I don't "forgive as I have been forgiven" (which, as I admitted, is way past the seven times seventy-seven number). So that's yet another sin. It's like looking at one of those digital counters that is ticking up the federal debt. The numbers just keep piling up. So I don't quite understand people who rejoice in condemning others and then calling it "charity." So, like my friend, I worry about the people who don't believe in a loving God who not only forgives us, but also sends us the grace to do better, "What do they even do? How do they deal with the fact that there's so much evil in the world and in our own hearts? What relieves the burden of sin? What gives them hope in the face of death? We live in a culture that, for some reason, seems convinced that belief in the Christian God is a "burden" to be avoided. That's odd. One would have thought that belief in a meaningless universe with no moral point or boundaries and no true forgiveness would be the greater burden. At least the Christian God provides a moral standard to guide us and a means of forgiveness when we fail. If I thought going into a Catholic Church was a public proclamation of sinlessness, I would never enter. But since I take it that going into a Catholic Church is a public proclamation that "I am a sinner, in need of God's forgiveness and grace," I'm happy to go in. In the same spirit, I wait in line for Confession, and while I'm embarrassed to be back there, I look at the others in line and remember: "I'm not alone. These people must be sinners too, ot...…

The Catholic Thing

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Where is Pope Francis? 10:13

10 days ago10:13

10:13

By Sebastian Morello. It seems a decision has been made among many outlets of the Catholic commentariat to remain, for the time being, uncritical of the new pope, Leo XIV. Undoubtedly, this approach is the right one, as everyone should proceed in good will, hoping that with Prevost's election will come a new chapter after the unhappy decade or so of Francis's pontifical reign. But, troublingly, for the third time since his pontificate began only a short while ago, Pope Leo XIV has declared that the soul of Pope Francis is in Heaven. Most recently, Pope Leo asserted this to be the case via an official Pontifex 'tweet' on the social media platform X, which stated that Francis had "returned to the Father's house. He accompanies us and prays for the Church from Heaven." But this eccentric habit of declaring, outside any official canonisation process, that, as it were, no such process is needed, is deeply problematic. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the faithful of the Catholic Church are being prepared for this highly controversial figure (who, as one journalist friend put it to me, "lingered over the Church for twelve years as if he were an enormous dark cloud") to be canonised soon, as if it were inevitable and unavoidable. There are several very serious problems with Leo repeatedly stating that Francis is in Heaven. For one, such statements cause the faithful to doubt the gravity of Francis's public sins. These sins are not inconsiderable, given that they include idol-worship (Pachamama), the suppression of an ancient apostolic rite of the Church, syncretism and religious relativism, the protection and promotion of predators and deviants, the abuse of the Church's law, the teaching of heresy, etc. Who knows if Francis was a heretic, but it's clear that he was heretical. The distinction being that the former would have required him to be publicly accused of heresy and for him in response to have held obstinately to his heresies. Given that he customarily refused to meet with those who raised objections to his teaching or manner of governing, we were not given the opportunity to witness any obstinate attachment to heresy. But in any case, the record is not good. If such sins can be committed and the perpetrator still immediately enjoys the beatific vision upon his death, then the message to the faithful is clear: either these sins were not even as grave as our ancient faith would have led us to believe, or they are not sins at all. Perhaps people will not be led to such erroneous conclusions, but then the remaining alternative is that, despite the Church's age-old teaching to the contrary, Purgatory does not really exist. If such sins can be committed without any need for purgation from the guilt entailed by them, then Purgatory must not be in fact necessary. Thus, again, if the faith is to remain intact among the faithful, Leo's habit of declaring Francis's heavenly status is far from desirable. Such declarations by Leo, moreover, discourage the faithful of the Church from exercising charity. Whatever our view of Francis, he was a baptised member of the Church and thus a brother in Christ who may now stand very much in need of our prayers. For if his sins are as grave as the ancient faith would lead us to believe, even if he made a perfect act of contrition prior to his death and made a good confession, his soul will remain in Purgatory for a very, very long time. Those who wish to participate in God's mercy upon Francis's soul, and therefore to say prayers and do acts of penance for his benefit, may be dissuaded from doing so by the reigning pope's repeated statements. But there is another reason why Leo is, in fact, playing with fire. It has not gone unnoticed among many of the Church's faithful that, of late, canonisations have been co-opted as an instrument in what has for decades been the dominant ecclesiastical regime. Instrumentalising such holy things, besides being sacrilegious, is a very foolish thing t...…

