The Catholic Thing
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…
Worth & Worship – The Catholic Thing
What is a thing worth? In economics, it’s relative. Prices fluctuate. Markets rise and fall. A thing is worth what someone’s willing to pay for it. Back in the 1980s, my LPs were worth a lot. With the arrival of CDs, they were worth almost…
What Does Love Look Like?
It’s a commonplace observation that most people think more readily in pictures than in abstract concepts, and that stories move and transform us in ways that logical arguments often don’t. God, who of course knows this, therefore has revealed…
A Perfect Model of Fatherhood
Excerpted from Address of John Paul II to the members of the Pontifical Council for the Family, June 4, 1999 The theme of fatherhood, which you have chosen for this plenary meeting, refers to the third year of preparation for the Great Jubilee,…
Whatever Happened to Natural Law?
There are many crises in the Catholic Church today, but one of the most serious is the dismal state of moral theology. That crisis has its roots in the confusion and intellectual ferment that ensued in the aftermath of Vatican II. Progressive…
Faith in Space – The Catholic Thing
During the high point of investment clubs – back in the dark ages, long ago, in 1998! – mom and pop investors would gather and use a tool such as the NAIC’s “Stock Selection Guide,” to pick stocks based on a ten-year record of sales, earnings,…
A Brief Note on Consequences
On a cool October evening some years back, a young woman – let’s call her Jenny, age 18 – checked into St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica and gave birth to a baby boy. Her friends had urged her to have an abortion. So did her boyfriend, Jack,…
Who is a Christian? – The Catholic Thing
The Department of Defense recently made waves over a decision to remove Mormons from the category of “Christian,” to distinguish more clearly among the chaplains and the servicemen as to who might best minister to them in matters of faith and…
‘Ars Poetica’ – The Catholic Thing
The proverbial Martian visiting America in this 250th year (a whole quarter millennium) of our existence would be struck by many things. But probably by nothing more obvious than the large gap between what, on the one hand, we daily say and do –…
Mozart, Freemasonry, and the Synodal Way
A recent, brief exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City highlighted the life and work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. J.P. Morgan, the famous financier, built his library on Madison Avenue in the 19th century as a place to house,…