The Mahayana Buddhist scripture Vimalakirti Nirdesa, also known as the Vimalakirti Sutra, contains one of the most radical ascetic statements in any religion’s canonical texts. The main figure of the text, Vimalakirti, is feigning illness so that he can preach...
We live in an apology-averse, perhaps even a remorse-averse age. Even churchmen, when accused of severe wrongdoing, are as likely to spin, deny, or counteraccuse as they are to express repentance or seek atonement. That being the case, it is...
Note: This essay will discuss the political takes of figures to whom I don’t particularly want to direct web traffic. Google “[figure’s name] putin” and most of it will come up. Conservative Catholicism has a long history of receptivity to...
When in 2020 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued an instruction that the plural pronoun “we” was not to be used in the baptismal formula because it implies that the baptizand is baptized not by Christ but...
A reflection on the readings for February 13, 2022 — The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Today’s Gospel gives us Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, an analogue of the more famous equivalent or parallel passage in Matthew. Luke’s “take” on...
In a way, the recently released German report on sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which faults Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for mishandling four abuse cases during his brief tenure as archbishop there in the late 1970s...
Rutilio Grande, SJ, who is being beatified today along with Franciscan Fr. Cosme Spessotto, 70-year-old sacristan Manuel Solórzano, and teenager Nelson Rutilio Lemus, the latter two of whom were murdered alongside him, is best known as a personal friend of...
Before the much-publicized uproar over the Amazon Synod, and before white Catholics were scandalized about perceived pagan imagery and idolatrous devotion creeping into the faith, there was another controversial figure in European Catholic circles – Our Lady of Guadalupe, the...
Pope Francis had one of his customary in-flight press conferences today on his way back from his visit to Greece and Cyprus. In response to a question about a European Commission member’s (later retracted) suggestion to avoid discussing “Christmas” in...
It has become a truism of late that the internet in general and social media-driven “Web 2.0” in particular have had a disastrous effect on most people’s ability to understand ambiguity and get along with others. This point has been...
There is no peace to be compared with that of the souls in purgatory, save that of the saints in paradise, and this peace is ever augmented by the inflowing of God into these souls, which increases in proportion as...
Recently Pope Francis gave a video address to the fourth World Meeting of Popular Movements (EMMP), a primarily but not exclusively Latin American coming-together of social and political activists against poverty and inequality. Francis made a positive reference to the...
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