In my last essay, I took aim at Pelagianism, a heresy from Late Antiquity, which Pope Francis has frequently targeted in its perceived modern forms in his teaching. In this essay I will discuss Gnosticism, the other major heresy whose...
A culture can grow barren when it “becomes inward-looking, and tries to perpetuate obsolete ways of living by rejecting any exchange or debate with regard to the truth about man.” — Pope Francis Querida Amazonia 37 (quoting St. John Paul...
Today is the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, so obviously we could not let today go by without mentioning the patronal feast for our website! Pope Francis delivered a wonderful homily today, recalling how today’s First Reading, from the...
In the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD, a monk and theologian known to history as Pelagius advanced a novel understanding of the relationship between free will and grace. Pelagius, who hailed from somewhere in the British Isles and...
The COVID-19 pandemic is easing in some areas, increasing elsewhere, and settling into an ongoing reality everywhere. At the same time, the United States is facing a reckoning with our terrible legacy of racism following the killing of George Floyd...
In his address to the US Congress in 2015, Pope Francis mentioned the prominent American Trappist monk Thomas Merton, describing him as “a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for...
“Even in the face of serious social discrimination, holy women have acted ‘freely,’ strengthened by their union with Christ. …In every age and in every country we find many ‘perfect’ women (cf. Prov. 31:10) who, despite persecution, difficulties and discrimination,...
One of the alarming aspects about the sometimes overwhelming resistance by conservative Catholics against Pope Francis is that they are not only putting their political and religious ideologies above the Church, but they are—unwittingly or not, and apparently without awareness...
Somewhere in what we have come to call the cloud, a joyful ninety-two-year-old priest is blogging from the dead. Father John Jay Hughes, who died June 3 after a brief illness, lived a remarkable life. Descended from John Jay (the...
For the past couple of weeks I have taken up Pope Francis’s recent encouragement that we read his encyclical Laudato Si. I’m ashamed to say that I’d never read it before, but I decided that now is as good a...
The Lord comes to meet us with his promise: I will send you the Spirit, the Comforter, the One who speaks to you in the depths of your being. I will send you the Holy Spirit. This is obviously an...
Two recent viral videos that circulated on Twitter recently underscored just how divisive mask-wearing has become. The videos themselves might elicit embarrassment-by-proxy and certainly aren’t reflective of everyone who chooses not to wear a mask, but these videos are emblematic...
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