We're all familiar with the term “conspiracy theory.” For some, it's used as a pejorative—a way to discredit information or something useful to calumniate someone who is not like-minded. For others, it's an annoying word that they're sick of hearing from those who never give them the benefit of the doubt. However you have heard [...]

Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one on intellectual amputation. If thy head offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, [...]

Let’s admit it: the Solemnity of the Ascension is a practically marginal feast for Western Catholics. In many Western countries and much of the United States, it’s even been rendered ahistorical, shunted off from the fortieth day of Easter to the nearest Sunday. The dirty little secret is that the feast is so irrelevant to [...]

Which is better for your own sake, to think that most people will treat you well, even if that is not quite true, or to think that most people will treat you badly? If it is the former, then people who discourage you do not have your best interest in mind. Why would they do [...]

Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option advocates a simple response to modernity: retreat, re-arm, and renew. Basing his battle plan on that of the sixth century founder of Western monasticism, Dreher argued that, just as St. Benedict abandoned the decadence of a declining Roman Empire, so Christians today should respond to a society crumbling into [...]

Let me begin with a plain fact: the sacred liturgy is where most Catholics most of the time encounter the Church and her teaching.  “The Church” and “the Magisterium” might well seem like abstractions until they take on concrete form in the liturgical rites—the texts, music, ceremonies, and other elements of worship—by which the Faith [...]

Something momentous has happened recently that has gone under the radar for most Christians. While the pandemic raged across the globe and a U.S. Presidential election turned into political turmoil, a wall that stood as an impenetrable fortress against the Christian Faith for 1400 years was breached. The very platform of the Tech giants, one [...]

I’ll never forget the look in that engineer’s eyes when he interrupted the professor. “Wow,” he exclaimed, “I get it, I get it!” I know what he was feeling because I felt it too. It was as if the final nail in a bridge between islands in my mind had been hammered home. The class [...]

There was once a thriving little town in Central Europe where almost everyone was Jewish and they all had a job. The single exception, it seems, was the Village Idiot who, when offered work, refused to take it. What was the job? It was to wait at the outskirts of the village for the arrival [...]

The topic of “discerning a vocation” is a commonplace yet difficult one with young Catholics. In order to make a generous choice of a state in life (usually, in the Roman Rite, between marriage and consecrated religious life and/or priesthood), young men and women in the Church must listen to and grapple with every aspect [...]

A home is not the same as a house. You can live or stay in a house and it is not a home. You can possibly live in a house many years and yet it never becomes a home. Home, the ancient expression goes, is where the heart is. While that might have become rather [...]

To celebrate Easter properly, we should probably recall Luca Signorelli’s 1499 masterpiece The Sermon and Deeds of the Anti-Christ. It now hangs in the Chapel of San Brizio in Orvieto. Upon first glance, it appears that Christ stands in the foreground. Then the observer realizes that it is not Christ at all. It is an [...]

I grew up near Los Angeles and now I live in Washington, D.C. So I have had my fair share of city experiences.  Last year, I was on the Washington metro with a friend when a fight broke out, and we were caught in the middle. I’ve been on a train where two men have [...]

The story of Holy Week recounts the historical events surrounding Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection; but it also pinpoints common failures of humanity while providing the antidote that ultimately saves us. A suffering world needs to dive into the causes of darkness that surround it and investigate deep within itself to ask how we ought [...]

Some time back, I was engaged in an online forum with some religious skeptics. Under discussion were the usual: the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, evidence for the resurrection, and so on. For the most part, the participants were civil and without the animus that has been far too typical of these exchanges. [...]

This past Christmas Eve, I sat with my wife, sister and brother in-law, and my four small children in a small elementary school gymnasium. We sat on old foldout chairs made of plastic in groupings of seats that were set at least six feet from the next grouping. When we knelt, we knelt on the [...]

Many Christians are thinking seriously about how to decouple from the popular culture and form versions of community and culture that will encourage the flourishing of their faith. To unthinkingly absorb mainstream entertainment, participate in public education, or patronize Big Tech’s latest offerings seems increasingly like madness considering their clear intentions to sideline us and [...]

Whenever the Advent season approaches, our thoughts turn quite naturally toward Christmas and, with the urging of the Church, we rightly use the Advent season to prepare our souls for the coming of Our Lord. Christmas and Easter are probably the two most popular, and most solemn, Holy Days among Catholics and we rightly prepare [...]

We live in “unprecedented times.” This oft-repeated phrase has not only made the headlines of the daily newspaper and graced the lips of many a newscaster but has also become an ever-present mantra of our everyday encounters. “Unprecedented times” describes the bewildering conglomeration of political chaos, religious tensions, and a pandemic-ridden society.  Yet, it is [...]

My wife recently brought me to a local curiosity shop where she enjoys hunting to find something extraordinary. Picking our way through a labyrinth of treasure and trash—the indescribable flotsam and jetsam of life—she pointed to a place on the cluttered pegboard wall. There, peering piercingly through a tangle of frames, infernal bric-a-brac, mannequin heads [...]