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What Makes for Peace 5:52

11 days ago5:52

5:52

by Fr. Paul D. Scalia. "It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…" This line from today's first reading (Acts 15:1-2, 22-29) sounds a little odd. As if the decision of the Holy Spirit wasn't enough, the Apostles have to add "and of us." It calls to mind the story of the priest who pompously began his sermon, "Our Lord once said - and I think He's right…" Or, still curiouser, it can sound as though the Holy Spirit and the Apostles had finally come to some agreement. Still, despite its odd sound, the phrase is extraordinarily important - and a harbinger of peace. "It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…" The Holy Spirit didn't need the Apostles' affirmation, and the two parties had not come to some kind of compromise. Rather, that line confirms that the Holy Spirit is working through the Apostles, and the Apostles are the instruments of the Holy Spirit. What the Apostles hand down from Jerusalem is no human opinion but the authoritative teaching of the Spirit. Now, the occasion for this declaration reveals the purpose of the Church's teaching authority: to confirm the faithful and thus give them peace. In Antioch, there had been many Gentile converts, and the Church was prospering. But then some came from Judea and said, "Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved." (Acts 15:1) As one might expect, this requirement disturbed the peace of the Church in Antioch. Part of their trouble would certainly have been the requirement of circumcision. But the greater reason for their lack of peace was the uncertainty about God's will. How were they to live as Christians? What did it mean to believe in the Christ? Were they, as Saint Paul describes it, "running in vain"? (Galatians 2:2) The Apostles were aware of what that lack of clarity had done. "We have heard that some of our number who went out without any mandate from us have upset you with their teachings and disturbed your peace of mind." So they are also confident that their clear teaching will restore peace of mind. Through that Apostolic letter, the Antiochenes will know the truth and have the confidence that they're not running in vain. "In His will is our peace," Dante famously wrote. We try to find peace in doing our own will, in having our own way. That might keep anxiety at bay, for a time. But it's ultimately in vain. We find peace in knowing and doing His will. Which is not to say that we find comfort, prosperity, or popularity. Only that we possess the tranquility of knowing that we are on the right path. And when we know that we are walking in integrity and truth, then we can endure and even embrace a great deal of discomfort, poverty, and scorn. "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." Jesus speaks these familiar words while He also speaks of keeping His word (John 14:23-29) - that is, of obedience. Again, peace is found through His word of truth. Indeed, throughout the Last Supper discourse He teaches the Apostles about commands and obedience, peace and joy. Only in knowing and obeying His commands can we know peace and joy. Of course, to the worldly minded these things - commands and obedience, peace, and joy - are contradictory. Obedience to God's command deprives us of peace and joy. In His will is not our peace but our slavery and elimination. Because we are in competition with Him. The world resents any clear teaching because it comes with responsibility. Thus, worldlings are forever trying to create the tall grass and blur distinctions, lest the arduous but true path be revealed. So, our Lord makes the necessary distinction: "Not as the world gives do I give it to you." The world gives "peace" by ignoring or denying problems. Christ bestows real peace by entering into our greatest sorrows, even into death itself. The world proposes the false peace of contentment and comfort. Christ gives the true peace that calls us to higher things. The world settles for a false peace by numbing our pain with drin...…

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In Memoriam: Alasdair MacIntyre 6:39

