When Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2005, there were any number of fascinating coincidences that surrounded his death. They were the sort of things that make you go “hmm” and (if one is a wobbly agnostic) begin to suspect that maybe You Know Who has His hand in things after all. John … Read more
I once read an interview with Garrison Keillor in which he recounted going to a funeral. During the final prayers, the minister prayed for the deceased — “and for the next person here who is going to die.” He said that most of the guests were outraged and offended, but that he was moved and … Read more
According to tradition St. Thomas Aquinas once asked St. Bonaventure how he had acquired the deep theological wisdom he displayed in his writings. St. Bonaventure pointed to a crucifix and said that he had learned all he knew from contemplating it. If there are any prayerful Catholics in our pews with St. Bonaventure’s talents … Read more
As we saw last week, antique atheists like Bill Maher still imagine that people who take the Bible seriously must read it literalistically, as he does. However, there is a difference between literalistic interpretation — which is the habit of all fundamentalists, whether atheist or Christian — and the literal sense of Scripture. The Catechism … Read more
If you examine an icon, you will notice that the figure in it will often be breaking out of the frame. Sometimes the hands, sometimes the halo, sometimes both are outside the border framing the image. That’s no accident. It’s part of what iconography is trying to get us to see: that the supernatural is … Read more
"Jesus came to give us moral guidance, and to prove he meant business, he let himself be killed and seen after death, so we would listen and be good." Not being raised in any particular religion myself, it wasn’t until later that I discovered that this view of Jesus’ death and resurrection (which I heard … Read more