The Catholic Thing

By Matthew Walz John Paul II died on the night of April 2, 2005. It was Easter Saturday and thus the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday. One could hardly imagine a more fitting moment for him to go to the house of the Father. Almost five years earlier, on April 30, 2000, after Mass on the Second Sunday of Easter, John Paul told Dr. Valentin Fuster, "This is the happiest day of my life." He had just canonized St. Faustina Kowalska as the first saint of the new millennium. Dr. Fuster, an accomplished cardiologist and the pope's friend, had verified the second miracle required for Faustina's canonization: the healing of a diocesan priest of congestive heart failure. (Sidenote: Can you think of a better image of becoming truly merciful – truly misericors or "pity-hearted" – than being healed of congestive heart failure?) Always attentive to the historical significance of events, John Paul said this during his homily: Today my joy is truly great in presenting the life and witness of Sister Faustina Kowalska to the whole Church as a gift of God for our time. By divine Providence, the life of this humble daughter of Poland was completely linked with the history of the 20th century, the century we have just left behind. In fact, it was between the First and Second World Wars that Christ entrusted his message of mercy to her. . . .Jesus told Sister Faustina: "Humanity will not find peace until it turns trustfully to divine mercy.". . .The light of divine mercy, which the Lord in a way wished to return to the world through Sister Faustina's charism, will illumine the way for the men and women of the third millennium. Initially, as a young Polish priest and then as Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla familiarized himself with Sister Faustina's teaching on Divine Mercy in her diary. He also knew well the image of Jesus that she was told to have painted: Christ with red and white beams of light radiating from his heart, reminding us of the blood and water that gushed forth from his side as a fountain of mercy for us, signifying the Church's life-giving sacraments. For John Paul II, a man of exceptional pity-heartedness matured through suffering, it's unsurprising that canonizing Sister Faustina brought such happiness. St. Faustina had no greater promoter than John Paul II. Not only did he raise her to the altars, but he also ensured the endurance of her message by establishing Divine Mercy Sunday. Lex orandi, lex credendi: annually, this feast reminds us that the Father's mercy stands at the heart of all reality. John Paul anticipated this almost 20 years earlier in his second encyclical, Dives in misericordia, whose title derives from St. Paul's description of the Father as "rich in mercy." (Ephesians 2:4) Dives in misericordia complemented his first encyclical, Redemptor hominis: the latter highlighted the human dimension of Christ's work of redemption, while Dives in misericordia highlighted its Divine dimension, i.e., the prevenient mercy-love of the Father, revealed first in the work of creation and then in the redemptive offering of his Son on the Cross. Among the myriad insights to be gleaned from Dives in misericordia, it's worth highlighting three. First: As a devoted friend of the Bridegoom, John Paul pored over the Gospels in order to uncover what informed the conscientia (the "consciousness" or "conscience") of Christ while carrying out his mission on earth. John Paul longed to know Christ "from within," to grasp the interior source of his salvific action. Early in the encyclical John Paul sums up what he has learned: "Rendering the Father present as love and mercy constitutes in the consciousness of Christ himself the chief touchstone of his task and mission as the Messiah."(§3) What an illuminating insight! When Christ acted in the world, John Paul teaches us, the question he continually posed to himself was this: In this particular situation, how do I best render the Father present as love and mercy? Wouldn't we – adopted sons...

By Anne Hendershott Catholic social teaching sees work not as a burden to be engineered away, but as a central part of life wherein the human person is formed. From Genesis to Laborem exercens, the Church teaches that work's dignity lies not in how new or efficient it is, but in how it forms character, skill, and a commitment to the common good. This is precisely what Arthur Brooks misses in his Free Press essay entitled "It's 2028: AI Has Made You Much Happier." Brooks imagines a future in which artificial intelligence frees us from what he calls the "complicated" tasks of life. In fact, Brooks treats routine intellectual labor as if it were merely a nuisance – email, drafting, data work, repetitive problem sets, the slow accumulation of skill. Brooks's vision begins from a premise that the Catholic tradition has long rejected: that work is primarily a burden to be escaped. In Catholic thought, work is not an obstacle to human flourishing but one of its primary engines. It is the arena in which we cultivate moral character and responsibility. For a faithful Catholic, work is the daily practice through which we participate in Creation and contribute to the common good. A society that treats work as a problem to be eliminated misunderstands both human nature and the moral structure of ordinary life. Brooks draws a sharp line between "complicated" tasks (solvable, mechanical) and "complex" ones (relational, existential). He seems to believe that these tasks are separate. But in practice, the two are intertwined. The complicated work of preparing a lesson, grading a paper, drafting a report, or creating a budget is not separate from the meaning of teaching, mentoring, leading, consulting, strategizing, or forecasting. It is the substance of the vocation itself. When AI removes the substance, it risks removing the vocation. Brooks fails to see that these tasks are not incidental to learning; they are the learning itself. In celebrating a future where artificial intelligence liberates us from what Brooks calls "busywork" or routine tasks, he treats such work as spiritually empty. Yet the Catholic tradition sees the opposite: the slow, repetitive labor of writing, revising, practicing, quantifying, memorizing, and persevering is how our intellect is shaped. It is how we build character and discipline and learn to take on responsibility. A world in which AI performs all the "busy work" of an online college class – as Einstein promises – may make students feel momentarily happier to be released from what they may see as the "drudgery" of responding to discussion prompts and textbook questions. But it will not make them wiser. And it risks hollowing out the very disciplines that prepare us for the deeper, "complex" dimensions of life that Brooks claims to prize. When students are introduced to Einstein, they are assured that Einstein is an AI with a computer. He logs into Canvas every day, watches lectures, reads essays, writes papers, participates in discussions, and submits your homework automatically. While Einstein assures students that "he will work while you sleep," critics have suggested that "at a very basic level, Einstein was simply a distillation of what more general-purpose AI chatbots or agents already offer to students: the capacity to cease learning anything at all or doing any academic work for themselves, while retaining the prospect of still earning a university degree." The greater mistake in Brooks' "AI Happiness Theory" is the assumption that leisure, rather than work, is the primary engine of human flourishing. The Catholic tradition has always insisted on the opposite: that meaningful work orders the soul toward purpose. As far back as 1963, Josef Pieper warned in his book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture , that a culture obsessed with escaping work eventually loses the capacity for genuine leisure – the kind of leisure that flows from an interior life that has been shaped by purpose and discipline. When we tre...

By Brad Miner Yes. But so have many people been throughout history. And now some good news, although it's the only good news. The Pew Research Center recently released a report, What Do Americans Consider Immoral? (We should be cautious about that verb, consider. I suppose pollsters can't really ask the more pointed question, "What actions do you engage in that you know to be morally wrong?") And the good news is that a whopping 90% of Americans believe adultery ("Married people having an affair") is wrong. Let's look at Pew's chart: As I say, good news. Yet we might compare this with recent reports from the General Social Survey and the Institute for Family Studies that say 20% of married men and 13% of married women have cheated on their spouses, and that these data have been consistent for three decades. Of course, opinion doesn't necessarily comport with behavior. This is called hypocrisy. And the numbers represent an upward trend, although not dramatically so, and the rise is being driven by men and women over 55. Does this suggest that the old notion of a 7-year itch has become a 27-year itch? In any case, this deviation from 90% opposition to adultery is significant. But, perhaps, it means nothing more than that only 70% of men actually think adultery is immoral, and 87% of women do. I'm not a statistician, so I can't vouch for those numbers. But hypocrisy is certainly at work here, and some of those who state their opposition to adultery may cross the line into an affair if tempted by the right person – or by the Tempter himself. The old joke about economists (and it might apply to statisticians) is that they should have one of their hands cut off so they can't say, "But on the other hand . . ." But on the other hand (I can use the phrase because I'm not an economist), the Pew report's index notes that no matter what religion a person is, 90% oppose adultery. Religion matters. Most disheartening are the data in the chart concerning abortion. The "not morally wrong" response to "having an abortion" stands at 52%, which is a sickening reminder that most people have been beguiled into believing that thing in the womb is not their son or daughter. Another chart at the Pew website indicates that "Republicans are 3 times as likely to say having an abortion is morally wrong." GOP members are 71% opposed; Dems only 24% opposed. Not to get political. . . The overall tone of the report is depressing. One can't help thinking that "tolerance" in America is on a slippery slide towards perdition. When it comes to pornography, for instance, only White Evangelical Protestants are steadfastly opposed (80%), whereas among Catholics (white and Hispanic), only 56% think the naked cavorting in videos is morally wrong. Could it be that we Catholics have been desensitized by all those nude figures on the Sistine Chapel ceiling? I doubt it. Only 23% of Jews think porn is morally wrong, and that may be because those good people are Republicans. Sixty-five percent in the GOP think porn is wrong; only 39% of Dems do. Twice as many Republicans as Democrats oppose marijuana, but that's not saying much, since approval in both parties is very high; 69% v. 84%. But I'll tell you what, the thing that really struck home for me is what the report's data says about contraception. This would appear to be a battle the Roman Catholic Church has lost. Just 9% of Americans believe artificial birth control is wrong; among Catholics, it's a merely better 13%. No doubt this is a measure of failed catechesis and Biblical ignorance. After all: God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Genesis 1:28) That's, you know, in the beginning – just two short verses after the creation of humankind! There's no silver lining here, but I will note that only Catholics and black Protestan...

By Michael Pakaluk "And it came to pass – when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount – that Moses knew not that the skin of his face sent forth beams while He talked with him." (Exodus 34:29-30) This is the best translation I can find of these verses from the Jewish Publication Society of 1917: The skin of his face sent forth beams. It's a great translation because it leaves open an ambiguity in the Hebrew. Were these beams of light, or of something else? Famously, St. Jerome in the Vulgate rendered the word for "beams" with extreme literalness as "horns": "And when Moses came down from the mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord." (Douay-Rheims) That's why Michelangelo's Moses displays horns. But other venerable translators rendered otherwise, as for instance the Septuagint: "Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified." Moses's skin was radiant with unreflected light, anticipating, then, how he would appear at the Transfiguration. It's not a silly mistake to suppose that Moses grew horns. In the ancient world, including throughout the Hebrew Bible, horns were an image of power and honor. And yet, that the Hebrew locates the beams explicitly in the skin of Moses's face tips the scales decisively, to my mind. Horns, after all, must grow out from the skull, at the top of the head, not from the skin on the face. Try to imagine Michelangelo's statue with horns growing out from all over Moses's face. But I say all this by way of preface. Assume that Moses's face indeed radiated powerful beams of light. Such was the effect of his being in the presence of God. The question then arises for us: Should Catholics expect that attendance at Mass, where God becomes truly present, will have a similar effect on them? At a Mass, we "are not come to a mountain that might be touched, and a burning fire" (Hebrews 12:18), but to something even greater. Let's make the question more focused. The Easter Triduum, which we have just celebrated, comprises the holiest days and the greatest liturgies of the year. Did your presence and mine at these liturgies leave an impression of holiness upon us? What I have in mind is a generalized effect which is independent of our will, our actions, our emotions, or our merit. I am thinking of an effect that operates not unlike a physical cause. The effect I have in mind would come not from our "participation" at these liturgies – that is, what we sing or say, or our standing or kneeling. The reception of Our Lord in Holy Communion, of course, implies a wellspring of countless graces. But I am not interested, here, in that effect, but in something else. I mean, rather, this logic: you are in the presence of holy things, and, as a result, you are made holy. Plato thought that punishment worked like that. To punish someone justly, he said, is to impose the formal character of justice on his soul, regardless of whether the sufferer wills to be made just or not. This is why punishment is medicinal, he thought. Someone treated justly will become more just as a result. We clearly believe that nature works like that. We go out into the wilderness for a few days, hiking and camping, in part because we believe that we are made better, through being "in nature," because we are made more like the purity and wildness we find there. We think that children are like that, too. We spend time with children, in part, because we think that from being in their presence, we become more youthful, more full of life, and more innocent. They "leave an impression" upon us. We use clothing to bear witness to an effect like that: we place a white garment on a newly baptized infant to signify the holy effect of Baptism. People used to dress up to go to church, yes, to show respect, but also to display what they believed the sacred liturgy made o...

By Francis X. Maier. For Christians, this week is the heart of our liturgical year. Easter week is a time of gratitude and celebration; a time of joy that rises above the frictions of everyday life and reminds us of our eternal destiny. But of course, a fallen world rarely cooperates. Sages from Heraclitus to Hobbes have claimed that "war is the father of all things" and the natural state of man. So it has seemed throughout history. So it seems now, in our own time. This Easter week marks the 81st anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's death. A gifted Lutheran pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer cofounded Germany's Confessing Church movement in the 1930s to oppose the Nazification of his country's Evangelical Lutheran Church. The Third Reich hanged him at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. The charge was treason, based on his rescue of Jews and spreading information about anti-regime resistance, but finally – and decisively – on his links to the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer was a skilled writer and teacher. And among his most widely known comments is this: "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." The words are memorable. Whether he actually said them is disputed. But it doesn't matter. They're true in their meaning, and Bonhoeffer's life and death embodied them. I remembered those words over the Easter weekend, reading a Wall Street Journal editorial. The Journal is not a fan of the current occupant of the White House. Its pages are filled with criticism of the man in charge, his manner, and his policies. But in "The North Korea Lesson for Iran," it outlines 40 years of failed diplomacy with a committed, intensely dangerous enemy, and warns of "what happens when the US puts conflict avoidance above all else." Starting in the early 1980s, the Pyongyang regime systematically lied to, outmaneuvered, and threatened the international community while pursuing its nuclear weapons program. The United States responded with indecision. As a result, North Korea is now believed to possess: some 50 warheads, and it tests ICBMs that will one day be able to reach the continental U.S. The latest missile test came [last] Sunday. The lesson is that U.S. Presidents waited too long to stop North Korea. The risks of war were always said to be too high, it was never a good time, and there was always another diplomatic option to exhaust. North Korea is now a nuclear power, which means it could escalate to devastating effect in any conflict. There's more: This is more or less the path that at least four presidents took with Iran. Talks, deals, and economic relief were in ample evidence, with sanctions used as a negotiating tactic but without a credible threat of force. Like Pyongyang, Tehran agreed to a deal that didn't require it to come clean about past nuclear activities and left [its] nuclear infrastructure intact for the future. Iran's regime never stopped pursuing the bomb. And finally: "We don't know how the current Iran conflict will end, but we do know Iran's radical regime will not have a nuclear program when it's over." One can hope. My own views on the Iran conflict, at least as it stands to date, are detailed elsewhere. So far, criticism of the U.S.-Israeli effort has been an alloy of serious and urgent moral concern; common sense anxiety for the outcome; and chronic loathing of the man at the desk in the current Oval Office – with a pinch of anti-Jewish hatred for Israel tossed in from both left and right. Mentioning Dietrich Bonhoeffer in connection with any of this, of course, risks a very unpleasant response. We remember Bonhoeffer as a martyr, not the conspirator in a planned tyrannicide. The differences between his time and ours, between the Germany of April 1945 and our own world of April 2026, are too many to count. And a gulf of moral character and heroism separates a man like Bonhoeffer from every recent U.S. p...

