“Fargo” and the Problem of Evil
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...
Category: Reflection
The Sower and the Seeds: A Timeless Parable
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 Preserve Culture Is To Kill It
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...
Gnosticism: When Is a Mystery Not a Mystery?
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...
Statues and Living Stones
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...
Peter is the Church’s source of unity
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...
Pelagianism: A Heresy for All Seasons
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 Ongoing Pandemic of Child Abuse
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...
Pope Francis, Thomas Merton, and the false self
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...
Catholic women: witnesses of peace
“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,...
Richard John Neuhaus on obedience to the pope
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...
A cloud of witnesses: the fulfilled life of a remarkable priest
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...
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