Tag: catholic church

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,…

Defeating Modernism – The Catholic Thing

Among the most distressing things about the Catholic Church is her (really, OUR) failure to take advantage of the many opportunities that the “modern world” accidentally offers us. We have made ourselves smaller and more inconsequential by…

Two Reflections on the Feast of the Sacred Heart

Human Hearts and the Sacred Heart Matthew D. Walz What is the “heart”? The Catechism proves helpful here. In a section on the unity of man, the Church teaches that man is “at once corporeal and spiritual” and that “man, whole and entire, is. .…

Beauty in the Power of the Holders

What do you suppose was the favorite site in Rome for the majority of a group of twenty-six college-bound students visiting for the first time? St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Museums? The Colosseum and the Forum? The Trevi Fountain and the…

The World as the Womb of Divine Love

Some people wonder: Why stick around in this life if the next life is so great? In fact, why has God sent us into this world at all if His ultimate goal for us is union with Him? Why not just get us there? Why send us here, risking the…