By Daniel B. Gallagher Around the corner from my old office in the Apostolic Palace is the Torre dei Venti, a sixteenth-century tower housing the sundial Pope Gregory XIII used to correct the Julian calendar. Aided by a team of brilliant Jesuits, Gregory tracked the movement of sunlight across the floor to ascertain the precise timing of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. This led to the removal of ten days from the month of October in 1582. With very few exceptions (Iran being one of them), the "Gregorian calendar" has been the standard mode of computing the annual cycle ever since. Few people know that the Vatican continues to collect astronomical data assiduously for the international scientific community. Its primary instrument is the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) located in southeast Arizona, which observes light in the optical and infrared ranges. Among the notable discoveries made by VATT are astronomical bodies in our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy called Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs), which may help explain the presence of the mysterious and controversial "dark matter" that keeps our galaxy together – "dark" because it does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, and is thus invisible to telescopes. A public-school product of the 1970s, I had neither heard of Gregory XIII nor known of the Vatican Observatory's existence. My fourth-grade teacher taught me that Columbus set sail to prove Catholic monarchs wrong for believing the world was flat and that Galileo was locked up for thinking the sun was at the center of the universe. The former is patently false, and the latter is a gross simplification. Georges Lemaître, the twentieth-century priest and astronomer, was also entirely unknown to me until I took an astronomy class in college. It was Fr. Lemaître who first hypothesized that the universe was formed from a single particle that exploded at a definite point in time. His theory, which eventually became known as the "Big Bang" theory, continues to emerge as the best cosmological model for explaining the expanding universe. I've been obsessed with space exploration ever since watching the Apollo 17 mission unfold on television, an event I am barely old enough to remember. So, it was only with great enthusiasm that I listened to NASA recently announce plans for a permanent lunar base. The Artemis II mission is, even as this column appears, carrying a crew around the Moon. If all goes according to plan, we'll be watching humans walk on the moon again in 2029. In 1969, Pope Paul VI hailed the famed Apollo 11 mission for opening "a threshold to the wide expanse of boundless space and new destinies." The saintly pontiff entrusted a handwritten copy of Psalm 8 to astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to be left on the Moon. There it still sits, silently proclaiming, "I will sing of your majesty above the heavens with the mouths of babes and infants." How easy we forget the primacy of "singing God's majesty" in the Christian life. "Praise," we read in the Catechism, "is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God." (2639) If we principally know God from His works and praise Him thereby, how much more elevated our praise should be when we recognize the grandeur of His works. In Dante's Paradiso, Beatrice directed the pilgrim's gaze to the Moon to demonstrate the insufficiency of man's sensory and intellectual powers for understanding Paradise. Three centuries later, Galileo pointed his telescope at the Moon and found it irregular and mountainous, something that deeply troubled the prevailing opinion that the Moon was perfectly smooth and reflective of the Earth's surface. In a famous letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Galileo lamented that his detractors "seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction." By "the arts," Galileo meant everything that contributed to t...

By Robert Royal The days immediately following Easter are usually a period of interior peace for believers, but also mystery. The Resurrection's afterglow, of course, but also a lingering question, especially this year as wars and civic unrest trouble the whole world. "The strife is o'er," as in the hymn, set beautifully by Palestrina. Jesus has conquered sin and death. But why, then, does so much "strife" – and sin and death – continue? A good question, but God's answer is clearly different than what we expect. Even in Jesus' day, some followers "went away" because He didn't restore the earthly kingdom of Israel. In fact, within a few decades, the Romans obliterated – literally, not as in current presidential rhetoric – Jerusalem and Israel. The God of the Bible works in time and through people, as we see in both the Old Testament and Church history. Despite its contemplative dimension, Christianity is not Hinduism or Buddhism or postmodern "spirituality," which can exist anywhere, just anyhow. Christianity, too, deals in the Spirit, and preeminently. But also in the flesh, the "world," and everydayness. Which it shapes, slowly, or not, over generations. God could, like some tyrant, impose peace on the world. But to do so, He would have to abolish free will, the very possibility of sin, and therefore also of love. And that, we know, He chose not to do. Instead, the Gospel must be preached and make it's ways in the hearts of fallen human beings. Against all human odds, over time, a Word carried by a few fishermen, tax collectors, seemingly random disciples, here and there, converted the greatest empire in existence and large parts of the rest of the world. The great age of missionaries – the sixteenth century – was also the hard century of the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion. As in many human things, turmoil and conflict can also produce daring and resolve. The Jesuits of that age were, simultaneously, the greatest Catholic educators in Europe and evangelizers to the whole world. It hardly needs saying that we need something similar today. Desperately. Most of the talk about the New Evangelization and synodality revolves around the mission to formerly Christian peoples. That could be a good thing, properly managed. But it can't be managed if the evangelizers don't believe in the urgency of God's message to all peoples. A sentimental niceness towards the Other isn't enough. Even Jesus grew impatient about the process: "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" (Luke 12:29) Our Western civilization has talked itself into idiocy. It lost its soul in the materialistic pursuit of knowledge and power. And now realizes its spiritual poverty and hopes to save itself via machinery and AI. So what are we to do? Two things. Understand what has happened, and pursue – with intelligence and energy – reversing what needs reversing. Carl Trueman's The Desecration of Man, which officially appears tomorrow, is a scintillating guide to both. His title echoes The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis's penetrating little study of how, already in the 1940s, we were – via false logic and psychologizing tendencies – doing away with many of the things that make us human. But in Trueman's reading, we're now doing something much worse. Lewis was responding to errors. Trueman says we have moved on to desecration of the good and the holy – and our own humanity. We hear all the time these days of transgression of established norms and practices as something good and bold. But the whole process has gone so far that transgression itself has become a kind of establishment, to the point that there's almost nothing left to push against. In Trueman's telling, it was Nietzsche's "Madman" who first saw what had happened. Western people thought they could do away with God and still keep the "good" Christian values, a "humanism" based on nothing. That began to percolate in our very notions about the world and oursel...

By Msgr. Charles Fink. But first a note: All of us at The Catholic Thing wish all our readers a happy and blessed Easter. He is Risen! Now for today's column... During the first half of the 20th century, there emerged an extraordinary constellation of English Catholic writers, many of them converts, who had the great gift of being able to explicate the Catholic faith on a popular level without watering it down. Names like Chesterton, Knox, Sheed (originally from Australia), and Houselander come to mind. Among these was a Jesuit priest named C.C. Martindale, who, after having spent five years of internment under the Nazis, was asked by the BBC to deliver six talks on radio during Holy Week of 1946. Father Martindale ended his first talk with these words: whether it be the problems set by long history or by the present hour, whether it be the problems set by our own soul and our inner experience, whether it be the Sufferings and Death of Christ – the Christian has but one starting point, that is to say God, His Love, and His will that we should live. This truth never changes, however much we may change. God wishes not the death even of the sinner, but that he should live. I cannot say it too often, nor too emphatically. . .that at the origin of all things, during all things, and at the end of all things are God, and Love, and Life. Fr. Martindale was able to say those words, even after having endured the horrors of war and prison, because he had assimilated and made his own the bright, shining message of Easter. It was this message that helped transform the cringing apostle Peter into the courageous and forceful preacher we meet in the Acts of the Apostles. It was this message that prompted Paul to write to the Colossians, "If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above," and "you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Paul understood that Christ hadn't risen from the dead just for Himself but for us, that united to Him, we might already begin to rise with Him. Our feet might be mired in the grime of earth, but our heads and hearts are with Christ in Heaven. What had Peter, what had Paul to fear on earth when already they shared in the risen life of Christ? When Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John found the tomb empty on Easter morning, Christ's burial clothes still lying there, the Gospel tells us that John believed, but also that "they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead." John believed that Jesus was risen but did not yet fully comprehend all that was implied in the monumental fact of the resurrection. Understanding would come, however, and the only apostle to escape violent martyrdom would spend sixty more years on earth preaching the God who is love and who wants us to have life to the full, not only now, but forever. The message of Easter is not that there will be no more crosses but that all our crosses, even death, can lead to new and eternal life, an eternal life begun here and now by our union with the risen Lord. We are like divers in those old movies, who are lowered into the sea from a ship, "strangers in a strange land," surrounded by darkness, but all the while receiving life from above, our share in the risen life of Christ. Easter must be for us what it was for Peter, Paul, Mary Magdalene, and all the saints, not just something we believe once happened and will someday benefit us. It is that but so much more. It is a present reality, something we share in here and now. Let the world do its worst. It can never do worse than to kill the Son of God, and we know what came of that. And we share in His life. We are all familiar with the expression "Rise and shine." It can, of course, be just an annoying cliché or the interruption of a good night's sleep. But for Christians, it can be a reminder that, sharing in Christ's life, we have already begun to rise and must manifest that by radiating Christ's light and life and love in all we do. Remember the words of...

By An Ancient Author. What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled. Truly He goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; He wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, He who is God, and Adam's son. The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, His Cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: "My Lord be with you all." And Christ in reply says to Adam: "And with your spirit. Amen!" And grasping his hand, He raises him up, saying: "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." "I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise." "I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person." "For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden." "Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image." "See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one." "I slept on the Cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you." "But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of Heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God." "The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages." A reading from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday Prayer Almighty, ever-living God, whose Only-begotten Son descended to the realm of the dead, and rose from there to glory, grant that your faithful people, who were buried with him in baptism, may, by his resurrection, obtain eternal life. (We make our prayer) through our Lord. (Through Christ our Lord.) Prepared by Pontifical University Saint Thomas Aquinas

By Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. It seems to be a fact of human psychology that when death approaches, the human heart speaks its words of love to those whom it holds closest and dearest. There is no reason to suspect that it is otherwise in the case of the Heart of hearts. If He spoke in a graduated order to those whom He loved most, then we may expect to find in His first three words the order of His love and affection. His first words went out to enemies: "Father, forgive them," His second to sinners: "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise," and His third to saints, "Woman, behold thy son." Enemies, sinners, and saints – such is the order of Divine Love and Thoughtfulness. The congregation anxiously awaited His first word. The executioners expected Him to cry, for everyone pinned on the gibbet of the Cross had done it before Him. Seneca tells us that those who were crucified cursed the day of their birth, the executioners, their mothers, and even spat on those who looked upon them. Cicero tells us that at times it was necessary to cut out the tongues of those who were crucified, to stop their terrible blasphemies. Hence the executioners expected a cry but not the kind of cry that they heard. The Scribes and Pharisees expected a cry, too, and they were quite sure that He who had preached "Love your enemies," and "Do good to them that hate you," would now forget that Gospel with the piercing of feet and hands. They felt that the excruciating and agonizing pains would scatter to the winds any resolution He might have taken to keep up appearances. Everyone expected a cry, but no one with the exception of the three at the foot of the Cross, expected the cry they did hear. Like some fragrant trees which bathe in perfume the very axe which gnashes them, the great Heart on the Tree of Love poured out from its depths something less a cry than a prayer, the soft, sweet, low prayer of pardon and forgiveness. . . . The next two words, the fourth and the fifth, betray the sufferings of the God-man on the Cross. The fourth word symbolizes the sufferings of man abandoned by God; the fifth word the sufferings of God abandoned by man. . . .When Our Blessed Lord spoke this fourth word from the Cross, darkness covered the earth. Truly, all was darkness! He had given up His Mother and His beloved disciple, and now God seemingly abandoned Him. "Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?" "My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" It is a cry in the mysterious language of Hebrew to express the tremendous mystery of a God "abandoned" by God. The Son calls His Father, God. What a contrast with a prayer He once taught: "Our Father, Who art in Heaven!" In some strange, mysterious way His human nature seems separated from His Heavenly Father, and yet not separated, for otherwise how could He cry, "My God, My God"? He atoned first of all for atheists, for those who on that dark midday half believed in God, as even now at night they half believe in Him. He atoned also for those who know God, but live as if they had never heard His name; for those whose hearts are like waysides on which God's love falls only to be trampled by the world; for those whose hearts are like rocks on which the seed of God's love falls only to be quickly forgotten; for those whose hearts are like thorns on which God's love descends only to be choked by the cares of the world. It was atonement for all who have had faith and lost it; for all who once were saints and now are sinners. It was the Divine Act of Redemption for all abandonment of God, for in that moment in which He was forgotten. [The fifth word] is the shortest of the seven cries. Although it stands in our language as two words, in the original it is one. . . .He, the God-Man, who threw the stars in their orbits and spheres into space, who "swung the earth a trinket at his wrist," from Whose finger-tips tumbled planets and worlds, who might have said, "The sea is Mine and with it the streams in a thousand valleys ...

