by Stephen Hand In Evelyn Waugh’s stunning classic, Brideshead Revisited, there is a scene which presses on my mind these days as I ponder so many forces gathering against a Church weakened greatly by the sins of her own children, both clerical and lay. All of us. It is the time when Sebastian, Lord Alex… Read More Lord Marchmain’s Long Hate
A very fine man and fellow traveler, Vermavkv Hello dear friends, Life has a way of asking us questions in moments we least expect. Recently, I came across a simple yet profound question: “What are you most proud of in your life?” At first, I thought about achievements—degrees earned, career milestones, or public recognition. But… Read More Pride in Life: My Achievements
To be a Roman Catholic one must believe in miracles. This in itself has been a stumbling block to many. And yet the believer knows that one need only find the earth beneath one’s feet and all other genuine miracles become mere footnotes. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, originally a student of the intractable rationalist, Bertrand… Read More Wittgenstein and Existence.
“The word “God” exists. Thus we return to the beginning, to the simple fact that in the universe of words with which we build our world and without which even the so-called facts do not exist for us, the word “God”, too, occurs. Even for the atheists, even for those who say: God is dead,… Read More Karl Rahner* on the Word “God”
You are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. “… Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in… Read More Blessed is the One Whose Sins Are Forgiven
… and the New Pseudo Praxis. Perhaps the most critical and classical difference between all forms of Protestantism and Catholicism lay in their respective understandings of the relationship between faith and good works. For Catholics, God’s saving work in Jesus Christ – the fruit of unmerited grace – issues in a changed heart and a… Read More Loving Theology More Than God
“…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith“— Hebrews 12. By St. Francis de Sales.Introduction to the Devout Life. “…Whensoever you urgently desire to be delivered from any evil, or to attain some good thing, strive above all else to keep a… Read More Seeking deliverance from sins and doing penance — without panic
Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer, writes, “When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I am… Read More Pascal and Grace: Piercing The Blindness of Pride
“We, the Ordinary People of the Streets“. The words express the core of Madeleine Delbrel’s vision: These are the people who have an ordinary job, an ordinary household, or an ordinary celibacy. People with ordinary sicknesses, and ordinary times of grieving. People with an ordinary house, and ordinary clothes. These are the people of ordinary… Read More We the Ordinary
St. Bernard declared forcefully, “[You may say] I have committed a great sin. My conscience will be troubled but I will not despair because I remember the wounds of my Lord. For indeed, He was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that it cannot be remitted through the death of Christ?… Read More Never to despair
Modern or post-modern man (i.e., the human person, m/f) is characterized by and attached to ambiguity and relativity. Truth, the very notion of it, is suspect. As a human being, I am obliged to truly encounter my world, my times. It has engaged me. I am now 70 years old. I have tried to engage… Read More The Light and Life of Being
In one of Saint Therese of Lisieux’s favorite books, End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life, the author, Fr. Charles Arminjon (1824-1885) writes among many important things on the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. And he draws a most important moral Gospel lesson: “There are circumstances when even… Read More Even the Wicked Are Rewarded In This Life.
The need to be in a state of grace to receive Communion (CCC 1385) Leila Miller: … Christ said marriage is a one flesh union. So anytime you’re ripping that living flesh apart, something is dying. I mean, something pretty serious is being lost. Trent Horn: Yeah, because we think about divorce, it’s always so… Read More Trent Horn on the Evil of Divorce and the Way to Healing.
By Laura Loker.The Pillar. America is facing a crisis of loneliness. With nationwide declines in social connectivity, even the U.S. surgeon general is concerned about the “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” facing Americans. And Catholics are not exempt from the crisis. But parishioners at St. Thérèse Little Flower in South Bend, Indiana, might just have… Read More Household’ gatherings offer intentional community at South Bend parish
Recent discoveries are making Jewish, secular and agnostic scholars reconsider a century’s worth of skepticism towards the New Testament accounts of Jesus. (Pinned Dec. 18, 2022) By Robert Hutchinson, via The Blaze.com. The entrance to the Mary of Nazareth International Center in central Nazareth doesn’t look like much. It’s just a simple doorway off narrow… Read More New Discoveries About Jesus of Nazareth
by Gregory Caridi.A Journal of the McGrath Institute for Church Life.June 03, 2021. “… The issue of improper correction of prelates has existed since the Church’s inception, and it is not likely to be resolved any time soon, particularly in a world that has become especially protective of the right to public speech, public criticism,… Read More How to Correct Bishops Correctly
O Jesus. Meek and humble of heart, Hear me.From the desire of being esteemed,Deliver me, Jesus.***From the desire of being loved…From the desire of being extolledFrom the desire of being honored…From the desire of being praisedFrom the desire of being preferred to others…From the desire of being consultedFrom the desire of being approvedFrom the fear… Read More Litany of Humility
“There would be tares as well as wheat in the harvest, good as well as bad fish in the catch, foolish virgins as well as wise virgins; there would be scandals, false sheep, jealousy, seeking first places at table, craving to lord it over others—until the final reckoning, when He would come in the clouds… Read More The Mystical Body of Christ by Fulton J. Sheen
The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis. “All men naturally desire to know; but what good is knowledge without the fear of God? Indeed a humble husbandman who serves God is better than a proud philosopher who neglects his soul to study the course of the stars. He who knows himself well becomes mean in… Read More Every man naturally desires knowledge
Penitential Practices for Today’s Catholics was originally published as a resource for the Jubilee Year 2000. U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. This resource is presented as a pastoral tool for cultivating the penitential practices in one’s daily life. While its focus is limited to a discussion of the Church’s penitential practices, it serves to promote these… Read More Penitential Practices for Catholics
The New Oxford Review. In our October [1987] symposium, Thomas Molnar, an authority on all things French, threw out the intriguing morsel that the New Oxford Review seems to be following in the footsteps of Esprit, the French Catholic review founded in 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier (who lived from 1905 to 1950). Although we would… Read More Are We “Personalists”?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to… Read More The Image of God in Our Turning Techno-logical Moment
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