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...