By Stephen P. White. Beginning in 1979, Pope John Paul II took up the habit of writing an annual letter to priests which would be published on, or just before, Holy Thursday. These letters allowed John Paul II an outlet for repeated meditation on the nature of the priesthood. Read together, they provide a detailed account of his understanding of the priesthood and thus, necessarily, of both himself and the Lord. The tone of these letters was always fraternal. He wrote, not as a superior addressing his subordinates, but as a priest writing to priests about common concerns, hopes, fears, and joys. These were letters among brothers. As he put it in his first letter, "I think of you all the time, I pray for you, with you I seek the ways of spiritual union and collaboration, because by virtue of the sacrament of Orders, which I also received from the hands of my Bishop. . . .you are my brothers." He went on, cribbing from St. Augustine: "I want to say to you today: 'For you I am a Bishop, with you I am a Priest.'" Holy Thursday, of course, is a natural occasion for reflections on the nature of the ministerial priesthood, being the day on which Christ Himself instituted both the Eucharist and the order of the priesthood which flows from and serves that same reality. And as one might expect, writing to the same audience every year on the same occasion, in the same liturgical setting, leads to some thematic repetition. But reading these letters together allows us to see, precisely in that repetition, what Pope John Paul II saw as most important to share with his brother priests. In his first letter, in 1979, John Paul wrote of the importance of priestly perseverance, not only as a matter of personal fidelity, but as an example and witness to those whose vocation leads them along a different sacramental path: Our brothers and sisters joined by the marriage bond have the right to expect from us, Priests and Pastors, good example and the witness of fidelity to one's vocation until death, a fidelity to the vocation that we choose through the sacrament of Orders just as they choose it through the sacrament of Matrimony. (Emphasis original) This theme of perseverance and fidelity emerges again and again in the Holy Thursday letters. When one remembers that tens of thousands of men voluntarily left the priesthood in the decade following the Second Vatican Council (and the subsequent collapse in Catholic marriage rates across most of the West) Pope John Paul II's words take on an added significance. During the Great Jubilee of 2000, Pope John Paul II wrote his Holy Thursday Letter from the Cenacle, the Upper Room, in Jerusalem. This letter is especially poignant, both because of the setting from which it was sent – the physical space with all its tangible reminders of the historical events we commemorate in this season – but because of his sense of the human inadequacy of the men God calls to be priests: Many times, the human frailty of priests has made it hard to see in them the face of Christ. Here in the Upper Room why should this amaze us? Not only did the betrayal of Judas reach its climax here, but Peter himself had to reckon with his weakness as he heard the bitter prediction of his denial. In choosing men like the Twelve, Christ was certainly under no illusions: it was upon this human weakness that he set the sacramental seal of his presence. And Paul shows us why: "We bear this treasure in earthen vessels, so that it might be clear that this extraordinary power comes from God and not from us." (2 Corinthians 4:7) The frailty of men was not a stumbling block for Pope John Paul II's view of the priesthood; it was an entry point into the mystery of Christ's own priesthood. The Word Incarnate washes the feet of sinners. He pays out his life in service and sacrifice. And He invites us all – and his priests in a unique way – to do the same. Great indeed is the mystery of which we have been made ministers. A mystery of love without limi...

By Joseph R. Wood. This is the week when we contemplate, more than any other week, how much we are loved. This is the week when the words of John's Gospel, that we are "given power to become children of God," are brought to fulfillment. This is the week when we are restored to the possibility of having a great soul. God is love, claims St. John. At the Last Supper, Christ tells us repeatedly to love Him by knowing His commandments and keeping them. Such is the person who "loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. . . .This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." That emphatic call for love as Christ prepares to suffer follows His teaching after His entry into Jerusalem. Asked which is the greatest commandment, He replies, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." Christ has come to fulfill the law in its every detail, the law that is love. Of the three theological virtues that we must be given by grace – faith, hope and love – St. Paul tells us that love is the greatest. If God is love, and the foundational commandments are love for God and each other, then all sin must be a failure to love well, an absent or misdirected love that shrivels our soul. The crucified Christ saw every sinner in all of history, and He became every sin, every failure of all time to love our neighbors properly – acts of theft, murder, adultery, lies, injustice against parents – and every failure to love God as we are created to love Him. All of those failures follow from the original sin that divided the divine and supernatural from the human and natural, splitting our human logos or reason from Logos itself. After that catastrophe, but without divine revelation, philosophers reasoned about what an excellent human life would entail. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle identified the excellences of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. These habits permit a good life in human or natural terms, and they result from rightly ordered reason. Failures in these virtues derive from failures of reason or prudence, failures either to know reality or to act according to it. Prudence, writes Josef Pieper, is the mother and guide of the other three virtues. Without prudence, a person cannot be just or brave or moderate. Aristotle also described the virtue of magnanimity, or great-souledness. The magnanimous man is dissatisfied with modest achievements. He is concerned not with money but especially with "matters of honor and dishonor." He wants the highest honors his community can offer – because he rightly deserves them for his great action. He knows he is built to be great. Philosophers have puzzled over what Aristotle meant, or whether he was serious, or even whether he actually wrote these passages. And Aristotle himself is puzzled. "For we blame the ambitious person, on the grounds that he aims at getting more than he ought." We see some people as overly ambitious when they seek honors that are greater than their souls merit. "We blame the unambitious person, on the grounds that he chooses not to be honored [even for] what is noble." He is wrongly self-effacing. Yet "sometimes we praise the ambitious person as manly and a lover of what is noble, and praise the unambitious person as measured and moderate." Aristotle seems to conclude that our speech and opinion about ambition are confused. We are to want great things in the right proportion to the greatness of our souls, but we can't get our praise and blame about this greatness consistent and clear. My pastor, Fr. Paul Scalia, preached recently about "holy ambition," two words whose association we might find as confusing as Aristotle would. He meant, I think, that we are supposed to...

By Randall Smith We pride ourselves on the fact that we don't have a "caste system" in America, with higher and lower castes and those at the bottom who are "untouchables." I sometimes wonder, though, whether we have something analogous in the way we distinguish "the elite" from the "deplorables." As for "untouchables," try going to a "Not a King" rally and saying, "I like some of the things Trump does," and you'll quickly discover what lepers felt like at the time of Christ. Each side in the political divide has created its hated "other." But one group that has become our society's real "untouchables" is the weak and infirm elderly. Rather than honoring the elderly, our tendency is to warehouse them in institutions to keep them out of sight and out of mind. Please don't misunderstand me. Many of those in "personal care homes" or "assisted living" facilities were placed there out of loving concern for them because they could no longer live alone and needed the extra medical care that such facilities can offer. But this reality still gives rise to several questions. Why are so many of our elderly alone? Have we valued "independence" in ways that are not conducive to health and human flourishing as we age? Why warehouse the elderly in separate facilities rather than trying to incorporate them into society in a new, vital way? And finally, why are so many of those facilities for the elderly so terrible? Rarely are they very good. One lesson anyone who has dealt with elderly parents needing special care soon realizes is that there is really no good answer to the challenge. Everyone I have asked, "Did you find a better way?" has said in no uncertain terms: "No, it's all terrible." The second lesson is don't be old and poor in America. A small room with mediocre care can run $8,000 to $8,500 per month, and often more. So, if you don't have $100,000 to $150,000 dollars per year to spend on housing and food alone and continue that level of spending for ten or twelve years, you may find yourself in some very uncomfortable circumstances, your world contracted to a small room with a television. Even the expensive places that are nicer have the feel of a cruise ship. Life there may be pleasant, but one gets the sense that there is also a sense of meaninglessness – of facing one's own death while watching one's fellow cruise-ship passengers die off one by one. Inhabitants sense that they have been shunted aside by society, no longer needed (or so we mistakenly imagine). Personally, I have never understood why we have a society of elderly, who are filled with stories of life and the wisdom of old age, on the one hand, and groups of teens, on the other, who need someone with wisdom to talk to and listen to them. For some odd reason, we can't figure out how to put them together. Instead, we do everything we can to warehouse them as far apart as possible. We don't put high schools or colleges next to centers for the elderly, likely because we know that the teens in those schools won't respect the elderly. We don't put elder care centers next to the gorilla cages either. But what if, instead of following the cultural trends, we took seriously the word of God? Leviticus 19:32 states: "You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God." This passage has long been understood as showing that respect for our elders is directly connected to reverence for God. One could draw this conclusion as well from the first commandment on the "second tablet" of the Decalogue corresponding to the respect for God on the "first tablet": it is the command to "Honor your father and mother." 1 Timothy 5:1-2 exhorts us to treat older men as our own fathers and older women as our own mothers, admonishing us not to speak harshly to them. Technology offers some hope. Self-driving cars may help older people who no longer can or should drive. Being unable to drive oneself in America is like being a child again, always ...

By Brad Miner. "The sculptor arrives at his end by taking away what is superfluous." – Michelangelo to Benedetto Varchi, 1549 The greatest artist of the Renaissance is famous for something he may never have said: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." There are other versions of the quotation, as in the epigraph above, that are genuine, and they may seem to suggest that Michelangelo believed he merely liberated a form trapped in stone. Anyone who has visited the Accademia in Florence will appreciate the idea, because resident in the Hall of Prisoners there are Michelangelo's "slaves" – unfinished sculptures intended for the never-constructed tomb of Pope Julius II. The figures do seem to be struggling to escape: But stone is stone – even though quarks within are in constant, rapid motion – and the block of marble won't cough up a statue like a cat disgorging a hairball. It takes the mind, muscle, and imagination of a sculptor, not to mention his hands and eyes, to chisel a statue into existence. Thorne Smith, American humorist of the Great Depression (most famous for Topper), wrote a screwball comedy called The Night Life of the Gods (1931) in which an amateur scientist discovers a way, Medusa-like, to turn living matter into stone and vice versa. He animates sculptures of the Greek gods in New York's Metropolitan Museum, who escape to the streets of Manhattan. Chaos and hilarity follow. The ancient Greeks and Romans made sculptures, and they painted them. Some of that statuary still exists, and even more was standing or lying about in Rome in Michelangelo's time, at which point (as today) the paint (polychrome) had long ago worn off, and an erroneous theory arose in Renaissance Italy that classical artists glorified in the purity of plain, white stone. That has mostly remained the standard for figurative sculpture ever since. For Michelangelo, Carrara marble was the ideal medium, and, as the MET Museum's Carmen C. Bambach writes, he spent: long stretches of time on-site at the marble quarries in Carrara and Pietrasanta, where he not only selected marbles and gave precise orders regarding the sizes and shapes of the blocks being quarried, but even concerned himself with the building of roads to transport the stone. And that Tuscan quarry was the same one used by the Romans and is still used today. Michelangelo lived a long time – 88 years. At 13, he was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, a very fine painter, but this most famous of his students was more interested in stone than paint. At 15, Michelangelo joined the school of the Florentine sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni. This was a savvy move because Bertoldo's patron was Lorenzo de' Medici, ill Magnifico. It was Leonardo da Vinci who wrote in one of his notebooks (likely comparing himself to his mentor, Andrea del Verrocchio): "Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his teacher." Michelangelo certainly outshone Ghirlandaio and Bertoldo. One may debate which of Michelangelo's sculptures is his greatest, but, in my opinion, it's his Pietà. His David (also at the Accademia) is the most imposing, especially when you see it in person: it's 17 feet tall. His Moses (about which I've written here) has fascinated many, not least Sigmund Freud. But Pietà is best. Pietà means "pity," but in the secondary sense in English: "tenderness and concern aroused by the suffering or misfortune of another; compassion, sympathy." (O.E.D.) Unlike many other artists of the Renaissance, nearly all of whom were Roman Catholic, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was among the most Catholic, by which I mean the most devout. He has also proved to be the most catholic, by which I mean the most universally recognized and admired, although much of that is thanks to that ceiling in Rome. Pietà may also have been Michelangelo's favorite sculpture. Certainly, it's the only one he ever signed. But it's also one he hoped would make him famous. Not an unholy ambition, it s...

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia All of Lent is an exercise in holy sorrow. We don't know how to mourn as we ought – especially not our sins. So, we need these 40 days of penitence, to train us how to be sorrowful in the proper way. We need to learn genuine contrition. How not to skip over the gravity of our sins, nor to catastrophize them as if there were no Redeemer. To be sorry for our sins, not because we're embarrassed by them ("I can't believe I did that!"), nor only out of fear of Hell, but because they have hurt Him Who loves us perfectly – and so deserves to be loved. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be consoled. That's the Lenten Beatitude. We want to know how to mourn our sins, the sins of others, the fallen world, and most of all Christ Himself. We want to experience the blessedness of that kind of mourning that frees us from sin. Blessed are those who mourn. . . . Jesus exemplifies this Beatitude. He is the One Who mourned first and perfectly. Last week, we heard that He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He did so because He had lost a friend, because sin has come into the world and, with it, death. But He also wept to give us an example of mourning. For they shall be consoled. Jesus shows the Beatitude's reward as well. By weeping at Lazarus's tomb, He shows us how to mourn. By raising Lazarus from the dead, He gives an image and foretaste of the reward promised to all. The Lord's weeping for and raising of Lazarus prepares us for today's account of His Passion, in which we encounter the perfection of His mourning and the sanctification of our own. In the Garden, Jesus announces the beginning of His Passion by saying, "My soul is sorrowful even to death." God became man, He assumed our passible nature, so that He could suffer and die for our sins. It's significant that the first suffering He experiences is sorrow of soul. "His passion has begun from within," John Henry Newman said. The cause of His sorrow is our sins. He is in agony, yes, because He anticipates the physical sufferings to come. But His greater agony is interior, in the sorrow He allows to rush in on Him on account of our rebellion against God. It is the sorrow of the holy One, Who knew no sin but was made to be sin. It is a sorrow exacerbated by our lack of sorrow – by our justifying, downplaying, or simply denying sin. Blessed is He Who mourns. Jesus is the Man of Sorrows. He is also blessed – happy – because He is doing the Father's will. Indeed, the reason He mourns is because He assumes the guilt and punishment for our sin in obedience to the Father. His mourning shows His oneness with the Father, His participation in the Father's plan to confront and uproot sin. For He shall be consoled. Jesus promises consolation to those who mourn. So also, He's granted a consolation even in His Passion. The High Priest places Him under oath and commands Him to say whether He is "the Christ, the Son of God." It's the pivotal question, the very thing He has come to reveal and proclaim. Perhaps in all His sorrow and pain Jesus experiences a slight consolation in this opportunity to solemnly affirm His identity. He joyfully confirms His Sonship and therefore reveals the Father too: "You have said so. But I tell you: From now on you will see 'the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power' and 'coming on the clouds of heaven.'" All of Lent is an exercise in holy sorrow. The sorrow we desire is summarized beautifully in the 13th verse of the Stabat Mater: Let me mingle tears with thee, Mourning Him who mourn'd for me, All the days that I may live. Mourning Him who mourn'd for me. . . .Blessed are they who mourn because the Blessed One has already mourned. We are blessed to be able to share the sorrow of the One Who sorrowed over us. We should mourn Him because His soul first became sorrowful even to death. All that days that I may live. No, our mourning can't always be as intense as it is during Lent. But such sorrow should be a constant in the Catholic lif...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza The feast day of the newest Doctor of the Church, John Henry Newman, is not his dies natalis (death) but 9th October, the day of his conversion in 1845. That date was definitive for the shape of the Catholic Church in England. So much good for the Catholic Church followed. On March 29, 1986, Scott Hahn was received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil. So much good for the Catholic Church followed. Praising and thanking God in Steubenville on this fortieth anniversary, some three dozen of Dr. Hahn's family, friends, colleagues and collaborators are gathering in retreat to celebrate the occasion. I consider it a great honor to be serving as chaplain. But preaching to Scott Hahn brings a measure of nervousness! It's also the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reception into the Catholic Church of John Bergsma, one of Hahn's principal colleagues at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, which is also marking its twenty-fifth anniversary. Preaching to Bergsma runs the risk of bringing coals to Newcastle, as I have for years relied upon his four-volume commentary on the Sunday lectionary in my own homiletic preparation. Hahn, Bergsma, the St. Paul Center – much indeed for which to praise God! Hahn would be embarrassed by the comparison to St. John Henry. The two are not in the same ballpark as theologians. But in terms of impact on ordinary Catholic life? Hahn, Bergsma, and other Protestant pastors – now Catholic – have taught millions of Catholics to know the Word of God better, and thus to love it more. Add to that list Jeff Cavins of the Great Adventure Bible and the massively influential Bible-in-a-Year podcast. Twenty-five years ago, I graduated with my STB from the Gregorian in Rome, and had come to loathe the Scriptures. Not exactly. I loathed my Scripture classes, which sucked both spirit and life out of the Bible. Our Johannine course included excruciating weeks of dissecting John 2 into ever more minute fragments, so much so that it was years after ordination before I got over my aversion to preaching on the wedding at Cana. Our professor never mentioned that Augustine had written on John. The period of emaciated Scripture study is over. The leading figure in restoring the Bible to the entire Church as the "sacred page" and "soul of theology" – Vatican II's language – is certainly Joseph Ratzinger. But the St. Paul Center in Steubenville, founded in 2001 to multiply Hahn's Biblical approach, has played a key role. The books it publishes – both scholarly and popular – and the retreats it runs – especially for priests – have transformed the Catholic Biblical landscape. I grew to truly know the Scriptures – and love them – only after my theological studies were no longer impeding me. Three converts were key: the sermons of Newman and Msgr. Ronald Knox (still my favorite) and Frank Sheed's To Know Christ Jesus. (Sheed was a quasi-convert, baptized Catholic but raised Protestant.) Hahn and his happy band of former Protestants were teaching Catholics how to read and understand the Bible – and that it was the book of the Church. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible volumes were perfect for parish Bible studies. And A Father Who Keeps His Promises is the best introduction to Hahn's covenantal theology. There was a time when I led pilgrimages to the Holy Land regularly, and Hahn's book was the required advance reading. There was a graphic of successive covenants, which I insisted pilgrims memorize, from the original couple (Adam and Eve), to the family (Noah), the tribe (Abraham), the nation (Moses), the kingdom (David), and the Church (Jesus). Hahn accompanied us along the paths of salvation. Throughout the English-speaking world, I doubt there is a parish where some of the key lay leaders have not read Rome Sweet Home, his conversion account written jointly with his wife Kimberly, or The Lamb's Supper, on the Biblical character of the Mass. Hahn's popular works, littered aplenty with painful ...

