The Church, through the wonderful devotion of the Office of the Dead, allows us to both grieve and hope for the ones we’ve lost. St. Braulio, addressing death itself, says: “But your power is broken. Your heinous yoke has been destroyed by the One who sternly threatened you when Hosea cried out, 'O Death! I [...]
The triumph of Donald Trump was simply the triumph of the majority of Americans who saw their society slipping into anarchy and chaos without borders. I hope that in the next Trump years, the renewed, common-sense desire for proper borders in every area of life will prevail and will be balanced by that other great [...]
I stood in the flag-decked cheering crowd Where all but I were gay, And gazing on their ecstasy, My heart shrank in dismay. For theirs was the joy of the 'little folk' The cruel glee of the weak, Who, banded together, have slain the strong Which none alone dared seek. The Bosch we know was [...]
Why, one wonders, should one of the most famous people in history be featured as one of the unsung heroes of Christendom? This would seem to be a good question until we realize that most people do not perceive Shakespeare as a hero of Christendom. He is sung, to be sure. He is sung more widely [...]
Our God is a God of both justice and mercy. The Psalms remind us that “the Lord is just and loves just deeds” (Ps 11:7) and that he is also “gracious and merciful” (Ps 111:4). These twin divine attributes, mercy and justice, are so closely paired that to ask about God’s mercy and to ask [...]
The symbol of Christianity is the Cross, and the Cross lies over the world and marks human history. The rejection by man of God makes a cleavage between the natural and the supernatural, the secular state and the Church. Communism and Christianity, by Martin Cyril D’Arcy (Cluny Media, 216 pages) The felt and reasoned distinction [...]
Is it too soon to appraise the revolutions of 1989? That year represented the end of an era whose passing few people would be disposed to mourn. On the other hand, history affords no clean breaks. Nine months after the Berlin Wall had been breached, my wife and I found ourselves living in Göttingen, an [...]
Orestes Brownson believed that there must reside a sanction for justice and order which cannot be found apart from religious principles. Without such sanctions, we fight the same battles in political season after political season under the various ideologies intending to make America great again; but only the standards of those “permanent things” taught by [...]
We don’t believe in a God who can only show his power by fiddling with a material world as if it weren’t already his own. No, our God made the world, and at every moment upholds it all in existence, down to every last atom. God doesn’t need a miracle to manifest his power, everything [...]
Now not just certain individuals, the Swiss-German philosopher Max Picard argued, but the entire culture itself is in flight from God. It is manifested in every phase of life. But the fact that we are fleeing from God means that God is pursuing us. Among the many diagnoses about modernity that have been made, the [...]
I find in the Universe so many forms of order, organization, system, law and adjustment of means to ends, that I believe in a cosmic intelligence and I conceive God as the life, mind, order and law of the world. I do not understand my God, and I find in nature and history many instances [...]
We pray, O almighty and eternal God, who through Jesus Christ has revealed thy glory to all nations, to preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church, being spread through the whole world, may continue with unchanging faith in the confession of your name. We pray Thee, who alone are good and holy, to [...]
Much as Evelyn Waugh insisted that the theme of "Brideshead Revisited" was “the operation of divine grace”, J.R.R. Tolkien insisted in a letter to a friend that “'The Lord of the Rings' is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” In the fourth and final essay in this survey of liturgy and literature we [...]
It is not common that a person would recommend a philosopher to help you stay sane, but with the writings of Josef Pieper, if you have ever read even one of his books, you are likely to agree with me. Also, the range of his wisdom is most impressive. Some of the titles I have [...]