12 days ago6:39

6:39

By Joseph R. Wood. Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries, died on May 21. MacIntyre was born in Scotland and, after education in Britain, moved to the United States. He taught at several universities, including Duke, Yale, Princeton, Vanderbilt, and finally Notre Dame. There, with Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon and John Finnis, he was also a Permanent Senior Distinguished Research Fellow at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. He was a friend and admirer of Notre Dame's Ralph McInerny, a Thomistic scholar and founding contributor to The Catholic Thing. MacIntyre's academic career centered on moral philosophy: how we know and choose the good and right, or how we avoid evil and do good. His contributions in this field were immense. MacIntyre began his philosophical career as a Marxist and critic of Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy, until he discovered one day that he had become an Aristotelian-Thomist. He retained elements of his critique of capitalism and its associated modern political form of liberal democracy throughout his career. But his antidote to the problems of capitalism and modern democracy was rather different than that of Marx. MacIntyre's most famous work is After Virtue, published in 1981. He begins that work by noting that many of our political debates that carry the greatest moral freight - those we might associate with what others have called "culture wars" - seem to be interminable and irresolvable. We have lost the ability to reason together about these questions, because we have forgotten a common vocabulary that once enabled us in the West to think and argue seriously about moral truth. He traces how this loss came about, with the result that our discourse is now dominated by "emotivism." The emotivist argues, or at least acts on the premise, that "all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, attitude. . .or feeling." In other words, there is no logos or reason involved in our moral claims, just our feelings. We can't know anything objective or absolute about right and wrong, so there is no shared understanding of right and wrong. Our debates thus roll on without end, and the arts of persuasion serve not truth but the mere ephemeral and illusory pursuit of power in corporations, government, media, education, and other domains. From this tour of the history of philosophy and where the recent centuries of that history have landed us, MacIntyre attempts to restore and strengthen the Aristotelian-Thomist virtue tradition by introducing concepts such as "practice," by which he means "any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence. . .appropriate to that form of activity." Through practices, we become virtuous, and we extend human powers of excellence and achieve good. When we learn to play chess well, we develop the "internal goods" of knowing what it is to play chess with excellence. "External goods" - praise or monetary rewards that go with recognition of our excellence - might follow, but they only reflect the internal goods we achieve as excellence of practice. MacIntyre was a football fan, and being an excellent football player and member of the team is another example of practice. What MacIntyre would have thought about transfer portals and "name, image, and likeness" agreements that place money over college loyalty, I don't know. But he did have a reputation for being sharply acerbic. We learn these virtues of practices in small communities that seek a common good, and the practices themselves - handed down to us and to be handed on - shape our understanding of our lives as stories or narratives. These human narratives began before us and will continue beyond. Peter Berkowitz, a superb political theorist and commentator, once remarked to me that After Virtue was a rare t...…

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Pope Leo and the Ordo Amoris 6:26

13 days ago6:26

6:26

By Daniel B. Gallagher. No one is subject to more intense scrutiny than a new pope. Politicians have the campaign trail to air out their past records and proposals for the future. Cardinals - let's hope - never go on the campaign trail. So, the details of Pope Leo's life went from being of interest to family and friends to that of the entire world. Just ask his brothers. Of extreme interest, then, was Cardinal Prevost's post on X that read: "JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others." There is a problem here, though. These were not the Cardinal's words. They are by Kat Armas, whose commentary Prevost reposted. Prior to Francis's passing, I pointed out on this site the truth in Armas' interpretation of ordo amoris, but cautioned about its deficiencies. Similarly with James Orr's interpretation. The history of ordo amoris is complex and the reasoning quite subtle. But given that we have an Augustinian pope with an ostensible interest in Armas' commentary, I would like to improve on my initial attempt to understand the concept. Augustine's City of God is an ambitious attempt to explain the relationship between the secular and the eternal according to the Christian faith. He describes three general ways of understanding how human beings go wrong. The first is that we simply don't know enough. We are ignorant, and the only way to overcome the ignorance that causes us to do evil is to know more. If we only knew all the circumstances surrounding a moral choice and had perfected our use of logic to deduce the right action, we would never go wrong. Provided we are free to perform that action, we couldn't help but perform it since the power to perform it lies completely within us. This roughly describes the Pelagian view that Augustine vigorously attacked, insisting that our salvation ultimately depends on God's grace and not on our self-perfection. "O God," Augustine wrote, "grant what you command, and command what you desire." In other words, "I am utterly unable to attain what you command by my own power, so give me the grace to know that you command it precisely because you, the All Good, desire it." The second way of going wrong depends largely on outside factors because we are engaged in a cosmic struggle between two ultimate principles, light and darkness. Much of what we experience happens, in this view, because of the stars (astrology) or sheer luck. Although we're free, our moral actions are largely formed by what lies outside us, regardless of our intentions, will, and powers. This roughly describes the Manichaean position that Augustine fiercely denounced, calling it a "childish superstition." He countered it by writing, "I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more." In other words, "I have sensed something delightful, and it has aroused my desire for more of it." Augustine's exposition of a third way left a permanent imprint not only on Christian doctrine but on our way of interpreting history and distinguishing between the eternal and the secular. It's foundational for a renewed conception of the ordo amoris. It's not simply that we don't know enough (Pelagianism) or are caught in a cosmic struggle (Manichaeanism). Rather, we are pulled interiorly by an inexorable love for the good but fail miserably in attaining it. We are aware of an inner dynamism that compels us to love, but we are free to either love what is evil or love what is good. And more often than not, we find ourselves trapped by the former but yearning for the latter. This, quite simply, is "original sin," and there is only one way out of it: "Our hearts are restless until they find rest in You." This leads Augustine to define "virtue" as simply ordo amoris, the "order of love." (City of God, XV, 22) In other words, when we are truly virtuous, we are able to arrange the various particular goods in our lives according to their inherent connection to the One Good, God. Thus, to live according to the ordo amoris is not simpl...…