By Francis X. Maier Science is an odd theme to choose on the brink of Holy Week. Or maybe not so odd. In a way, science is miraculous. It's an expression of man's dignity and genius. It offers our species two deep satisfactions: the joy of discovering how the world works, and the means of using what we learn to improve our lives and the lives of others. It also seems to answer the "why" of things. Why do colliding atoms produce energy? Why can enough of that energy, properly channeled, vaporize an entire city like Hiroshima? And why can we even wonder about such things? The first two questions are really disguised versions of "how." To the third question, science will likewise offer a very reasonable theory of evolution: the route from chemicals in a primordial soup to the contents of a Tiffany's display window. It will explain why those chemicals might combine and morph; why some of them ended up as wildly expensive diamonds; and why those diamonds trigger favorable biological responses in the mating dance of a uniquely intelligent animal. But genuine science has the modesty to know its own limits; to acknowledge and respect other paths to truth and human fulfillment. Thus, when it comes to questions of why, science won't – because it can't – answer the Big One: Why is there anything instead of nothing? The above has already been said by others, many times. But it's nonetheless worth noting a point made by the social scientist Christian Smith in Moral, Believing Animals. There are no "non-believers." That includes hardcore atheists. We all believe in something. We all, first and often unconsciously, make a foundational assumption about the nature of the world based on our instincts, preferences, or experiences. We then build a rational framework on top of it to answer and engage the "whys" of life. As it happens, some choices are better, and some worse, than others. Scientism, for example, is not science. It's a materialist philosophy about nature dressed in scientific vestments. It's animated by the belief – a confident leap of faith – that reality is purely material "stuff" and processes. It assumes that science, at least theoretically, can someday unlock all or most of what there is to know. Thus we can properly accept an implausible but very real thing like superposition in quantum physics: the fact that a quantum particle can be there and not there, in the same place, at the same time. Nature, after all, is mysterious. But a virgin birth? A resurrection from the dead? Biblical nonsense. Here's the irony. Intellectual vanity is good news for a gifted writer. It makes a great target. Which is why the work of Arthur C. Clarke, himself a committed atheist, could draw praise from the likes of C.S. Lewis. In the early 1950s, Clarke produced a story – "The Nine Billion Names of God" – that's unforgettable and especially relevant to our reflections here. The plot is simple. A Buddhist monastery high in the Himalayas contacts an American computing firm. The monks hire two of its engineers, who then travel to install and run a computer on site. This will drastically speed up a project the monastery has been working on for 300 years: listing the nine billion names (claim the monks) of God. The engineers think this foolish. But the pay and food are good, the monks welcoming, and the scenery stunning, By day the world is endless, astonishing mountains. By night the sky is a carpet of intensely beautiful stars. The deeper "why" behind the project eventually becomes clear. When all of God's names are collected and codified, man's purpose (again, as the monks believe) will be completed, and Creation will end. The engineers suspect that when the world doesn't helpfully disappear, the monks will be unhappy – very unhappy – with them. So on the night the project nears conclusion, they slip away on horseback for the long trek to an airfield far below, and the trip back to reality. They chat affably on the way down. Then one of them fall...

By Michael Pakaluk A correct Catholic approach to AI becomes clearer, I think, if we approach a foundational text in Catholic Social Teaching, Rerum novarum, not as about structural issues in political economy, but rather as about claims on time and claims of authority. The workhouses of the Industrial Revolution, by paying only a subsistence wage to the father, forced wives and children into the factories too, destroying time for the family, the parish, and worship. And making each member of a household directly dependent upon the owner, not the father. This configuration, moreover, appeared fixed; the members of a household seemed to have no way to escape their plight as "wage slaves." A "living wage" busts this up. Pay the father enough so that he can support a family and so that they, if they live thriftily, can acquire capital over time, and the result is that the family is restored as the basic cell of society. And the father's authority too is restored. Workhouses absorbed nearly all leisure time and took authority away from parents and clerics. The living wage, when honored, returned remunerative work to its proper position of being for the sake of the family, not the family for the sake of work. Catholics face a situation today similar to the Industrial Age through what Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff has called "surveillance capitalism." Technology in the heady days of Wunderkinder like the young Steve Jobs and Bill Gates exulted to be in the service of the value creator – the entrepreneur, the artist, the executive looking for efficiencies of scale. But in roughly the early 2000s, things got flipped, so that the user became the product. You know the maxim, "if the app is free, you are the product." We pay for ostensibly "free" services not through money, but with our time and attention. If revenue comes from targeted advertising, then, once a network of users has ceased growing organically, further growth can come only from more screen time, or from more data, leading to better prediction and more assured control of behavior. Furthermore, things get locked in. Get devices into the hands of children, and their behavior can be shaped into adulthood. You see that your child is addicted to a screen? My colleagues around the country say that students can't sit through a lecture any longer: they must "go to the bathroom" at least once an hour, a euphemism for going away to look at their phones – the way cigarette addicts used to behave. These failings are not accidents or mere weaknesses of human nature. Are our clerics paying attention here? Christians are supposed to live "in the presence of God," not in the presence of short-form videos. If we have free time, saying a prayer is a good thing to do, or visiting a church. Families are supposed to center around the fellowship among the children, not Instagram networks, and follow the culture set by parents, not influencers. Priests and bishops who are internet celebrities are like worker priests who penetrated factories after the Industrial Revolution. They do good work, to be sure, but they are not naming the fundamental problem, or contributing to the needed change in our thinking about how technology uses us. In particular, they are not helping to foment this other "paradigm change," which Zuboff has rightly said is necessary to overcome "surveillance capitalism" – the way we came to see, as a society, that cigarette addictions and polluting the environment are to be shunned. The main ethical question concerning AI chatbots, then, is not new. Will these new technologies serve as de facto fiduciaries, putting the genuine interests of the user first, or will they join forces with existing "surveillance capitalism," so that chats come to be in the service of an advertising master besides the user; and users are drawn more deeply into a web of subjective illusion? Only Anthropic among the leading companies has foresworn advertisement as a source of revenue. Anthropic ...

By Matthew Walz For Lent this year, I resolved to pray the Angelus in the morning, at midday, and in the evening – a practice, of course, long a part of Catholic piety. In my adult life, I've been up and down in adhering to this practice, and this year I wanted to fix that. (Please don't ask how I've done thus far!) I was inspired to make this resolution by a passage in St. John Paul II's Gift and Mystery, which he published on the 50th anniversary of his ordination. This dense little book tells JP2's "vocation story." For a man who chose "Totus Tuus" as his episcopal motto, it's no surprise that Mary played an influential role in that story. From early on in life, it appears Karol Wojtyla prayed the Angelus three times a day. Indeed, while working in the stone quarry as a young man, Karol would pause at midday, put down what he was carrying, and silently pray the Angelus – a sight that his fellow workers found admirable, but also somewhat amusing. Such is the fate of a fool for Mary! By learning more about Mary and then consecrating himself to her (under the guidance of St. Louis de Montfort), young Karol "came to understand why the Church says the Angelus three times a day." The "powerful words" of this prayer, he writes, "express the deepest reality of the greatest event ever to take place in all of history." That's a mouthful, to be sure, and yet what a potent assertion! Especially on this Solemnity of the Annunciation, a feast that we might nickname "Angelus Day." His description of the Angelus highlights what's so meaningful, and yet so hidden, about the event that we celebrate today. Today we celebrate Gabriel's announcement to Mary that she will conceive in her womb and bear a son, whom she shall call Jesus. (Luke 1:31). Gabriel's announcement is, in fact, a proposal, since Mary remains free to accept Gabriel's future-tense statement as her own future. . .or not. In a well-known homily, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, another devotee of Mary, captures the drama of that moment so beautifully: You have heard, O Virgin, that you will conceive and bear a son; you have heard that it will not be by man but by the Holy Spirit. The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us. Bernard draws us into the magnitude of this moment. He intuits in this Angelus moment what John Paul himself describes: "the deepest reality of the greatest event ever to take place in all of history." It is the turning point, and we who place ourselves there with Gabriel also await Mary's reply. Indeed, my own Lenten attempts at a thrice-daily recitation of the Angelus have driven home John Paul's description of this moment, which makes two implicit, foundational assertions that ought to suffuse the minds of every Christian believer daily — and especially today. The first assertion is that the moment of the Annunciation is, in fact, the greatest event in all of history. The whole of history pivots around this event, around Mary's decision and what results from it, namely, the absolutely hidden and mysterious conception of Jesus Christ in her womb. This is the world-transforming moment of Incarnation, of the Becoming-Flesh of the Word of God. Et Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis. All of history up to that moment had been anticipating it, and all of history afterward has unfolded and will continue to unfold its reality and significance. And at the center of it all stands Gabriel's Annunciation and Mary's reception of it. The second assertion is in some ways even more mysterious: that the Angelus captures the deepest reality of this greatest event in history. The ultimate drama of the Annunciation lies hidden within Mary's personal interiority, within her heart, within her deliberate self-present exercise of freedom in response to God's proposal. Indeed, when we peel away all that led up to this moment as well...

By John M. Grondelski I take the subway to work. I like doing that because it gives me uninterrupted time to do things. Read. I get at least two books done per month. Write. Some of those book reviews get sketched out on the Orange Line. Pray. The trip to work can be a good 20 minutes for silent prayer. Recently, looking around at my fellow passengers, I wondered how many others might avail their time in similar fashion. And that made me think of Richard John Neuhaus's "naked public square." Why? When Fr. Richard John Neuhaus introduced the concept of the "naked public square" in a 1984 book with the same name, he argued that it was anti-democratic because it required citizens to strip off their religious identities as the price of admission to public life and discourse. The naked public square paradigm of church/state relations requires the majority of citizens, who are believers, to disavow that basic identity to participate in political and social life. Religion needs to be hidden from public view. In public life. In schools. On the subway. Now, I'm not arguing for ostentatious public displays of religion. Catholics are in the midst of a "season of grace and favor" which began with Matthew's Gospel, counselling people to go to their rooms, close the door, and pray. But that Gospel is hardly the sole norm for prayer. If it were, how do you explain what Christians are supposed to do every Lord's Day? Matthew counsels against public displays of faith to ensure we don't aggrandize our own names, not that we avoid honoring His. So, what's that got to do with the naked public square? Prayer and worship are not just commandments; they are also basic human needs because, pace modernity, there is no such thing as an atheist. Polish philosopher Zbigniew Stawrowski insists every man is a believer because everybody holds to certain absolute core principles – even, paradoxically, relativism – as matters not of proof but axioms of faith. One believes in one's "Absolute," one's god. That deity may be the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or a god like sex, money, or power. But it is a god with which one identifies and by which one's life is ordered. The naked public square does not exclude all believers from the public square, only those adherents of traditional faiths that do not make gods of the goods of this world. Contrary to its proclaimed goal of protecting religious liberty by excluding explicit religion from public affairs, it in fact fosters a preferential approach to religion, canonizing the faith of secularism as long as the latter pretends not to be a religion. And, in the end, it promotes people living double lives. It does so by privileging certain identities – secular identities – in the public sphere while creating cultural expectations that other deeply held convictions constitutive of one's identity must remain hidden. Observant Christians and Jews must engage in some form of spiritual self-mutilation (or at least spiritual hormonal therapy) to conform to the expectations of the naked public square. Those beliefs and values most constitutive of one's identity are supposed to stay in the closet because they are religious. In an era otherwise inclined to let "a thousand identities bloom," certain identities remain candidates for socio-cultural pesticide. Germain Grisez included "authenticity" in an early version of his ethical theory of the basic human goods. By "authenticity," Grisez meant a certain transparency of personality: what one held inside and what one showed the world were the same. It was a part of the goods that integrated human beings from the divisive effects of sin: integrity united the disparate parts within man (reason, will, passions); authenticity united the inner and outer man; friendship connected him to his human peers; and religion to his God. Authenticity and religion are, therefore, not optional, "feel-good" things, nor the exclusive territory of believers. They are basic goods necessary ...

