Though the New Evangelization has been a major effort in the Catholic Church for over forty years, it has failed to stem the disastrous losses of the faithful in the U.S. The New Evangelization is faltering: since 2000, 14 million Catholics … [Read more...]
Archives for 2015
How Priests Can More Effectively Evangelize Catholic Men
September 14, 2015 by Matthew James Christoff
Did Reno Get It Right?
Laudato Si in Its Centuries-Long Context
September 14, 2015 by Dr. Jeffrey Morrow, Ph.D.
I read with enthusiasm R.R. Reno’s First Things essay “The Return of Catholic Anti-Modernism” and, as always, appreciated his many insights. He helpfully pointed out some ways in which Pope Francis’s recent papal encyclical Laudato Si embodi … [Read more...]
Does Religion Have An Essential Place in Political Society?
September 14, 2015 by Raymond F. Hain III
It is often said that religion should be a private affair. I have been told this while I was still working. It shows a distinct ignorance of the basis of religion itself. Religion is not meant to be private. It never was. Christianity, … [Read more...]
Homilies for September 2015
August 30, 2015 by Fr. Paul Anthony McGavin
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year “B”—September 6, 2015 Readings: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/090615.cfm Ephphatha! “Be opened!” Mark’s Gospel is rather racy in style, if we may call it “style,” for in literary terms … [Read more...]
What a Catholic Education Owes Its Students
August 30, 2015 by David Vincent Meconi
As our students—big and small—begin to return to school, it is good to be reminded of what a truly Catholic education owes its students. For most of human history, education was a private affair between (usually) a young boy and his tutor. I … [Read more...]
The Merciful Call to Holiness
Addressing the Dualism Between Mercy and Doctrine in Cardinal Kasper’s Proposal
August 30, 2015 by Thomas Gourlay
Ever since it was first floated in his 1977 work, Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal to apply mercy to those suffering outside full communion with the Church through civil divorce and remarriage has been the source of much debate.[1. Walter K … [Read more...]
The Sacrament of Matrimony: A Conversation with Millennials
August 30, 2015 by Father Philip-Michael F. Tangorra, STL
Abbreviations LG: Lumen Gentium, Second Vatican Council Dogmatic Constitution on the Church MR: Missale Romanum (Roman Missal) (2010) SC: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Second Vatican Council Constitution on the Sacred … [Read more...]
Taking Up the Cross Daily by Praying with Our Senses
On the Role of Mortification in the Christian Life
August 30, 2015 by Dr. Jeffrey Morrow, Ph.D.
The term “mortification” has become increasingly less common in contemporary discussions of the spiritual life. One might say it is now nearly absent from such discussions. We hear about someone being “mortified” when they are humiliated, or … [Read more...]
The Gift of Law and the Law of Gift
August 30, 2015 by Dusty Gates
“I can’t understand why your Church makes you live that way,” a friend of mine once said to me, “it’s just not natural!” I fear that many, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, have a similar misunderstanding about nature, law, and the foundati … [Read more...]
Summer Reading for August 2015
August 30, 2015 by Book Reviews
Soul-Centered: Spirituality for People on the Go. Jim Clarke. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2015) 144 pages; $14.95. (Reviewed by Melinda Selmys) _____________ Make the Words Your Own: An Early Christian Guide to the Psalms. Benjamin … [Read more...]
“Your Ways Are Not My Ways”
August 9, 2015 by Brent Withers
Where is God to be found in our secularized western world? It is as if the volume has been turned up on all the distractions and temptations that plague us every single day. Not just the volume, but also the intensity. Everything we see and … [Read more...]
Reflections on the Glorification of Jesus in the Gospel of John
August 9, 2015 by Melissa Eitenmiller
One of the leitmotifs of the Gospel of John is the theme of glory: how the Son receives glory from the Father, and through this reception, the Son is manifested to us. In fact, the very purpose of the Gospel stated in John 2 … [Read more...]
The Awe-Inspiring Mysteries: The Importance of Mystagogy
August 9, 2015 by Brandon P. Otto
(This title is inspired by Edward Yarnold’s The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation: Baptismal Homilies of the Fourth Century (Slough, Great Britain: St. Paul Publications, 1971), the title of which is based on the common language of “awe” use … [Read more...]
How Augustine Made Us More than Matter—and Immortal
August 9, 2015 by Brother Justin Hannegan, OSB
St. Augustine was fascinated by the human soul. Before and after his conversion to Catholicism, he strove to understand its nature, its relation to the body, and its duration. Augustine’s thinking on the soul, like the rest of his life, fo … [Read more...]
An Anthropology of Gaudium et Spes, Part 2
August 9, 2015 by Francis Etheredge
If God freely made us in His image and likeness, then his Word is indispensible to our self-understanding; indeed, “man, male and female” (cf. Gn 1 27), makes “visible” the unfathomable mystery of the Blessed Trinity … [Read more...]
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