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Our Lord's Languages of Love 6:04

14 days ago6:04

6:04

By Michael Pakaluk. We say that "prayer is conversation with God," but that's not strictly correct. Prayer to God is conversation with God. Prayer to a saint is conversation with a saint. So, rather, prayer is conversation. It gets its name from just one thing we can do in a conversation, which is to ask (Latin, precare). Being an interlocutor in a conversation is hardly an incommunicable trait of divinity. Therefore, Protestants make a gross blunder when they accuse Catholics who pray to Mary of idolatry, simply because they converse with her. There is no reason why the only person in Heaven one can have "a personal relationship" with should be Jesus. In fact, if as Christians we are meant to imitate Jesus, then we must converse with Mary, and not to do so is to fail dramatically to imitate Him. I assume that Christians, and laypersons in particular, are meant to imitate Jesus in his "hidden life" at home, before he went out to his public ministry. These thirty years were 90 percent of His lifespan. We know almost nothing about them directly. Therefore, we must use what we do know about human nature to draw inferences about it, since he was a "perfect man." We know that he worked, for instance. Therefore, by pondering the best workers, we can infer how he worked. Boys talk to their moms all the time. But let's go back. The life of a newborn boy begins with him gazing lovingly into the eyes of his mother, nestling and cooing, as he nurses on her breast. His love for her appearance as he gets older is simply a development of this original, "I look at her, and she looks at me." Therefore, if we are to imitate Christ - it follows with iron logic - that we must find ways to gaze upon Mary's face in this way. Perhaps we do so side-by-side with Him - which explains, surely, why Christians have so greatly loved paintings of the Madonna with child. You may have noticed that, for a toddler or young boy, to think, to be alive, is to say aloud what he is thinking to his mom - spontaneously and naturally. This phenomenon, so endearing to us, would of course only be magnified in a "perfect man" in relation to a "mother most amiable." Therefore - again it follows with iron logic - if we are to imitate Christ well, as spiritual children indeed, we must speak spontaneously to Mary throughout the day, sharing whatever is on our mind. It would be fair to wonder whether we wouldn't imitate Him well enough by doing so towards our own mom, or perhaps one's spouse. And yet "behold, your mother" (John 19:27), and the fact that she is "the mother of God" (Luke 1:43), and therefore of the supernatural life in Christ that we enjoy. These seem to settle the question. Also, it seems that the imitation of Christ in some fundamental matter must, by the nature of the case, be always available to us, and not only when some relative of ours is alive and within earshot. Let us continue, then. As a boy becomes a man, he turns to his mom when he is proud of what he has done, to exult, in a good way. If he were a woodworker, for instance, he would "show off" to his mom the fine things which he built in his shop. Jesus in the movie, The Passion, is believably depicted as doing so with some chairs and a table. Over time, in this way, a young man develops a genuine friendship with his mother. Have you ever wondered why Jesus stayed at home until He was thirty? There was no period of "adolescence" back then. He would have been regarded as a mature man from age thirteen. Mary had an extended family: therefore, even if Joseph had already passed, Jesus might have left her in their care. Despite his burning desire to redeem - "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!" (Luke 12:29) - he stayed with Mary fifteen years longer than was in any sense necessary. Could it be that he loved his friendship with her, so that he lingered as long as he could, rather than leave as soon as he could? I have not yet mentioned Jesus in the womb, takin...…