By Robert Royal Let's begin with a pointed question: Are we, almost all, today, Sadducees? If your knowledge of the groups who appear in the New Testament is hazy, we might put it thus: Do almost all of us now, even Christians who claim otherwise, like the Sadducees in Jesus' day, basically discount eternal life and think physical death the absolute end, and worst of evils? If so, a war may do us a service because it reveals, in its dreadful and severe way, the state of our souls. War is hell. But does Hell – a place of eternal war – or Heaven – the place of the only true and lasting peace – play any real role in our minds and hearts during a time like this? It may seem heartless to ask the question in the face of so much immediate suffering, but it's precisely because of those human ills that the deeper questions come to the fore. As C.S. Lewis put it in a similar time: "The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it." No one should want war except as an absolute necessity for the gravest reasons. Totalitarians love war because they often think it's a remedy for the flabbiness that overtakes people when things are good. Mussolini said that the modern Italians needed a "bloodbath" to recover their ancient discipline and virtue. And he tried giving them one. We know how that, like other programs of renewal through war, turned out. Peace and prosperity are goods in themselves, but they're not always good for us. Europe's dependence on the United States for its security since World War II, for instance, made it into a continent that finds it difficult to find the will or allocate the resources to defend itself. Many Europeans – and sadly not a few Americans now – even doubt whether it's worth defending our civilization. A Christian shouldn't be surprised. "In his riches, man lacks wisdom: he is like the beasts that are destroyed." (Psalm 49:20) It doesn't have to be this way. We may be wise even in prosperity. But reason and revelation alike warn of dangers. Just now, we're rightly preoccupied not only about the justice of the Iran war, but also about its possible spread – along with terrorism. And we try to imagine what a "successful" end might be. We can't help but doubt what we're told by politicians and the media. But in all this, do we lose sight of the truth that neither war nor peace is the last word for us? Our Christian forbears didn't need to ask this basic question because, until quite recently, bodily death was not considered the worst thing. Some things are worth dying for. Most people knew anyway from daily experience that our years on earth are sharply limited, war or not. And that the next life is, for good or ill, forever. The traditional classification of sins and virtues reflected this. We cite Dante a lot on this page because. . .one just should, for many reasons. Besides the sheer imaginative beauty of his Divine Comedy, he makes it easy to see crucial distinctions, Christian distinctions, about the state of the soul, both in this life and the next. For instance, sins of violence and murder are, of course, punished in Inferno, but only about midway down into Hell. There are good reasons in the Christian tradition for this. In the proper Christian understanding, we are a composite of body and soul. Murder or indiscriminate slaughter in war are, to be sure, horrible. But a Certain Authoritative Person made a point of saying (twice): "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell." (Matthew 10:28, Luke 12:4-5) We rarely hear this these days, even from the highest authorities in the Church. Which is why both just war and capital punishment now appear "inadmissible" to some Church authorities. If you believe in eternal life and the greater importance of the soul than physical life, however, there are still plenty of worse things than the bodily death, wh...

By Fr. Benedict Kiely As we mark our head, lips, and heart with the Sign of the Cross when the Gospel is solemnly proclaimed at Mass, we signal, by that prayer made with hands, the desire that the living Word of God will touch and convert mind and heart, that we may become those who proclaim the saving message we have heard. It is an acknowledgement that, particularly in that most serene of liturgical settings, the Gospel is not some dry and dusty volume from ages past, but the voice of the Lord, with His word, as Scripture tells us, "alive and active," with the power of the "double-edged sword," to penetrate the very core of our being. No matter how many times we have heard or read a particular passage of the Gospel, it is always new, with a message for us, if we have the ears to hear. Despite the greatest exegesis, the wisdom of the Fathers, and preachers, including some, as we know, who can always find a new application for a passage to guard and guide us, there is still an unfathomable mystery when we hear the words of the incarnate God. One of the saints described the Scripture as a fountain that never dries up. That, in itself, should inspire awe. As with the Eucharist, and the mystery of the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, the most profound response to the Gospel is worship and adoration. As we kneel physically before the Lord in His sacramental presence, so we kneel, metaphorically, as we hear His word. Our Eastern brethren, in naming the Eucharist the Divine Mysteries remind us, who lean on the rational mind of the West – so clear, concise, and categorised – of the word "mystery." This is not hidden esoteric knowledge, imparted to the chosen few, but the reality of Who is speaking when the Word is announced. And that there is, after all our intellectual efforts, much more that we do not know, and never will. The Gospel chosen for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the raising of Lazarus, is a perfect example of this awesome mystery that we are privileged to hear and read. Let us approach it with the bare feet of the Copts as they enter the sanctuary, as Moses approached the Burning Bush, trembling before the divine. Jesus, we are told, "loved" Martha and Mary and Lazarus. Along with St. John the Beloved Disciple, we hear of one other that He "loved" in the Gospel – the Rich Young Man. This human love, so deep He weeps at the human death of His friend, encapsulates the very mystery we described earlier. He will perform a miracle, but not for the purpose of display, or even to convert those who witness it. This miracle, and the Gospel account, is chosen for this Sunday for a reason, expounded by the Preface of Holy Week. We are approaching, the Preface says, the "days of His saving Passion and glorious Resurrection." This is the time, the Preface continues, when the "pride of the ancient foe is vanquished and the mystery of our redemption in Christ is celebrated." This mystery, the Triduum, which occurs at every Mass, from the smallest hut in the mission fields to the greatest basilica, is why we hear this story of the raising of the one Jesus loved. There was a time, the Book of Genesis tells us, when the unity and intimacy between God and man, the "original blessing," was expressed by the image of God walking in the Garden in "the cool of the evening." Humanity – Adam and Eve, clothed with light, is tempted by the ancient foe with the original lie – "you will not die." From that moment until this very day, those who believe the lie and ignore the truth, eat of that fruit, concoct bizarre fantasies to escape reality – from space travel to freezing their brains – and still die. The ancient foe tarnishes the clothing of light and creates the nakedness of the dark. This nakedness is the fate of Lazarus, the fate of all humanity, no longer in the Garden of peace. "If you had been here," Martha says to Jesus, "my brother would not have died." There is only One who can counte...

First a note from Robert Royal: Normally, we do not publish columns under pseudonyms. It's a good rule, morally as well as editorially, for people to stand up in public for their ideas. But this column is so helpful about the "liturgy wars" that we decided to suspend the rule this time. The author, be assured, is a priest known to us for decades as a solid citizen, but who, for several reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. He is a North American priest who teaches in a seminary, does parish work, and celebrates both forms of the Roman rite. Now for today's column, The 'Polar Unity' of the Two Forms of the Roman Rite, by Fr. 'Amare Nesciri' ... The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007) of Pope Benedict XVI introduced into the contemporary ecclesial vocabulary a distinction that has since become both fruitful and contentious: the "Ordinary Form" and the "Extraordinary Form" of the one Roman Rite. Benedict was at pains to insist that these are not two rites but two usages of the same lex orandi. The Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council constitutes the Ordinary Form; the Missal of Pope John XXIII (1962), standing in organic continuity with the Tridentine codification of Pope Pius V, may be celebrated as the Extraordinary Form. Benedict's claim was juridical and pastoral, but its deeper import is theological. The coexistence of the two forms within one rite can be understood as a "polar unity" in the sense articulated by Hans Urs von Balthasar: a living tension of complementary principles whose unity is not the flattening of difference but its orchestration. Benedict himself rejected the hermeneutic of rupture that would pit preconciliar and postconciliar liturgy against one another. In his famous 2005 address to the Roman Curia, he contrasted a "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture" with a "hermeneutic of reform in continuity." The liturgy, precisely because it is the Church's most public act of faith, must embody this continuity in a way that is not merely conceptual but sacramental. The two forms of the Roman Rite thus stand as a visible sign that tradition is not a museum piece nor a revolutionary program, but a living stream whose depth and breadth can be perceived only by holding together its historical strata. To interpret this polarity in a richer theological key, it is helpful to turn to Balthasar's account of the Marian and Petrine dimensions of the Church. For Balthasar, the Church is first Marian before she is Petrine. Mary, in her fiat and her immaculate receptivity, embodies the Church's contemplative, bridal, and receptive essence. Peter, in his confession and commission, embodies the Church's apostolic, juridical, and governing mission. These two dimensions are inseparable; yet they are not identical. The Marian dimension grounds the Petrine; the Petrine serves the Marian. The Church is not an institution that happens to have a mystical interior; she is a mystery that necessarily assumes institutional form. If one applies this polarity to the liturgy, the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms may be seen as sacramental embodiments of Marian and Petrine accents within the one Roman Rite. The Extraordinary Form, with its hieratic language, ritual density, and pronounced orientation toward transcendence, gives privileged expression to the Marian dimension: receptivity, silence, adoration, and the primacy of divine action. The Ordinary Form, especially as envisioned by the Council's Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, gives heightened visibility to the Petrine dimension: proclamation, pastoral intelligibility, missionary outreach, and the gathered assembly's audible participation in the apostolic faith. This is not to reduce either form to a caricature. Both forms are Marian and Petrine; both are contemplative and apostolic. Yet each manifests a particular accent. In the Extraordinary Form, the priest's orientation ad orientem, his subdued voice in the Canon, and the stability of the ...

By David Warren In an effort to understand Hieronymus Bosch, I have been reading about the "movers and shakers" who first conceived of our modern world. Bosch presents the fantasies of these heretics, I think, without being entirely a heretic himself. It is easier to see a heresy from a mile off than when it is right up your nose. Or if you are an ingenious, astounding artist, like Bosch, you can examine it closely. In his book, The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch (translated, 1952), the author Wilhelm Franger reconstructs that past age by visiting the episcopal courts, and in particular their records of former hippiedoms and heresies. Especially in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries, they were the paradisal, gnostic cults that flourished across what would become Germany, the Rhineland, and the Low Countries, being known generally by some variation on the theme of "Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit." These self-proclaimed "Homines Intelligentiae" met literally underground, and were the "Woke" or "Wokists" of that time, believing themselves incarnations of the Holy Ghost, and very devoted – to their own esoteric and changeable notions. But they were not truly creative. Their "paradise" would always, always depart, generally through corruption and lust, from what exists in a true paradise, or in the witness of the real Mother of God. They strayed from reality, just as modern communists compulsively dictate a parody of the Christian faith. A violent and evil parody, but an assurance nonetheless that there is an order to this world, and nature. Each deviant movement falls back upon the same cosmic or spiritual shapes and volumes that, I believe, are inevitably representations of immortal things. This is because we are in a world and nature that is, and thus was constructed, from reality. There is no alternative, in effect, to being a copyist, if there is only one reality to copy, vast and complex as that reality may be. And one may depict it accurately, in art and in science, or try to improve upon it, and thereby produce something that is definitively wrong. We thus discover alternative realities, but on close investigation we rather unearth a zero, a form of Nothingness. The mediaeval scholastics realized that this Nothing is like extreme cold. It is not really an alternative thing, but rather it is the absence of a thing, in this case heat or light. It does not add, but subtracts; and when it has taken everything away, everything is, as it were, frozen in darkness. And as heat is added – a little or a lot – we begin to see all of nature's effects coming to life, or being spontaneously exemplified. The same happens when we turn to theology, or even to politics (to present politics in its religious form). As heat is removed – the heat of the divine – everything instead begins to resemble everything else. To use the commonplace analogy of deep space, there is no such thing as taking a spacewalk, unless for a very short period one is supplied with warmth and everything else one will need within a hygienically sealed and fitted suit. Curiously, it is the same on moonwalks, or if one visits Mars. In practical terms, the expense of supplying everything we need to flourish upon earth is, and will always be, very, very expensive. The same goes if, instead of spacewalk or starwalk (even if we could get to the neighboring star in less than an eternity), we decide to replace our religion, and invent a new one more attractive to ourselves (and not just attractive to an ever-absent God), we get to the point where we are freezing. The Adamites and other heretical cells, from centuries ago or just the other day, found that they were dealing with a world in which there are two, and precisely two, "biological" sexes. And after one has decided on the quaint, nonsensical principle of making them equal and interchangeable, or inventing some others, or putting clothes on them or stripping them bare, and calling, for instance, nudity by the word...

By Stephen P. White I have what I like to think of as a healthy obsession with bulbs. I don't mean the kind you screw into an electric lamp. I mean flower bulbs: tulips, hyacinth, daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops, and the like. I bury them in the dirt in the autumn. And as soon as the frozen ground softens to mud, green things start to emerge. While the rest of the world (the lingering snow by the curb included) thinks it is still winter, the bulbs are having none of it. The bulbs are unstoppable. Once the bulbs emerge – those little green nibs, sometimes tinged wine-red – there's no going back. Winter is finished, and all the cold snaps and late-season snow showers are in vain. As we say in our family every year when the first crocuses appear, "Aslan is on the move." The arrival of spring, of course, is a metaphor for resurrection. Here we are in Lent and what we see around us in nature parallels our Lenten journey. The first flowers of spring are heralds of the coming joys of Easter. The bulbs that "died" and were buried have emerged more glorious and alive than ever. And so every child knows. At least, it used to be so. I hope children still learn such things. Right now, winter is losing the same battle it loses every March. And just like every year, the bulbs are pushing the sodden soil aside and emerging clean, startlingly green, and swollen with new life. Somehow the arrival of spring bulbs, the sheer newness of them, is always startling. I know from the calendar that spring is coming, of course. And I planted those bulbs precisely so that I could see them in the spring. Yet spring arrives and these living things that were not there before (at least not to my eyes) push up through the cold, sweet-smelling earth with a contagious, irrepressible vitality. One could almost believe that the spring sun grows warmer because of the emerging flowers rather than the other way round. Every spring somehow feels like the first. I recall lines about spring from Gerard Manley Hopkins: What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden… But it happens again and again, over and over. Every year, the bulbs drive winter away. Every year, these little floral gems emerge, looking like the newest things in all Creation. Every year, nature's metaphor for resurrection plays out in plain view. Every year, it is startling to see something so utterly new under the sun. And here is another metaphor, one that is subtler and harder to learn than the first. A metaphor that has taken me many springs – many Lents and many Easters – to understand. It is a metaphor about old things and new things. About things past made present. About grace and nature. About creation and repetition. About the shocking newness and gratuity of something utterly predictable and expected. The Lord said: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. The seed goes down into the ground. It dies. But then it rises again to bear much fruit. The bulb is buried under dirt and snow and ice. From that death, a glorious new blossom emerges. So far so good. If we were to see this happen once, and only once, we would think it a miracle. If it happens over and over and over again, is it less miraculous? The Lord said: Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. An innocent man lays down his life. He dies. He rises again to new life, eternal life. A man takes bread and wine, blesses them, and gives them to his disciples; his body and blood. If it happens once, it is a miracle. But what if that same miracle is made present to us, not once, but over and over and over again? This metaphor, if you can follow me, gets closer to what I love about spring bulbs. This implacable repetition of the miracle, the outrageous made so commonplace we might hardly notice, is wh...

