Alex was about 20, a strong young man from a troubled family. His mother, who tried to drown him shortly after he was born, died in a mental asylum. His older brother had been committed to an asylum, where he, too, had died. His father, unable to hold down a steady job because...
For decades, public discourse about Christianity — especially Catholicism — has revolved around sexuality: who people sleep with, who they marry, what they do with their bodies, what is permitted, what is sinful. In the age of social media and constant polarization, those debates have only become louder. Scroll through enough debates online...
The wise guys are back for Part 4 of their deep dive into Magnifica Humanitas, and this time Scott Lieb and Michel Therrien unpack chapters 4 and 5 of the encyclical. (Click for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.) This final episode of the series explores the two final chapters of Pope...
In February, President Donald Trump announced that he would declassify the government’s confidential files on UFOs — or unidentified aerial phenomena — and have the Pentagon post them online on a rolling basis. Excitement over disclosure was already very high among enthusiasts, but the next month it took an unexpected spiritual turn. On...
For better or worse, preachers have always used “canned” content. There has been a wide variety of “homily hints” resources to draw upon, long before the advent of artificial intelligence. Given that, is there anything new or different in generating a homily with AI – especially if those in the pews don’t know...
In the past couple of weeks, two readers reached out to me asking if I had ever written anything about how theology about suffering is misused in coercive ways within the Church. Then yesterday, unprovoked, a friend sent me this excerpt from an address Pope Leo gave this past week in Spain: This...
Quite unexpectedly, Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas brought me back to my time years ago studying with the much-beloved papal Latinist Reginald Foster. Much of Magnifica Humanitas explicitly hearkens back to Leo XIII’s seminal social encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), including its use of the Latin phrase res novae to introduce the...
It is well known that the schismatic Society of Saint Pius X plans to consecrate four bishops on July 1, 2026, in Écône, Switzerland — despite being warned explicitly that to do so would incur excommunication for both those ordained and those performing the ordinations. We have been here before. In 1988 Archbishop...
The wise guys are back for Part 3 of their deep dive into Magnifica Humanitas, and this time Scott Lieb and Michel Therrien unpack Pope Leo’s analysis of “digital power” and what it means to be truly human in the age of AI. (Click for Part 1 and Part 2.) They explain why technology...
When subsidiarity is not linked to solidarity, it ends up becoming merely the protection of particular interests; when solidarity is not supported by subsidiarity, it degenerates into a form of welfare…. -Pope Leo XIV The northeasternmost region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, along with neighboring areas of Uganda, are suffering a daunting...
At the prompting of several friends from the Catholic traditionalist and apologetics community, I started writing this piece — unsure exactly what I feel compelled to write, not knowing where we will end up. I suspect this will be more personal reflection than apologetics or canon law. Approximately 14 years ago, I quietly...
Dawn Eden Goldstein, theologian, canon lawyer, and author, who has written Father Ed: The Story of Bill W.’s Spiritual Sponsor, a biography of Fr. Edward Dowling, who was pivotal to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, sees a link between 12 step programs and Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. She notes Pope Leo’s...
Popular Posts