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Augustine, Patron of the Age 6:07

15 days ago6:07

6:07

By Francis X. Maier. Earlier this month, I returned from two weeks in Rome covering the run-up and conclusion to the recent conclave. It was an extraordinary experience. On the day before Cardinal Prevost was elected, a friend and colleague - the excellent Jayd Henricks - asked me what I thought a new pope should take as his pontifical name. I said Augustine. More than Benedict or Dominic or any other saint, Augustine is the obvious patron for our age. Of course, we didn't get a "Pope Augustine." But we did get an Augustinian. I think - and I hope - that's significant. And I'll try to explain why. Looking back on the Francis pontificate, I wonder if one of its main, if unintended, functions was to provide a clean break between the immediate post-conciliar period and its conflicts, and something living, organic, and new in the Leo papacy. We live in a turbulent time. It's similar to the Reformation - not in its historical details, but in its underlying impulses and dynamic. It's a deep re-formation of how we think about the world, the organization of society, and what it means to be human - all driven by technologies that make Gutenberg's printing press look like a toy. In effect, we're at the end of one age, and the start of another. And that's exactly where Augustine found himself as bishop of Hippo, as the ancient Roman world fell apart. Augustine was always a realist, but also a man of hope. He pastored, encouraged, and faithfully served his people in a bitterly difficult time, while producing some of the most brilliant and fruitful thought in human history. If Leo XIV can deliver a fraction of that richness through his Augustinian formation, the Church will heal and thrive. We need that new life. We need it because many of us - too many of us in my generation - live our faith mainly as a practical code of everyday behavior and good social ethics. But that's not Christianity, and we don't really need Jesus Christ or his Cross for any of it. Catholics in this country have historically been outsiders and unwelcome. So we've worked very hard over the past century to be accepted into American culture. In a sense, that's become our real religion. And we've succeeded exceptionally well at it - so well that many of us are much more faithfully "American" than we are "Catholic." The result is predictable. A lot of American life today is a blend of vanilla spirituality that doesn't make many demands on our time and attention, and a pervasive, practical consumer atheism that does. The decline in our Catholic numbers nationwide is simply the truth forcing its way to the surface through layers of self-deception that we've accumulated as a Church over half a century or more. The truth can be painful, but it's never bad. The truth makes us free: free to change; free to remember who we are as Catholics and why we're here; and free to do better. My point is this: What we choose or don't choose, what we do or don't do, does matter. Augustine said that being faithful in little things is a big thing, and the little things we do can have very big consequences. Our job isn't to succeed, but to witness. Recovering a humility about our own silent apostasies, the need for our own deeper conversion, and clarity about the challenges for Catholic life in our country that lie ahead - these things begin the renewal of our Church and our nation. And we can thank our current media and political leaders, in both parties, for pushing that process along with the unintended gift of their mendacity. History is a great teacher, and one of its lessons is this: Under pressure, the tepid leave. But the faithful grow stronger, more committed to the truth, and thus more profoundly free. That's always been the story of the Church. And God always wins. Always. Despite all the malice directed at the Church down through the centuries; despite her own worst periods of bumbling and corruption; despite our own sins and failures and most ingenious acts of self-sabotage ...…

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Sing, Don't Tell: On the Birthday of Sigrid Undset 7:24

16 days ago7:24