The Waters of the Font
One of the things we do here at Sacred Beauty, our small Association of the Faithful, is the composing of liturgical music, drawn largely from sacred texts of the saints, fathers, and doctors of the Church, in the hopes of...
Author: Paul Chu
The Crèche
Last night, as I was walking on the Green in my home city, I stopped by the crèche – nestled on the rough equivalent of half a parking space ceded by the city, installed (and funded) by my hometown multinational men’s...
What Is To Be Done?—The Church and the Poor
[This is Part 3 of the series “Religion in Society.” Click for Part 1 and Part 2.] What could the Church possibly have to learn from a 19th century radical novel that inspired Lenin and Xi Jinpeng? Well… it’s complicated....
America’s Civic Religion and the Dangers of Christian Nationalism
Click here to read the first part of Paul Chu’s series on the Role of Religion in Contemporary Society. In 1896, the great American psychologist and philosopher William James gave a talk to a collection of philosophically-minded Ivy Leaguers, young...
Sacred Duty or Spiritual Truth? The Role of Religion in Society
Much of everyday modern humanity takes the most basic value of religion to be its truth value, such that exposing a religion as false should be decisive. This is largely due to Christianity, and it has long been the position...
What is hard that should be soft, what is soft that should be hard
As the Synod on Synodality was drawing to a close, I found myself hearkening back to the Penitential Vigil conducted on the eve of this October’s meetings. I was struck, above all, by the apologies spoken on behalf of the...
A word in haste – Pray for peace
A word in haste: My name is Paul Chu. I’m a writer and academic, and I’ve been doing some editing recently for Where Peter Is. This morning, I heard for the first time that our Holy Father Pope Francis called...
Cardinal Fernández’s New Norms: A Shield Against False Mysticism
Anyone who has spent enough time around the Catholic Church knows the type: they are variously stigmatists, exorcists, end-times prophets, levitating, bilocating, breathing forth the odor of sanctity – sometimes all at once. They claim knowledge not vouchsafed any other...
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