Thanksgiving is rapidly becoming runner-up to Christmas as poster child in the “holiday wars.” Christmas remains the feast that dare not speak its name, re-(de)christened as “winter holiday.” (What do politically correct Aussies call it?) Thanksgiving has kept its name but been hollowed out. Do we have any communal answer to the question “to whom/what … Read more
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Instruction on the Burial of the Deceased (Ad resurgendum cum Christo), released October 25, is a welcome restatement of the Church’s preference for earth burial over cremation. It is essential to seize the “teaching moment” this document affords: rather than just focus on the “do’s” (do bury … Read more
British author Alexander Pope was perhaps the first writer to turn a “bad hair day” into a poem—really, a satirical tragedy. Modern Americans, bereft of a sense of humor and inclined to view reality through the lens of a selfie, turn their bad hair days into epic farces. On the way to work in Washington … Read more
The first reaction one might have to Henderson v. Adams, the June 30 decision of a federal district court declaring Indiana’s parenthood statutes unconstitutional because they treat “same-sex spouses” differently from the real ones is: further proof of the corrupt influence of the Supreme Court’s legalization of homosexual and lesbian “marriage.” That’s not necessarily untrue, … Read more
Thursday, May 14 was the Solemnity of the Ascension in the ecclesiastical provinces of Boston, Hartford, Newark, New York, Omaha, and Philadelphia. In the rest of the United States, the Solemnity of the Ascension was marked on Sunday, May 17, which suppressed the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Church discipline in the United States allows for … Read more
Do you believe in ghosts? A particularly apt word to describe ghosts is “ephemeral”—gaseous, not substantial. That’s why when kids are afraid of ghosts, we reassure them that nothing out there will harm them. But is it true? A particularly evil spirit seems to inhabit the judiciary, one quite capable of doing substantial harm, and … Read more
Matthew MacWilliams, in a January 17 post on Politico, expatiated on the “one weird trait that predicts whether you are a Trump supporter.” That variable turns out to be “authoritarianism.” The author relates the results of a late December 2015 poll he conducted in conjunction with the University of Massachusetts. Controlling for different variables, he contends … Read more
The Gospel of the First Sunday of Lent always features one of the Synoptics on the temptation of Jesus in the desert. This year, we read from Luke. Spiritual writers have long reflected on the meaning of the temptations—for bread, for goods, for worship—that those temptations embody. The temptations Jesus faced are temptations we all … Read more
Charles Dickens’s 1843 Christmas Carol was the beginning of a series of annual “Christmas books” that were very popular gifts in the Victorian era. But while many today treat A Christmas Carol as a child’s holiday story, it is anything but … and it makes many Catholic points. Some might disagree. Jesus is only obliquely mentioned … Read more
In the wake of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino on December 2, I noted a very disturbing reaction, which speaks of a growing cleft in American society. That chasm should be worrisome both to those who believe America is growing into two separate and irreconcilable societies, as well as for those who think American … Read more
Judge Richard Posner and Professor Eric Segall took to the pages of the December 2 New York Times to warn against the threat of “majoritarian theocracy.” Although summoning readers to beware of U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia’s religious predilections, one might suggest the authors look in a mirror to ponder, instead, their own. For … Read more
Mercy featured prominently in the polemics surrounding the recently concluded Synod on the Family. Mercy was frequently counterpoised to dogma as an appeal to dilute ecclesiastical practice, and admit to Holy Communion those who are now “remarried.” Cardinal Kasper went so far as to publish a book between the 2014 and 2015 Synod sessions: Mercy: The … Read more
The admission of divorced and “remarried” Catholics to the Eucharist was one of the neuralgic issues at the recently concluded Synod on the Family. The German Episcopal Conference in general and Cardinal Walter Kasper in particular had been agitating for change in ecclesiastical discipline to allow some divorced and “remarried” Catholics to Holy Communion, with … Read more
One way that dissidents (including various episcopal conferences that had been derelict in teaching Catholic marital morality in the immediate periods before and after Humanae vitae) sought to dilute the clear Magisterial teaching the encyclical provided them was to reduce its vision of married sexual life to an “aspirational norm.” In other words, the idea … Read more
I recently stumbled upon a rare treasure: the Apocalypse Tapestry of Angers, France. Displayed in a special wing of a local chateau, the 400 foot long, double-wide fourteenth-century tapestry depicts more than 70 scenes from the Book of Revelation, the New Testament’s last book. Comprehensive depictions of the Apocalypse are not too common, so I … Read more
Every three years as the Church is reading the Gospel of Mark, during the dog days of summer it stops for five weeks and turns instead to the Gospel of John for instruction on the Eucharist. We began this process July 26 with the account of the sign of the multiplication of the loaves, and … Read more
Over at First Things, Presbyterian Peter Leithart ponders whether or not Bruce Jenner’s sex change should be addressed from the pulpit. While acknowledging that “[t]here are good arguments for ignoring the whole thing,” Leithart maintains that doing so is a “pastoral mistake.” I agree. There is a certain mentality in the Church that thinks (believes? hopes? … Read more
American universities have long been citadels of political correctness but, in the past year, the noose has gotten even tighter. In many places, classic literature and great books have been banished or at least subjected to the prior censorship of “trigger warnings,” lest their content prove discomforting to some students. “Microaggressions” are practically universal. “Speech … Read more
Christian Browne’s excellent critique of how receiving Communion-in-the-hand while standing are practices that might be reconsidered to strengthen American Catholics’ understanding of the Eucharist properly notes that these ideologically driven changes were required in no way by Vatican II or even the Holy See. Let me add three additional Eucharist-related phenomena bedeviling the “American Church” … Read more
Do state restrictions on how public welfare recipients can spend benefits offend the dignity of the poor? Kansas recently enacted a law banning the use of welfare benefits to buy alcohol, cigarettes, tobacco products, lottery tickets, concert tickets, professional or collegiate sporting event tickets or tickets for other entertainment events intended for the general public … Read more