By Randall Smith. But first note: TCT's Editor-in-Chief, Robert Royal, will appear tonight on 'EWTN Live' with Fr. Mitch Packwa for a freewheeling discussion about issues in the Church. Information about rebroadcasts is available by clicking here. Now for today's column... Augustine admits in Confessions that when he was young, he did not like the Scriptures; he found the language ugly and uninspiring. He preferred Cicero and Virgil. Worse yet, some things in the Scriptures caused him to think Christianity was ridiculous. Who would be so naïve as to think that God has a right hand? God doesn't have a body! What a bunch of rubes Christians must be. It was not until he got older that he realized that the Scriptures made use of figures of speech, metaphors, analogies, and other poetic devices. Christians don't believe that God has a physical right hand; rather, this is an image suggesting the intimate union between the Father and the Son. He had been laughing at Christians when he was the ignorant one whose pride had blinded him to the richness of Biblical language and imagery. "My inflated pride shunned their style," he writes, "nor could the sharpness of my wit pierce their inner meaning. Yet, truly, were they such as would develop in little ones; but I scorned to be a little one, and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as a great one." It is not uncommon for people who pride themselves on their scientific sophistication to find the Church's manner of speaking, especially in the liturgy, bizarre, perhaps even childish, something acceptable only to unsophisticated people who believe whatever they're told, no matter how ridiculous. I can imagine someone of this mindset asking: "Do you really think that there are choirs of angels 'soaring aloft upon their wings," singing 'Holy, Holy, Holy'?" As an adult convert, I can understand how skeptics from outside the Church might view this sort of language. It seems like something out of a children's book, like talking about Harry Potter's "sorting hat" or flying on a Hippogriff. Fine for children, but not for serious adults. Since we live in what is largely a dull, unpoetic "information age," I understand why the Church's language might seem this way. But perhaps there are things that simply can't be said in ordinary speech of the sort one gets in the newspaper or the latest magazine article. Perhaps some things simply transcend our normal, everyday ways of speaking and require a different mode of discourse, one that communicates realities that transcend our usual ways of speaking and writing – as when Robert Frost says: The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. Or when T. S. Eliot writes that, We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Or when the Psalmist proclaims: The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul. If you don't "get" the many ways language signifies – if, for example, you don't "get" poetic speech, and it seems like a bunch of meaningless twaddle – then you probably won't "get" the language of the Scriptures and the liturgy. Much of it will likely seem as silly to you as it did to St. Augustine when he imagined that Christians thought God had a physical body. I could say, the phrase "at the right hand of the Father" means that the Risen Christ is intimately united in the oneness of Being with the One from whom He, the second "person" of the Trinity, is eternally generated, being loved fully and eternally and loving fully and eternally in return. But that's not better. That language might have a useful role to play to help us better understand the language with which the faith has been expressed to us. But after we have used the more "scholarly" words to explain those Biblical and liturgica...

(As told to Jeremy Lott) You may have heard the legend that Saint Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, but I'm here to tell you it ain't, exactly, 100-percent true. Now it's true that Ireland has no snakes today and it's also true that Saint Patrick is the one that done it. But here's the thing: He didn't drive them snakes out. Nope, he outsmarted them. The snakes were always sinking their fangs into Irish people. And the people, well, they didn't like being bit one bit. So they all said, "Patrick, caaaan't you do something about it?" Back then, Ireland was crawling with snakes from Donegal to Cork and from Galway to Wicklow. But there was one place the snakes liked best, and that was on the banks of the River Shannon in Limerick. Them Limerick snakes were so thick on the ground that the fishermen couldn't cast their lines or launch their boats. If anyone so much as looked at them funny, the snakes would snap and hiss and generally start a stir. And that's what they done when Patrick came up on them and said, "Snakes, we have to talk." Patrick let them go on for a bit and then he snapped back, "I said talk, not hiss." "That ssssssilly human thinkssssss he can talk to ussssss," said one pit viper to the other snakes, who all had a good snake laugh at that. "Yes, that is what the silly human thinks," said Patrick. Them Limerick layabouts were stunned into shutting up. A human who could speak snake was a new thing to them. Finally, a large python cleared its throat. "Well what issssss it that you want to ssssssay to ussssss, human?" the python asked. "The Irish have been talking to me, and they think it's time for you to go," Patrick said. You may wonder why Patrick said, "the Irish" and not "we Irish." It's because he didn't come from here, but that's not what the snakes were wondering at that moment. They weren't wondering because they were coiling mad. "Then we'll bite them! We'll bite every lasssssst one of them," one rattler said. Many others joined in with threats and hisses. Again, Patrick let them get it off of their scaly backs for a minute before he spoke up. "My slithery neighbors, Ireland is a wet and chilly place for us humans, and we're warm blooded! Aren't you cold?" he asked. "Yessssss," a few snakes answered. "And wouldn't you rather go to where it's warm?" Patrick asked "Yessssss!" many more snakes said. "Rattler, wouldn't you like to slither through a nice Texas desert? And Adder, wouldn't you rather lounge on the banks of the Nile? And mamba, doesn't a sky island in an African rainforest sound good?" he asked. Many snakes nodded their snaky snouts. "Well then let us give you all a long vacation, and if you don't like it there you can always come back," Patrick said. Some snakes started to say "yessssss," but then the biggest, baddest one of them all spoke up. "You reek of liessssss, human. Why shouldn't I ssssssimply eat you insssssstead?" asked the anaconda. Now, I gotta give Patrick some credit here. He did not give into the fear that he must have been feeling. No, he told that great big snake, "I'm too much for you to swallow." And, well, that did it. "Ssssssurely you jesssssst, human. I can eat anything that movessssss, from a mousssssse to a rhinocssssserosssssss," the anaconda announced. So Patrick made a bet then and there. If he could name something that moved that anaconda couldn't eat, all the snakes would all go on that vacation. And if not, well then, he was supper. There must have been a twinkle in his eye when he said, "Eat the river." Anaconda hissed. Trapped by its own boast! Still, the great big snake gave it a shot. It slithered out into a ways into the river and opened its great mouth and tried to suck the water in. It wasn't long before the current carried it off. And I don't know much about snake religious notions. But if they have saints too then Patrick is one of them, because of what he did next. He'd won. The snake that was gonna eat him was a goner, but Patrick went right went i...

By Robert Royal When Notre Dame de Paris almost burned down in 2019, owing to a fire started (accidentally?) by workmen, the world was stunned by the near loss of one of the West's iconic monuments – and a religious landmark at that. But churches around the world are burned or subjected to other types of attack these days, year after year, not by accident, but deliberate anti-Christian acts. Never heard of it? Thereby hangs a tale. It's no surprise to anyone that Christian churches suffer frequent attacks in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. They've been going on for years, with a sharp rise since 9/11 and the emergence of radical Islamic groups, as I've documented in my book The Martyrs of the New Millennium. And these attacks often add insult to injury by being timed to take place at major Christian feasts like Christmas and Easter. What is surprising, however, is how little attention is paid to the ongoing violence by Western media. In Nigeria, the wholesale slaughter of Christians – thousands in 2025 – and the assaults on churches and Christian schools, together with kidnappings and ransom demands – couldn't be ignored any longer by news outlets and governments. But the plight of Christians in a dozen other countries never draws serious attention. That failure clearly has a two-fold cause: reluctance among journalists – newsrooms are overwhelmingly progressive – to contribute to "Islamophobia," and a soft anti-Christian bigotry. The American political scientist Samuel Huntington asserted that Islam has "bloody borders," evident not just from recent times but the long interactions between Islam and Christians, Hindus, etc.) Modern analysts often try to deny that these conflicts are religious – in a materialist age political and economic causes are believed to be real, religious motives at best secondary. But the only way to believe that is to be ignorant of centuries of history – and the Koran itself. Still, it's surprising that those same media also manage to pass over quickly or, more typically, to ignore outright anti-Christian acts even in the West. We need not look far for striking examples. Earlier this month in "celebration" of International Women's Day, churches in Mexico – Catholic Mexico! – came under literal fire by feminist extremists (see video here). But it's not only there. Throughout Latin America, including Argentina during the reign of Argentine Pope Francis, similar things have happened owing to feminist rage and radical ideologies of varying kinds. In Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, we've even seen the continuing saga of Marxist repression of the Church – holdovers from the totalitarian nightmares of the previous century. And those regimes are supported by old-style state Communism in China, which notoriously persecutes religion. One Mexican feminist proclaimed, "I fear those who pray the Rosary more than I fear criminals." It's heartening to see, as in Mexico, Catholic men forming human shields around Church buildings. But where was the coverage – outside of Catholic news organizations – of something that is a clear public fact about our time? It's not mere Catholic special-pleading to point out that if the target had been a synagogue or mosque, our sharp-eyed watchdogs in the press would be investigating and relentlessly reminding us about systemic prejudice. Sad to say, the Church itself has sometimes been all-too-willing to blame Catholics for past misdeeds – sometimes when they didn't even happen. In 2021, reports in Canada surfaced that ground radar had discovered over 1000 graves – sometimes called "mass graves" – near "residential schools," government institutions often run by Christians, which took "First Nation" children from their parents and tried to integrate them into the Canadian mainstream. A sensitive subject, of course. But subsequent investigations have uncovered no "mass graves." Yet many people – including Pope Francis, who made an apologetic visit t...

By Fr. Robert P. Imbelli, However fervent or fitful, our Lenten journey is moving toward its culmination. Of the many symbolic riches of the Paschal Triduum perhaps none resonates so affectively as the raising high of the Paschal Candle in the darkened church. And the minister intones the ineffable saving mystery: "Light of Christ!" While the jubilant assembly responds in grateful wonder: "Thanks be to God!" Less dramatic, though equally significant, are the words pronounced just prior to the proclamation. As the celebrant lights the Paschal Candle, he prays: "May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds." Christ's light reveals not only our vocation to glory, but, inseparably, our dire need for salvation. So, St. Paul exhorts the Colossians to give thanks to the Father "who has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins." (Colossians 1:13-14) Only through Christ do we pass over from the domain of darkness into the promise of transfiguring light. Hence, in the patristic tradition, baptism was also referred to as "phōtismos" since it signified the new Christian's enlightenment by Christ. Thus, it is fitting that, on this Sunday of the second scrutinies of the catechumens, themes of light and sight permeate the readings. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, joyfully exclaims: "You were once darkness, but now you are light [phōs] in the Lord," thereby disclosing their new identity in Christ. But this is immediately followed by the imperative that governs this section of the letter: therefore, "walk [peripateite] as children of the light!" (Ephesians 5:8) In effect Paul exhorts the Ephesians: Be all that you are called to be! Fulfill your destiny in Christ. In the seven verses of today's second reading the word "light" appears five times. It becomes manifest in lives of "goodness, righteousness, and justice." And it displays stark contrast not only to the "darkness" [skotos] of believers' former lives, but also to the darkness of the surrounding culture. The Letter to the Ephesians is noteworthy in its emphasis on the ongoing growth of the Christian community, the building up of the Body of Christ. "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." (Ephesians 4:15) Baptismal renunciation and conversion are both the conclusion of a process of enlightenment and the beginning of an ever-renewed growth in the Lord. Saint Gregory of Nyssa famously characterized the Christian life as an ongoing dialectic of endings and new beginnings, every end [telos] giving rise to a new beginning [arche]. Hence the crucial importance of ongoing discernment – "discerning [dokimazontes] what is pleasing to the Lord." (5:10) The believer must carefully examine his or her own behavior, learning to put on the mind of Christ, not yielding to the spurious enticements of those who are "darkened in their understanding and distant from the life of God." (4:18) In many ways, then, the final chapters of Ephesians are an extended commentary upon what Paul had admonished the Romans. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, discerning [dokimazein] what is the will of God, the good and well-pleasing and perfect." (Romans 12:2) Such discernment fosters an ever-greater realization of Christians' new life in Christ and what it entails in the everyday. Not only the newly baptized, but those who have lived the Christian life for some time, are called to realize ever more fully the glorious vocation that Paul celebrates in the great benediction with which his Letter begins. "God has called us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and without blemish in his sight."(Ephesians1:4) Sons and daughters of light, Christians stand forth as a "contrast society," that will often require of them a countercult...

By Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, Like many people years ago, as a child, my brother and I, together with our dad, always prayed in our "night prayers" the traditional prayer to our guardian angels: "Angel of God, my guardian dear to whom God's love entrusts me here, ever this day (or night) be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen." I still ask my guardian angel at night when I go to bed and, in the morning, when I get up, to watch over and protect me. Moreover, before writing, I always ask my guardian angel to give me clarity of thought and expression and to whisper the right words into my ears. Sometimes when I am struggling to find the right word, he places exactly the right word in my mind. Prayers to one's guardian angel are Biblically based: • God instructs Moses, as the Israelites set off for the Promised Land: "Behold I send you an angel before you, to guard you on the way and bring you to the place which I have prepared. Give heed to him and hearken to his voice." (Exodus 23:20-21). • Psalm 91:11 affirms that one need not fear, "for he (God) will give his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways." • Jesus himself states that we should not despise the little ones, "for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 18:10) • In the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter escapes from prison and knocks on the door where the faithful were gathered, his brethren wrongly think: "It is his angel!" (Acts 12:13-15) Although most of us will never see our guardian angels, many saints have. Padre Pio frequently conversed with his guardian angel, who would defend him against demonic attacks. Gemma Galgani was in daily contact with her guardian angel, who taught, protected, and corrected her. Sr. Faustina Kowalska spoke of her guardian angel accompanying her on her journeys. She also saw him when she was immersed in prayer, often asking her to pray for the dying. The point of the above examples is not to say that one has to be a "saint" to speak with or behold one's guardian angel. Rather, it is to illustrate that we, too, can converse with and be assured of our guardian angel's protecting and guiding presence. Moreover, we should dispel the romantic and "cute" notion that guardian angels are only relevant for vulnerable children. Adults are in as much need of their guardian angels – maybe even more so, for their temptations and affairs are often of a more serious nature. Our guardian angels are therefore present to strengthen, to encourage, and to guide us in living out our respective vocations, whether single, married, religious, or priestly. To dismiss them as only suited for what is childish is to place ourselves in harm's way. The question has been asked: After death, do our guardian angels cease to be with us once we enter into Heaven? Obviously, we no longer need to be guarded. Do they, then, get recycled to someone newly conceived? According to Catholic tradition, our guardian angels even remain with us in Heaven and together we give praise and glory to the most holy Trinity – to our heavenly Father who is the ultimate source of life, to the risen Jesus, the Father's incarnate Son, who is our loving Savior and Lord, and to the Holy Spirit who cleanses us of sin and makes us holy. With all of our brothers and sisters in Christ, along with our respective guardian angels, we will sing forever a glorious hymn of praise and thanksgiving. Here, we perceive the confluence of the earthly and the heavenly liturgy. At the conclusion of the Preface at Mass the following, or something similar, is said: "And so, with the Angels and all of the Saints we declare your (the Father's) glory, as with one voice we acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory." With one voice, our earthly human voices, the heavenly voices of the saints, and the host of angelic voices, we all together declare that both Heaven and earth are filled...

