Catholic Church
In Praise of Imperfect Heroes
I am in Poland, as I am every July, for the Tertio Millennio Seminar, a three-week meeting on Catholic social teaching and the thought of John Paul II. As we often do, we began our seminar with Mass in the St. Leonard’s chapel. It was there that…
The SSPX and the French Revolution
As everyone knows by now, the ordination of bishops carried out by the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has resulted in the automatic excommunication of the six bishops involved. No matter how it may spin its canonical status, the Society is now…
Pope Leo and Catholic Education
Magnifica humanitas has been widely discussed for its approach to artificial intelligence. Pope Leo emphasizes the importance of the schools for training people to retain their humanity in the face of these challenges. If we took the encyclical…
Hillbilly with a Rosary – The Catholic Thing
When J.D. Vance’s memoir of his path back to Christianity, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, is described at a high level of generality, we see immediately that it is a book of the highest importance. Here is a leader on the world stage…
America Must Not Become a Land of Hate
There are terrible injustices in our country. There are people in jail who don’t belong there and people on the street who belong in jail. But there is no country on earth where one is likely to get a fairer trial or where one will have a…
Five for the Fourth – The Catholic Thing
Outright Love for This Land Robert Royal In Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo invokes the Biblical story of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem as a poignant alternative to the Tower of Babel’s effort to reach Heaven without God. It’s a good…
Jefferson and the 4th of July
In the early days of July 1826, Thomas Jefferson “marshalled his will toward the realization of one last mission: He wanted to survive until the Fourth of July.” So writes Jon Meacham in his marvelous biography Thomas Jefferson: The Art of…
SSPX: Schism and Excommunication – The Catholic Thing
The canonically illegal consecration/ordination (the terms are interchangeable) of four new bishops by two Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) bishops who were themselves illegally ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre 38 years ago is a renewed wound…
Human Dignity and America’s 250th
Like many Americans, I’ve been refreshing my knowledge of the American Revolution in anticipation of July 4 this year. And, at the same time, I’m finding myself comparing the Founders’ notions of human dignity with the way the term is frequently…
Is the Church of England in a Death Spiral?
The Anglo-American poet, T.S. Eliot (born in St. Louis), wrote “The Hollow Men” in 1925. The poem concludes with this haunting quatrain: This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang…