Catholic Church
Catholics and “Surveillance Capitalism” – The Catholic Thing
A correct Catholic approach to AI becomes clearer, I think, if we approach a foundational text in Catholic Social Teaching, Rerum novarum, not as about structural issues in political economy, but rather as about claims on time and claims of…
‘The Deepest Reality of the Greatest Event Ever to Take Place’
For Lent this year, I resolved to pray the Angelus in the morning, at midday, and in the evening – a practice, of course, long a part of Catholic piety. In my adult life, I’ve been up and down in adhering to this practice, and this year I wanted…
Double-Lives in the ‘Naked Public Square’
I take the subway to work. I like doing that because it gives me uninterrupted time to do things. Read. I get at least two books done per month. Write. Some of those book reviews get sketched out on the Orange Line. Pray. The trip to work can…
Thoughts about War in a Lenten Season
Let’s begin with a pointed question: Are we, almost all, today, Sadducees? If your knowledge of the groups who appear in the New Testament is hazy, we might put it thus: Do almost all of us now, even Christians who claim otherwise, like the…
Awake, O Sleeper and Rise
As we mark our head, lips, and heart with the Sign of the Cross when the Gospel is solemnly proclaimed at Mass, we signal, by that prayer made with hands, the desire that the living Word of God will touch and convert mind and heart, that we may…
The ‘Polar Unity’ of the Two Forms of the Roman Rite
The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007) of Pope Benedict XVI introduced into the contemporary ecclesial vocabulary a distinction that has since become both fruitful and contentious: the “Ordinary Form” and the “Extraordinary Form” of the one…
Free Spirits – The Catholic Thing
In an effort to understand Hieronymus Bosch, I have been reading about the “movers and shakers” who first conceived of our modern world. Bosch presents the fantasies of these heretics, I think, without being entirely a heretic himself. It is…
When the New Things Come Again
I have what I like to think of as a healthy obsession with bulbs. I don’t mean the kind you screw into an electric lamp. I mean flower bulbs: tulips, hyacinth, daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops, and the like. I bury them in the dirt in the autumn.…
Poetry in Church – The Catholic Thing
Augustine admits in Confessions that when he was young, he did not like the Scriptures; he found the language ugly and uninspiring. He preferred Cicero and Virgil. Worse yet, some things in the Scriptures caused him to think Christianity was…
Saint Patrick Charms the Snakes
You may have heard the legend that Saint Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, but I’m here to tell you it ain’t, exactly, 100-percent true. Now it’s true that Ireland has no snakes today and it’s also true that Saint Patrick is the one that…