By Auguste Meyrat Friedrich Nietzsche is notorious for his theory of the Übermensch, the superior man who rises above the constraints of morality and mediocrity. But his theory of the "last man" has proven to be far more prophetic – and relevant. A kind of counterexample to the Übermensch, the last man is lazy, weak, incurious, and lives for pleasure. He is the product of an overly civilized, Christianized, and complacent culture. While literary examples of the Übermensch abound, there are relatively few depictions of the "last man" in all his non-glory. Perhaps such a character hits a little too close to home and might make more than a few readers uncomfortable, or perhaps most writers like to imagine themselves as an Übermensch creating and commanding imaginative realms, not last men confessing their weaknesses. Or most likely, last men are by definition so passive that they pose a serious challenge for any writer trying to put together a compelling narrative about them. But just because something is challenging does not mean that it isn't worth trying. In his debut novel The Rhinelanders, Catholic essayist Alan Schmidt takes on the problem of the last man by telling his story and envisioning his destiny. In doing so, he portrays the mundane, quiet despair in which so many people today live, including people of faith. His novel reminds readers not to forget these lost souls since they, too, are children of God, people with a notable past and a potentially notable future. The story takes place in Westphalia, Michigan, a small rural town founded by German Catholic settlers. The hero of the story is Stephen Koenig, a middle-aged, unmarried, and unremarkable man who lives with his mentally handicapped sister, Sarah, and ne'er-do-well brother, Thomas. Unlike most of the Koenig clan, Stephen never left his hometown, lacking the ambition that would inspire such a change. He lives comfortably, working a nondescript office job at a financial consulting firm, attending Mass, praying his rosary every day, and maintaining good relationships with his siblings and neighbors. Certain forces intervene, however, to disrupt Stephen's placeholder existence. At night, he is periodically visited by ghosts of his ancestors along with two menacing wolves who deny him peace of mind. During the day, he is offered a job opportunity that would finally take him out of Westphalia, and is confronted with a romantic relationship with a woman who essentially initiates every meetup. Meanwhile, he uses his sister's disability and his brother's failure-to-launch as excuses for putting off any meaningful action. \ Schmidt introduces each chapter with a passage recalling a moment in the history of Stephen's ancestry. From a tribe of pagan Goths to the generation of German Americans immediately preceding Stephen and his family, the juxtaposition illustrates the gradual loss of will and inner strength that once propelled the Koenigs. Well before he is explicitly identified as "the Last Man," it is apparent that this is who Stephen is meant to represent. Even so, Schmidt refrains from offering a mere Nietzschean allegory set in modern rural America. Certain redeeming factors complicate Stephen's character. Yes, he is indecisive, noncommittal, and insecure, but he is also charitable, pious, and wholesome. This happens to make him much more sympathetic than his brother Thomas, who is the inverse, a man of great energy and will, but also abrasive and rebellious. The modern world shows its preference for men like Stephen by granting them a frictionless existence full of easy opportunities, while it actively punishes men like Thomas who must fight for everything they have. Moreover, even as Stephen and Thomas make their way in the world, Schmidt makes it clear that their choices do not happen in a vacuum. They are the product of their local surroundings, their German lineage, their church, their upbringing, and the life-altering tragedies that occur without warning...

By Michael Pakaluk. The New York Times reported the words, but the Wall Street Journal didn't. When Bam Adebayo, two days ago, was asked to describe the moment when he scored 83 points in an NBA game, second only to Wilt Chamberlain's 100 points, he said, "Man, I wish I could relive it twice. I credit God, my family, my teammates, this crowd." A wag commented that, right after God, he should have credited the Washington Wizards, the team ostensibly defending him. But credit, too, to Bam. The first question most sportscasters ask is "How did you feel?" On the classical view of the passions, this is like asking someone to describe the agitation of his guts, either his viscera or heart. "Describe to me what your guts felt like when you did this." Who cares? But Bam sensibly externalized the question and turned first to God. Others credited Bam's hard work, recounting the long hours he put in as a boy, practicing. Others played up the fact that he had just surpassed Kobe Bryant's record of 81. But Bam sprinted right past the four species of pride identified by Pope St. Gregory. He attributed his excellence to God, not himself. He did not claim that he had merited it. He did not overstate it. And he did not draw comparisons with others. Like all of us, he'll need to battle pride later. But just then, when the spotlight was on him and the cameras were rolling, he spoke with humility. You've noticed that athletes often give credit to God first. Fernando Mendoza, the 2025 Heisman Trophy winner and quarterback who led Indiana to the college football championship, when he was in the spotlight said, "This moment is bigger than me. [sic] First, I want to thank God." Kudos to Mendoza, who is said to be a devout Catholic. By mentioning God first, outside his intention he actually amplified himself. If he had said out loud what many think privately at such a moment, "First, I want to exult in how great I am," he would have drawn himself down in the eyes of others, deservedly so. "I'm a faith-filled guy. I believe in a Creator. I believe in Jesus. Ultimately, I think that's what defines me the most." This was Scottie Scheffler after winning the 2024 Masters, another athlete side-stepping the four species of pride. The interviewer then pressed him on his feelings. Scottie refused to introspect his guts and instead changed the subject, returning to the objective message he wished to convey: "It's hard to describe the feeling. I think that what defines me the most is my faith. I believe in one Creator, that I've been called to come out here, do my best, compete, and glorify God." I've taught many athletes and can report that the conflict that some find between athletics and academics is a false conflict. Pursuing a sport seriously can make an athlete a better student. In the same way, pursuing some sport seriously should make us better Christians. How do other achievers compare with the athletes? Over the last three years of Oscar winners, encompassing nearly 70 speeches, only two recipients referred to God, but how they did so fell short of the athletes. Last year, Adrien Brody, when he took the stage to receive the Best Actor award (for The Brutalist) said, "Thank you, God. Thank you for this blessed life." But even then, he did not quite give credit to God for his achievement. And two years ago, Da'Vine Joy Randolph (Best Supporting Actress, The Holdovers) began with "God is so good. God is so good." And she closed with "I pray to God that I get to do this more than once" – which sounds like greediness rather than gratitude. Already in 2015, a writer for the Huffington Post wrote an essay on how Oscar winners were no longer thanking God. Reviewing almost 1400 acceptance speeches, Carol Kuruvilla found that Stephen Spielberg was thanked the most, with 42 mentions. Harvey Weinstein came in second. (Res ipsa loquitur.) While God received only 19 mentions, and many of these were goofy or off-key: I'd like to thank the Academy first of all. ....

By Francis X. Maier I'll get right to the point. Leigh Snead's new book Infertile but Fruitful is one of the finest personal testimonies I've read in the past decade. It's a "simple" story in the best sense: concise, intimate, utterly frank, and memorable. It spoke, directly and beautifully, to my own family, as it will to many others. I'll come back to it in a moment. But first, some useful background. In a general sense, a culture's fertility rate hints at its character. It also suggests its health. Bearing and raising children is serious business. It demands sacrifices. But for anyone with a generous spirit, it also creates love and hope, and trust in a meaningful future, because the instinct to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28, 9:1) is hardwired into the human species. Rejecting that has consequences. And here's an example. The minimum replacement rate for a population is 2.1 children per woman per lifetime. The total fertility rate across Western Europe was around 2.66 in the early 1960s. It had fallen to 1.46 in the late 1990s. It continued dropping to a historic low of 1.34 by 2024. That's a fertility decline of 50 percent in barely two generations. Muslim Europeans tend to have somewhat higher fertility on average, but the broader story is nonetheless a massive, sustained collapse in childbearing across the continent. As for the United States: In the early 1960s, its fertility rate was around 3.5, sharply higher than Europe's at the time, because the American postwar Baby Boom was larger and lasted longer. But the subsequent drop off was steeper. The U.S. total fertility rate shrank to 1.59 by 2024. Thus, the net fertility decline over the past six or so decades is actually larger for the United States than Europe in absolute terms. Why the collapse? The factors are fairly obvious: easy access to contraception and abortion; more women in higher education and the workforce; the rising costs of living; a consumption-driven economy; and the decline of religious belief. Christianity strongly encouraged permanent marriages and large families. As Europe secularized, that moral pressure disappeared. Today, most children grow up seeing small families as normal. Their own fertility adjusts downward accordingly. What makes this reality so hard to reverse is that a modernity rooted in the sovereign self and its material appetites has taught so many of us to value these features. The end result is a culture's loss of meaning, an aging population with escalating health care costs, supported by a shrinking workforce. The necessary economic response to demographic decline is immigration, filling the labor gap with working-age people from higher-fertility regions. But the kind of mass immigration needed to compensate for low fertility typically sparks a bitter political backlash. This creates constant friction between economic need and grassroots popular anxiety that has impacted the life of nearly every Western nation. So much for all the social data. How does any of it relate to Infertile but Fruitful? One of the (wonderfully) ironic responses to all of the above is the number of women today, many of them religious believers, who deliberately choose to have large families. Again, fertility – the yearning to be part of bringing new life into the world – is inherent to being human. That can mean children, or a celibate life of service to others. But everyone, without exception, has the need to be fruitful, and ignoring that need deforms the heart. Our own daughter is the mother of seven. For my wife Suann, some of the hardest years in our marriage were those early eight or ten when she was unable to conceive or had multiple miscarriages; this, while friends all around her birthed child after child. Husbands can provide love and support. But they can never fully understand the suffering and sense of loss felt at a cellular level by the woman longing to bear a child, but can't. Especially when the inability to conceive prove...

By Casey Chalk I wouldn't describe myself as a "fan" of science fiction. I shrug my shoulders at Star Wars and Star Trek, and became so frustrated with Frank Herbert's Dune that I barely finished it. Nevertheless, I confess a certain guilty fascination with futuristic dystopian works. The imagery of the Australian bush and the attendant storyline of the revised Road Warrior series haunted my imagination for weeks. Much the same happened with the Blade Runner revamp. Brave New World, 1984, A Clockwork Orange. I gobble up such books up and wonder: How could human society become like that? Surely escapism explains much of this, but there is also a human desire to imagine, even anticipate, what the future holds for us and our descendants. It's a means of grappling with the most acute moral and political questions of our time, but with a certain personal and emotional distance. It's not us or our children suffering at the hands of post-apocalyptic Australian motorcycle gangs or humanoid robots with automatic weapons. This much, and far more, can be said of Ross McCullough's The Body of This Death: Letters from the Last Archbishop of Lancaster, an enchanting book that straddles a variety of genres: epistolary novel, pastoral handbook, and theological science fiction. A sort of sci-fi Screwtape Letters, the reader cannot help but be drawn into McCullough's dystopian (if frighteningly imaginable) world, in which the vestiges of liberalism accommodate an ascendant global Islam, while humanity escapes deeper into an all-consuming artificial intelligence called "IR." Yet like C.S. Lewis's classic, it's also a text bursting with spiritual and theological insight. The letters of the late archbishop certainly paint a sobering picture of a future in which the Church's influence has waned. Citizens' behaviors are carefully documented beginning in school to exert maximum control over the populace. Technological firms promote transhumanism and "transfiguration procedures" to "transfer consciousness from brain to brain." The underlying irony is that in "metamodernity," the modern Baconian quest to control the natural order is realized by fleeing nature. Priests have accommodated themselves to the new reality, leveraging IR in order to visit with more of the faithful, even if the bishop admits "there is little friendship with someone who is in IR, whether they are in the withdrawn catatonia of passive consumption or the excited catatonia of erratic and unexplained motion." It's an admirable description of the dehumanizing tendencies of social media. Or how about this: Think only of how much more control the government has over us on these platforms. Think only of those who control the platforms themselves. This is the problem when reality itself goes up for sale, when we place ourselves in a marketplace of realities. For we are not the hunters in the marketplace but the hunted. The archbishop's reflections on sexuality are equally incisive. One letter argues that AI-generated porn – presented as a means of protecting the human participants from degrading behaviors – only further encourages dehumanizing tendencies, because users of such material are free to do whatever they want within the "safe" world of IR. It's not real, though the effects on the human brain and character certainly are. Elsewhere, the archbishop describes a "second Pill" that was developed to allow sexual partners to not feel any attachment to one another. In a twisted way, that makes sense. Obviously, a baby complicates sex, but so does the unitive quality of the sexual act, which binds people together in complicated ways, even if both tried to keep things "casual." McCullough hints at a panoply of terrifying future possibilities. He describes a procedure ironically titled "transfiguration" that involves removing the patient's eyes and entering the orbital cavities, which subjects "generally come to approve of." The result is "lobotomized rebels" similar to what (lapsed Ca...

