Some people become Catholic because the Church is a communion of sinners and slobs who are losers, oddballs, factory rejects, and broken dunderheads who can’t tell their butt from a hole in the ground and who have messed up their lives so badly that they know only God can save them. They don’t know from … Read more
As if we needed another reminder of the fruits of avarice, the business press is on fire with the news of the conviction of Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the hedge fund Galleon Group, on all 14 charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. I hope he looks good in federal orange. As the … Read more
One nice thing about being Catholic is that when a dimestore Origenist (who is pretty certain nobody’s going to Hell) goes up against dimestore Calvinists (who are certain they know just exactly who is in Hell), you don’t have to feel as though TIME magazine is arbitrating a dispute that never ever ever occurred to Christians before. Just … Read more
There is only one John Zmirak. A prolific author, popular literature professor, gadfly critic of culture and politics, and out-and-proud beagle enthusiast, John leaves an impression. And gives a memorable interview. He spoke with Brian Saint-Paul about his latest book, The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Seven Deadly Sins. ♦ ♦ … Read more
As a literature teacher, I’m marking the Easter season in one way I know how: assigning books that are suited to the season. This week we’re reading that lyrical, enormously uplifting work of Charles Péguy, The Portal of the Mystery of Hope. A gifted poet, Péguy lived among the poor, defended the innocent Dreyfus, embraced and … Read more
As we enter Holy Week, it is good to focus our minds on the matter that occupied Jesus in His final hours before His Passion, that we might imitate the mind of Christ. Therefore, I thought we might take a little time and look at what is called the Last Supper Discourse in the Gospel … Read more
The ugly little secret of life, one I hesitate to share with students, is how disappointing all of it is. Indeed, if the reader is under 30, I’m tempted to tell him to click on some other column — lest I drain from him the sparks of life and energy that are meant to keep … Read more
O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that has united, The Lover with his beloved, Transforming the beloved in her Lover. Upon my flowering breast Which I kept for him alone, There he lay sleeping, And I caressing him There in a breeze from the fanning cedars. When the breeze … Read more
There is an old saying that we judge others by what they do, but we want them to judge us by our intentions. That more or less sums up one of the central confusions engendered by our embrace of modernity’s Absolute No. 1 Favorite Moral Heresy: consequentialism. Consequentialism, for anyone not fully up to speed … Read more
I had my first taste of alcohol on vacation with my parents when I was eight years old. We had just sat down to dinner at a restaurant in Rome, and the waiter came as usual to pour wine for my parents. To my surprise, he didn’t pass over my glass. As I looked at … Read more
More than any other time, the season of Lent raises for us the question of suffering. Indeed, the great advantage of Christianity over competing faiths is its technology for rendering suffering meaningful. Beginning with the book of Genesis, divine revelation seems to me less an answer to speculations such as, “Where did the world come … Read more
A reader writes: I’m wondering if you could help me with a question about mortal sin. I recently learned that the Catechism teaches that masturbation, if done with full knowledge and consent, would count as a mortal sin. (I realize there are a few additional caveats.) Does this mean that masturbation is, in the eyes … Read more
I am not a crafty mom, but I sometimes let fantasy and ambition get the best of me. Two days before the start of Lent this year, my oldest daughter reminded me of a family activity we had done together many Lents ago. It was a craft I had read about in one of those … Read more
As I suppose everybody does when they reflect about their life, I sometimes sit back and think about the astonishing chain of little choices that have contributed to the fact that I exist. One evening about 30 years ago, for instance, I was stopped at a red light and the radio in the car was … Read more
The 1998 canonization of Edith Stein created quite a turmoil for the Jews. They are willing to admit that she was an extraordinary woman, though the fact remains: To them, she was an “apostate.” It is not the first time the Jewish people have had to face a situation in which someone whom they view … Read more
I was recently delighted by the sting operation performed against Planned Parenthood by Live Action, whose members posed as a pimp and a prostitute, intending to test the organization’s willingness to enable the exploitation of underaged girls and expose its cynical disregard of the human dignity of women. None of this should surprise those of … Read more
Recently I paid my $1.99 and downloaded the new iPhone app for confession. Seeing the app was subtitled “a Roman Catholic App,” I figured it wasn’t going to suffer from “Catholicism Lite.” (Whether the new app would meet the demanding standard of John Allen’s “Taliban Catholicism,” I was about to find out.) Since its release, … Read more
The great Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov writes that the world about us was made for us to exalt, to spiritualize, not because matter is in itself evil, but because the good that it possesses was meant to be united by man with the God whom man serves. That is the meaning of our being … Read more
Some time back, a reader wrote me with an interesting observation: You know, I just thought of something. I used to have a part-time job as a pest caller (phone surveys, mostly) and so I met a lot of Wiccans. (In the 90’s they congregated in phone & restaurant work, for some reason; don’t know … Read more
That’s Chesterton’s idea, not mine. But he was surely right. Chesterton knew that, so long as the atheist remembers a Christmas of long ago, when it seemed that the stars themselves were made only that they might twinkle upon a stable in Bethlehem, he may yet someday become a man worthy of the boy he … Read more