Ever Ancient, Ever New – The Catholic Thing

St. Augustine famously wrote of having come late to the Beauty that is God: tam antiqua, tam nova (“So ancient, so new”). It’s a brilliant and profound way of expressing the truth that the deepest Good is not in the past or in the future, but by its very eternity transcends time. It’s like a heart-rending piece of music that, even the very first time you hear it, is both fresh beyond all expectation and, in the same moment, an evocation of a place that you feel you have known and longed for your whole past life, the one true home of the human heart. 

By contrast, what we’re most often immersed in is a false, politicized version of old and new. A limited politics is, of course, a necessary and good thing. But when politics takes on a religious importance, a defining reality for our lives, it’s a dangerous and partial substitute for the real thing.  What’s “conservative” then becomes merely a return to some idealized past; the “progressive” turns into a drive for some future utopia, whatever the cost (which is usually large in terms of human casualties). Compared with that deeper, truer music of Creation, the substitutes – if they come to possess us – are like an organ grinder’s tune geared to make the monkeys dance. 

That’s good neither for our souls nor our public lives. And it’s always the main task of our lives to take care of temporal matters with our eyes fixed on the eternal. Which is what we strive to do, day in and day out, here at The Catholic Thing. 

So today I have to ask you to join us in supporting work that seeks some larger, more Catholic way. We only come to you twice a year asking for your support. And as part of this mid-year funding campaign, we have some remarkable new/old things to report.

First, we’re re-launching today the website of the Faith & Reason Institute (https://frinstitute.org), the parent institution of The Catholic Thing, in a new format that will make it easy to keep up with our writers, fellows, and varied activities. I think the staff did a wonderful job and produced a format that’s both attractive and accessible. Please take a look. 

You’ll see not only worthwhile written material by myself and others at TCT, but also an archive of the Posses; our video series on martyrs and persecution “Faith under Siege”; our TCT courses (my new course on Pope Leo’s complicated relationship to his Augustinian heritage starts next week); our annual Summer Seminar on the Free Society, which this year features a dialogue between Western and Eastern Catholics about the public square; and several other new initiatives that we’ll be rolling out shortly.

We’re only able to bring you all this thanks to the generosity and fidelity of people like yourself who care about Catholic truth, and are willing to support us in this mission of keeping Faith and Reason present, together, not only among ourselves but in the whole world. As St. John Paul II wrote at the beginning of his encyclical Fides et ratio:

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know Himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.

Much is at stake in this dual approach to knowing God.  

I’d like to call your attention to one new feature in particular that we’re launching. Many people these days are confused about what the Church teaches and why. And while columns on this page often address those questions as they crop up in the news and public debates, and our courses look at broader subjects, we decided that lots of readers would benefit from a simple, but more systematic approach. 

And what better way to do that than by going through the Catechism of the Catholic Church? And not on your own, but with the guidance of my Posse colleague and friend Fr. Gerald Murray. So, you’ll shortly be receiving the first installment via email and an opportunity to register for the whole series of brief videos – only a few minutes or so each – in which you’ll learn about real Church teaching from a reliable instructor. Look for it. You won’t want to miss this one.   

And you won’t want to miss our ongoing coverage of events in Rome – Pope Leo’s first encyclical will be appearing next week (rumors say it’s on AI and will be called Magnifica Humanitas – “Magnificent Humanity”). That’s bound to cause a stir, and we’ll help you think through the implications of that text and other developments.

We’re also planning some special coverage with the Posse on the beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in September. Speaking of Sheen, he had his own brilliant new/old approach to current questions, both worldly and otherworldly, in his book Old Errors and New Labels:

The Church asks her children to think hard and think clean. Then she asks them to do two things with their thoughts. . . .The Church asks her children not only to externalize their thoughts and thus produce culture, but also to internalize their thoughts and thus produce spirituality. . . .[B]efore a thought can be bequeathed to the outside, it must have been born on the inside. But no thought is born without silence and contemplation. It is in the stillness and quiet of one’s own intellectual pastures, wherein man meditates on the purpose of life and its goal, that real and true character is developed. A character is made by the kind of thoughts a man thinks when alone, and a civilization is made by the kind of thoughts a man speaks to his neighbor.

As the greatest preacher the United States has ever produced – and convert-maker par excellence – Sheen is a model for all of us who know how much the United States and the rest of the world languish without the depth and breadth of the Catholic thing. In this year – the 250^th anniversary of the founding of our dear and troubled nation, he warrants special attention. 

So, please. Look into your own situation and do what you can in support of this vital work. Lots of us are under great financial stress these days. But like our forebears who – though immigrants and often poor – built the magnificent American churches, the Catholic school system, universities, hospitals, nursing homes, and charitable institutions, even in the face of anti-Catholic prejudices – we have to do our part, in our time, to make the Catholic Thing live and bear fruit. 

At TCT, we will continue to do all we can to make this urgent task a reality. Will you? Please, join us in furthering the work of The Catholic Thing.