"The Young Pope" is unexpectedly different, painting a picture of the Vatican that is at once repulsive and frightening, yet also beautiful, mysterious, and at times even holy. Hollywood’s brush tends to paint the Vatican in colors dark and foreboding, a lavishly decorated place of simony and secret sexual sins. The papal throne is made [...]
Which is better: taking a trip, or returning home? It may seem hard to answer this question at first. After all, there are many reasons we might enjoy traveling. It’s a chance for us to experience new places and people, and the change of scenery can even be refreshing. However, the feeling we get when [...]
It is only in mystical contemplation that our weak human love is so purified that it enables this love to mix, mingle and merge with the love of the Holy Spirit. Then, suffused and surcharged with this love we will not only be able to enter into the mystical body of Christ but into Christ’s [...]
The fairytale cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight. Were I asked, “What is a fairytale?” I should [...]
The Psalmist has some harsh words for idols, those who make them, and those who worship them. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they [...]
Suppose a man named Hutcheson lends ten pounds to a man named Smith. Then we might say, “Smith owes Hutcheson ten pounds.” Suppose that Hutcheson also teaches and aids Smith. Then we might say, “Smith owes Hutcheson gratitude/esteem/love.” Beyond Hutcheson, Smith might feel that he has been taught and aided by humankind generally, and Smith [...]
Even though it would be a faux pas to offer my own favourites among the papabile who could be elected pope, there is no harm in pondering my personal favourites from among those who have served as popes in the past. In the wake of the passing of Pope Francis, it is not for any [...]
The featured image, uploaded by Yakov Fedorov, is a photograph from the Visit of Pope Francis to Kazakhstan, 14 September 2022. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The vast majority of human beings of all races and in every place and at every time have understood that there is such a thing as the miraculous, that strange things do happen, and that our materialist explanations do not explain everything. Some time ago a friend of mine told me a miracle story. He [...]
Part of the continuing fascination of Augustine for people who know almost nothing of the period in which he lived, whose own time and place seem so completely removed from the corruptions of late antiquity that for them Augustine might as well have come from another planet, is the fact that here was a man whose [...]
Smoking tobacco is not of necessity one of the permanent things that conservatives should cherish, but it does symbolize an older way of life and a different sensibility. Choosing to smoke makes one immediately recognizable as one who is not “with the times.” The incarnational element of "lighting up" In a recent article for The Free Press, journalist [...]
The first spark of genuine engagement with great writers most often comes from a teacher, and the ever-fresh immortality of the great work has its ironic contrast in the aging and death of those who made the introduction. So it is for me with Shakespeare, who was first truly impressed upon my imagination during my [...]
“On the Role of Literature in Formation" is perhaps Pope Francis’s best document of his pontificate. Short, sweet, and full of good lines quoted and written. And yet he remains a "second friend" to many of his flock because they see their own world in some fundamentally different ways than he does. Pope Francis’s pontificate [...]
Would I have stood by the cross? Would I have still hoped, if I had watched my Incarnate Hope die? In this world, we suffer from our sins and the sins of others. Jesus comes to us—just as he came to the first disciples—and tells us that he has come to triumph over all the [...]