The former students of Pope Benedict have an annual seminar (Ratzinger Schülerkreis) to think about his vast and profound intellectual accomplishments. This year’s meeting was held Castel Gandolfo. On August 30, in the Church of the Teutonic Cemetery in the Vatican, Pope Benedict gave a brief, penetrating homily in German to the group. The general … Read more
“The Church’s practice always results from what she receives and contemplates in revelation. Pastoral ministry cannot be detached from doctrine.” ∼Robert Cardinal Sarah, Silent Action of the Heart (July 2015) I. In the Path to Rome, Belloc remarked that as one gets older he becomes more concerned with the human side of the supernatural Church. … Read more
In an incisive talk in Des Moines August 24, Ted Cruz covered the issue of religious liberty in the United States. He was quite aware of the persecution of Christians in the Near East under Islamic regimes. He had a moving chat with the wife of an evangelical pastor imprisoned in Iran. He stated that, … Read more
By now, most people are aware of the Colorado baker who refused to bake an elaborate wedding cake for a gay couple’s so-called “marriage.” The various commissions and courts have ruled that the gentleman’s religious objections to an act that implicitly required him to approve gay marriage violated the law. The court said that any … Read more
The laws of several western countries, besides the Islamic ones themselves, do not permit anything critical to be said of Islam. Such laws forbid what is called “hate speech.” They often include other sub-groups like homosexuals, women, or race. Such laws and customs have practically reduced responsible freedom of speech to a dead letter. Fines … Read more
“Truth is the self-manifestation and state of evidence of real things. Consequently, truth is something secondary, following from something else. Truth does not exist for itself alone. Primary and precedent to it are existing things, the real. Knowledge of truth, therefore, aims ultimately not at ‘truth’ but, strictly speaking, at gaining sight of reality.” ∼ … Read more
Islam has no central or definitive body or figure authorized to define what exactly it is. Opinions about its essence and scope vary widely according to the political or philosophic background of its own interpreters. The current effort to establish an Islamic State, with a designated Caliph, again to take up the mission assigned to … Read more
The number of subjects we cannot talk about in public discourse are rapidly multiplying. The older notion of “free speech” as a search for the truth through reasonable argument is being replaced. We no longer want to hear speech if it “offends” someone’s feelings or self-defined identity. We would rather “just get along” than to … Read more
The constitutions or laws of many nations provide for what is called “religious liberty.” In practice, this liberty is under severe restrictions in numerous countries, if it exists at all. The fact is that no one can really talk about religious freedom without examining what the “religion” holds. Grace builds on nature but does not … Read more
“The Church—I repeat once again—is not a relief organization, an enterprise nor an NGO (Non-Government Organization), but a community of people, animated by the Holy Spirit, who have lived and are living the wonder of the encounter with Jesus Christ and want to share their experience of deep joy, the message of salvation that the … Read more
People are curious. They like to know “what’s new.” Most people, whatever their background, do not, however, like to be proselytized, to be made unsettled in their normal beliefs and practices by some sharp stranger wanting to convert them to something or other. We tolerate many diverging views provided that their advocates do not seek … Read more
The book of Genesis was written in part to counteract a theory later known as Manicheanism. It held that a god of good created spirit and a god of evil created matter. In this view, the more spiritual we are, the less we are connected to matter. This position suggests that by withdrawing from matter, … Read more
The sub-title of J. Budziszewski’s 2009 book, The Line Through the Heart, reads as follows: “Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction.” The initial dedicatory citation in the book, from which the book derives its title, is a memorable one from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It reads: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through … Read more
Socrates was fond of repeating the advice of the Oracle: “Know thyself.” He probably said, “Know thyself,” rather than, “Know the world,” because it is more difficult to know oneself than to know the world. Self-introspection yields not ourselves, but something approaching infinity beyond ourselves. The first thing we know about ourselves is that we … Read more
At the beginning of each academic year, we talk of a desire to learn. We think we have developed institutions that facilitate this learning. True, we question the cost of a university education. Many students end with significant debts; jobs are often scarce. Many do not actually learn much in college, especially about the important … Read more
The characteristic of the modern age is that men concentrate on themselves and what they can and want to do. This and this alone is what life is about. No outside source can guide, command, or coerce us. Man is autonomous. He is only what he makes himself to be, whatever it is. He does … Read more
In 2001, St. Augustine’s Press published a new edition of Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 novel, The Lord of the World. A friend of mine in Vermont recently urged me to read it, and I did. Ralph McInerny, in a brief introduction, writes: “The novel wonderfully conveys the flatness and boredom of a world without God. … Read more
“Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty to … Read more
When St. Paul said in Ephesians 6 that our struggle was not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, he was not kidding. What we might add today is that the principalities and powers have shrewdly made sure that the struggle is precisely over our “flesh and blood,” over the very meaning of … Read more
“For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their place in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it.” —Wendell Berry, “It All Turns on Affection,” The 2012 Jefferson Lecture Wendell Berry is a … Read more