Tomorrow, July 18, 2020, marks the 150th Anniversary of the promulgation of the 1870 document Pastor Aeternus, the First Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ. This document formally spelled out the Church’s teaching on the nature of...
Last summer, I took it upon myself to watch as many great films as I could, based on several “best movies” lists. No matter the decade or the genre, I wanted to immerse myself in the most celebrated movies of...
A reflection on the Mass readings for Sunday, July 12, 2020. If Jesus walked among us today, I wonder what parable he would preach? Amidst the pandemic, the social unrest, the racial inequalities, the dehumanization of the human person, the...
To attempt to preserve a culture is the surest way to kill it. Like a flower that is pruned so it can be put on display, cultures begin to die when they are removed from their roots. The Catholic culture...
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...
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