“God wills, Man dreams, the work is born” — Fernando Pessoa “O Infante,” “Mensagem” (my translation) Pope Francis often asks us to dream. In fact, the Holy Father signs off his most recent encyclical with these words: “Yet only by...
Community—communion—is the fundamental building block of the Catholic faith. Christ draws us into himself to create the community of believers, a cloud of witnesses. Even more foundational is that God does this radically by offering the whole of himself to...
I had the pleasure of having been invited to the podcast “Tradition Reclaimed“, a Youtube channel focused on advancing authentic tradition, in communion with the living magisterium. In this episode we talked about the encyclical Fratelli tutti and the richness...
Now that the votes have been cast in the US election, I hope Catholics can once again discuss the issue of abortion without being accused of trying to sway the Catholic vote. And discuss it we must, because it is...
UPDATE: Here’s the video. Tonight at 6:30pm (EST) I’m giving a presentation on Pope Francis’s new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing, Michigan invited me to give an hour-long presentation (followed by a brief Q&A). You...
Our world is in need of peace. All around the globe, and especially in the United States, we see the rotten fruits of a society that is not at peace. There is violence in the streets, rage on social media,...
Where Peter Is · Austen Ivereigh Part 1 NEW PODCAST! David Lafferty and I had the privilege of interviewing papal biographer Austen Ivereigh yesterday. The first part of our conversation focused on Fratelli Tutti and Pope Francis’s recent comments...
There are two persistent criticisms used against Francis and his teachings by many of his detractors. The first is that the Holy Father is not concerned with squaring his (allegedly) new teachings with tradition and prior magisterium. The second claim...
Catholic Americans seem to revel in polarization. Our country’s two-party political system, which siphons the electorate into severely limited options, certainly doesn’t help. But there’s an accompanying divisive insistence, particularly among Catholics, that one secular party or the other holds...
We have come to know and expect that whenever the pope writes or says anything of significance, he will earn the ire of professional provocateurs. Now, in the eighth year of Francis’s papacy, there’s a certain comforting predictability about the...
One key to understanding the Church’s teaching on the economy is to ask—as Francis does in Fratelli Tutti—whether we “include or exclude those lying wounded along the roadside” (FT 69). This is, of course, a reference to the parable of...
It has become common in certain Catholic circles to label Pope Francis (and the post-Conciliar Church) as “modernist.” This term is applied to stand in opposition to “tradition,” a fundamental Catholic value. After all, Tradition (with capital “T”) is one...
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