By Daniel B. Gallagher. The 250th birthday of the United States is a good time to remember that 1776 was the year of a new nation, not a new government. It would take another eleven years for the Founders to formulate what the government would look like, and two more to elect the first president. This sequence of events reminds us that it is not a government that makes a nation, but a nation that makes a government. Even peoples who lack a sovereign territory, such as the Kurds or Basques, conceptualize themselves in some way as a nation before devising some sort of governing apparatus. You need something to govern before you can figure out how to govern it. The Vichy regime in France is an example of what can happen if one attempts to establish a government with no true nation behind it. Having been around long enough to celebrate both, I can't help but feel concern about the disquietude surrounding this year's Semiquincentennial celebration in comparison with the Bicentennial fifty years ago. Last summer, a White House task force appointed to plan and to implement the celebrations was already butting heads with a congressional commission established for the same purpose. John Dichtl, president of the American Association for State and Local History, has a point when, referring to plans to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) at the White House, asks, "What does a (UFC) fight have to do with America's greatness?" Writing in The Hill, Myra Adams confesses that she feels "less pride" in this Semiquincentennial year, lamenting that "dangerous trends threaten what our Founding Fathers envisioned." Back in 1976, virtually no one hesitated to wave a flag, march in a parade, and join in singing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." And all this not even two years after an American President voluntarily stepped aside for the first time. Fifty years later, students no longer recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the elementary school I attended. That said – and especially in light of recent chaos in Minneapolis – I do understand how people could lack enthusiasm for the event if they forget we are celebrating the founding of a nation and not a government. The former is much more worthy of celebration if we take it as the primary locus of the shared values and ideals inspiring a diverse people to form a Union. Chief among those is obviously freedom, including the freedom to vote Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, or even Communist or Socialist, if you like. If you want to know what a one-party celebration looks like, look no further than the Tian'anmen and Kim II Sung Squares. The need to revisit the distinction between a nation and a government became clearer to me when, while interviewing political theorist Patrick Deneen, Bishop Robert Barron asserted that, according to the classical view, the purpose of "government" is to cultivate virtue in its citizens. He claimed to have learned this from philosopher Robert Sokolowski at the Catholic University of America. Msgr. Sokolowski was my professor too, and I don't remember him saying this. I do remember him saying that, according to the classical view, the purpose of the polis was to make citizens virtuous and good. That's not to say government has no role, but the polis is a richer and more expansive concept than "government," even though the extent to which the ancient Greek polis resembles the modern state is debatable. In any case, a polis, according to Aristotle, is a natural community where individuals come together to pursue the good life. The politeia is the way a polis is organized, including – but not limited to – its system of government. Politeia also encompasses the values and practices that make a polis possible. Though much more can be said about the distinction, it is enough to draw attention to the myopic view of "politics" we have today. If we limit politics to what happens inside the D.C. beltway, we easily fall into the trap of thinking that it is primaril...

By Dominic V. Cassella In the season of Lent, the Church enters the wilderness to fast and abstain. It is a time of testing. The number forty often indicates this throughout the Scriptures. "Forty days" signals a time when God tests the hearts of His people, so that what lies hidden within might be revealed. In Genesis, the deluge that washed the world of living creatures – except for Noah and those on the ark – lasted for forty days. Moses fled Egypt for his life after murdering a man and spent forty years in Midian as a shepherd before God appeared to him in the burning bush. After forty days, the ten spies that Moses sent into the land convinced Israel to distrust God and despair of their ability to take it. For forty years, the Israelites were sent to wander in the wilderness before they could occupy the Promised Land. For forty days and nights, Goliath taunted Saul and his army before David slew him. And Jonah gave the Ninevites forty days to repent before they would be overthrown by God. And in the most famous case of all, of course, Jesus spent forty days in the desert and was tempted by the Devil. These periods of forty days or forty years are not random spans of time. They reveal a pattern in how God deals with His people. As Moses tells Israel: The LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. (Deuteronomy 8:2) God does not test human beings because he needs to learn about the fidelity of his creatures. He already knows the human heart. (1 Samuel 16:7) The test exists so that the man himself may learn what is inside of him. Abraham was tested by God, and came to learn of his complete trust in the Lord. In contrast, Pharaoh was tested by God and he hardened his heart. Now that we are in the midst of these forty days of Lent, we have entered the same Biblical pattern of trial and purgation. Lent should not be just like any other season in life. During this time, we should especially have our eyes turned toward the heavenly Promised Land, and most especially toward the Way that leads to it: Jesus Christ. Yet Lent often passes in vain. Our hearts are not easily moved. They grow dull and indolent when left unattended. In the stagnation of idle thoughts, the heart becomes a wilderness thick with thorns and thistles, tangled with brambles and covered with stones. This inner wilderness is a consequence of sin, both actual and original. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God and attempted to decide for themselves what was good and evil, the curse of that wilderness was the natural consequence. St. John Henry Newman describes this condition: We have stony hearts, hearts as hard as the highways; the history of Christ makes no impression on them. And yet, if we would be saved, we must have tender, sensitive, living hearts; our hearts must be broken, must be broken up like ground, and dug, and watered, and tended, and cultivated, till they become as gardens, gardens of Eden, acceptable to our God, gardens in which the Lord God may walk and dwell; filled, not with briars and thorns, but with all sweet-smelling and useful plants, with heavenly trees and flowers. A careless and frivolous heart gradually becomes a hardened one. But the desert fathers teach that the remedy for such a heart is meditation on the Cross. For instance, St. John Cassian describes this remedy and tells us that we Christians must be "daily and hourly turning up the ground of our heart with the Gospel Plough, i.e., the constant recollection of the Lord's Cross." The hard ground of the heart cannot cultivate itself. The wilderness of the heart must first be cleared of vain thoughts, and then the heart can be broken up with the Gospel Plough, the Cross. As the plough tears into the soil, so the Cross breaks up the hardened heart. Meditation on the Lord's Cross during this season of Lent, and the formation of a habit of frequ...

By Anthony Esolen In one of the great ironies of linguistic history, the English word "bedlam," suggesting frenzy, madness, chaos, and noise, comes from what was then the common British pronunciation of the sacred name Bethlehem, in the Hospital of Saint Mary in Bethlehem, a monastery dedicated in 1402 to the housing and treatment of lunatics. Hence we have "Tom o' Bedlam," the name that Edgar assumes in King Lear in his disguise as a madman; first to escape the ministers of law that pursue him, unjustly, as a traitor to England and to his father, the Duke of Gloucester, but second, to remain close to the action, so he can do whatever he can for justice, for his father, and for his country. For the truly mad are those souls devoured with ambition, while the faithful and loyal are called fools. How do you preach the word of God to madmen? How do you preach it in Bedlam? For everyone in Bedlam is going to be afflicted with the twitch. If everyone around you is shouting, you will be led to shout too, if only to be heard at all, but eventually it may come to be a matter of course. If everyone around you howls at the moon, gathering in packs to lift up their hearts and eyes and hollow throats to that satellite, you will likely steal a glance that way too, and maybe join in, at first because you want to meet the madmen where they are, but eventually because you too fall in love with the howling. I ask the question, because Bedlam is where we are, a political, social, educational, and religious Bedlam of distraction in the most literal sense – as of someone condemned to death by horses pulling him apart limb from limb. Let me illustrate. Bishop Robert Barron notes that the Somali welfare scam in Minnesota is a crime against the needy. At a moderate assessment, $1,000 has been filched from every man, woman, and child in the state. He does not launch into a diatribe about it, since he has more important things to do. But for this, I have seen him accused of being as wicked as a Vichy collaborator with the Nazis. Now that, frankly, is not sane. Whatever one may think about what American immigration laws should be (I have yet to hear anybody suggest any specific emendations to the laws in question), it is bizarre to draw any equivalence between American immigration officers and the Gestapo. And as far as an American Kristallnacht is concerned, those bricks smashing the windows of businesses during "mostly peaceful demonstrations" do not have the fingerprints of policemen on them. Nor is it "Nazism" to say that schoolchildren should be taught, first and foremost, to be proud of their country and their culture – whatever of it still remains after the inundations of mass media. It is a part of the virtue of piety, required by the commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." I expect that Italian schoolchildren will be taught the glories of their artistic and literary heritage, and I would be deeply disappointed to learn that it is no longer so. It was not Matteo Ricci who demanded of the Chinese that they should despise their ancestors. That was the Communist, Mao Tse-Tung. This, too, did Bishop Barron call to mind when he criticized, gently enough, a rather loud but dopey congresswoman who seemed to insist that material goods were all that really mattered to people. For at base, the Marxist, along with too many secularists who consider themselves conservative, really does believe that man doth live by bread alone. But we need to pull back from the madness. Bedlam, even for sinful and addle-pated mankind, is not a normal state of affairs. I appeal to this rule. If political division causes you to break charity with a fellow Christian, if you are pleased to learn that such a person has done or said something bad, if you are eager to magnify its badness rather than to interpret it in a less damning light, if you are the Eternal Oculist, so eager to remove specks from other people's eyes that you delight in gouging them out altogether, ...

By Joseph. R. Wood. It's Lent, when our mortifications and the Church's readings give us a sharper opportunity to think about what we love, and whether we are loving the right things. James Patrick was a wise man and a good friend. I met him after he had founded a tiny post-secondary educational institution, St. Thomas More College in Fort Worth. I say "institution" because even aside from its size and situation in a few residential houses near Texas Christian University, it bore little resemblance to anything we'd recognize as a university today. He had previously taught at the University of Dallas, the University of the South at Sewanee, and the University of Tennessee. He had studied architecture, theology, philosophy and just about everything else. He was an Episcopal priest before entering the Catholic Church. Jim was one of the many wise people who have shared with me much of their time and goodness. He was a man of letters, an exemplar of Western civilization. You might say in many ways he was another Fr. Jim Schall. He knew of my interest in philosophy and provided one of the greatest gifts I received as I began formal studies. He warned me, gently but clearly, that when philosophy gets off its knees, it gets into trouble. That's a pithy way of saying that when philosophy, the use of human reason to know the whole truth of "what is," divorces itself from faith, bad things happen. While failure to love God above all throws any life awry, the intellectual life seems particularly vulnerable to losing one's way. Perhaps this is because many intellectuals are very smart and can indeed make considerable progress in knowing reality, so they become overambitious and proud. A paradigmatic modern case was Martin Heidegger, a truly brilliant mind who produced much great philosophical work, jettisoned his Catholic faith, and became a Nazi (the degree of his cooperation with Hitler's regime is disputed). The original case study, though, must be the geniuses who came up with the idea for the Tower of Babel. I'm always struck that God did not say, "Look at those fools, trying to do something impossible." He stopped them because they might have succeeded. He disrupted their logos, confusing their reasoned speech so that such collective endeavors would be less likely thereafter. Reason as used by the Babel builders might have accomplished something that, presumably, God knew would not be their true good. They sought Heaven without depending on God. What does it profit us to gain the world and lose our souls? "Philosophy" is derived from the Greek for "love of wisdom." It's very easy for philosophers to focus on the "wisdom" – the truth of things – and forget about the "love" part. St. Augustine and other Christian philosophers knew this danger and accepted the notion of "I believe in order to understand." I am given faith as my first love – love of God – then I use my reason to seek truth within that love. Jim Patrick and Fr. Jim Schall understood that approach. Some philosophers, including Leo Strauss, who helped revive the study of ancient philosophical wisdom in recent decades, would disagree. He thought it was impossible for a man of faith to be a true philosopher, as faith would constrain the search for the truth, which is itself unconstrained. I wonder whether that kind of thinking brought the poet-philosopher Dante to the point where he begins his Divine Comedy. The beginning of Inferno is one of the most famous starts to any journey in Western literature: Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell The nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh – the very thought of it renews my fear! It is so bitter death is hardly more so.… How I came there I cannot really tell, I was so full of sleep When I forsook the one true way. – Inferno I.1-12 (Hollander trans.) Dante knew philosophy well, including St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, and bits of ...

Hamnet, the 2025 film that has already won a slew of awards and is a favorite to win Oscar "Bests" for Picture, Director (Chloé Zhao), and Actress (Jessie Buckley), deserves its accolades. Based on Maggie O'Farrell's novel, it reimagines the genesis of The World's Most Famous Play. (Spoiler alert ahead, although at the very end.) Hamnet begins with the meeting and mating of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, called Agnes in the book and film, because her father's will refers to her by that name. O'Farrell, who came across Richard Hathaway's will, sees "Agnes" as a kind of revelation about the way, historically, the fame of fathers, sons, and husbands has subsumed female identities. There's truth in that, although probably not in this case. In O'Farrell's novel, the playwright's surname never appears. He's just "Will." So, in a fair exchange for "history's" marginalization of Anne Hathaway, Farrell and Zhao place William Shakespeare in the margins of the book and the film. And, twee as I think that is, it doesn't diminish the movie's power. Besides, we know perfectly well who's wooing Agnes. Hamnet moves slowly through their courtship: a kind of midsummer-night's-dream of wonder in what's probably the Forest of Arden. Agnes is an almost pagan figure, gathering medicinal plants and cavorting with her falcon. Is she a witch? Will, his father being a glover, presents her with a hawking gauntlet. He tells her the story of the ill-fated love between Orpheus and Eurydice. Will and Agnes have sexual intercourse. They marry and have three children. By and by, Will leaves for London. At the heart of Hamnet, of course, is the boy, Hamnet, the Shakespeares' only son, born with his twin sister, Judith, in 1585. (Their oldest, Susanna, had come two years earlier.) The real Hamnet would die of bubonic plague at age 11, and is buried (as are his father and mother) at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon. The loss of a child is devastating. It was even in the 16th century when infant and childhood deaths were commonplace. The film does not explicitly suggest that Will retreated to London out of grief, but it seems that way, especially because we are given no hint that this young, grieving father will dominate the literature of the English-speaking world as no one ever had, or has since. Perhaps his success, his fortune, and his work don't justify "abandonment." But, perhaps, there was no abandonment. After all, Agnes was no poor child. When they married, Will was 18, and she was 26. We don't know when Shakespeare left Warwickshire for London, but it was certainly after the births of the twins and may have been after Hamnet's death. Anne would then have been in her early to mid 30s. Coincidentally, Hamnet has appeared within months of the release of scholarly work by Prof. Matthew Steggle that refutes the premise of Hamnet, which is that Shakespeare abandoned his family for London and fame. Steggle has found (and not he alone) that Mrs. Shakespeare likely visited and even lived with Will in London, and that their connection was strong. Of course, that's history, not drama – and new history at that. And it does not matter, in a way, since O'Farrell and Zhao are not engaged in fact but fiction, placed in a historical setting. That said, the premise that Hamlet was inspired by the death of Hamnet is also dismissed by scholars. And it matters not that they don't address the "authorship" or "recussant Catholic" questions. But in a brilliant bit of casting, perfectly aligned with the film's premise, the Prince of Denmark is played by Noah Jupe, the real-life older brother of Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet. Thus, when Agnes travels to London with her brother and they join the groundlings to see a performance of Hamlet, she is doubly shocked to hear a name and a face so like that of her dead son. More about the performance of Jessie Buckley in a moment, but I pause to praise Jacobi Jupe's portrayal of Hamnet. He resembles no one...