Agere sequitur esse—What you do follows upon what you are. Let us resolve to be who we should be, know what we should know, and do what we should do, so that “Posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream”–Richard Hooker (1554-1600). In…
“If we deny Him, He will also deny us.” (2 Tm 2:12; cf. Jude 1:4) A number of commentators are telling us that it’s alarmist and unwarranted to suggest that the political sky has fallen. John Paul Jones-like, they assure us that we have not yet begun to fight. We are on the side of…
My pastor was trying to write a parish mission statement when, forsaking all modesty, I blurted out, “Father, you can write our mission statement in six words: Glorify God, Save Souls, Make Saints. He liked it and promptly had it emblazoned on—the collection envelopes! About a week later, trying (as writers do, to revise, and,…
The prophet Ezekiel gives us the “allegory of the cedar,” which teaches us personal and political lessons. In that prophecy, Egypt is compared to a cedar tree grown tall and beautiful. As it grew, however, it became arrogant — “its heart was proud of its height” (31:10) — so the Lord rejected it and let…
In a recent interview with America magazine, Archbishop Rino Fisichella praised the “dynamic nature” of sacred Tradition. Such Tradition, he maintained, is “first and foremost living.” We must not view Tradition as hidebound, the archbishop implied, because denying the “dynamic nature of tradition is tantamount to denying the contemporaneity of the Christian faith.” Here I…
Recently, my grandson Thomas received his first Holy Communion at a parish I have visited only a few times. My wife and I assist at Mass at a different parish, in part because it offers the traditional Latin Mass. The day after Thomas’s first Holy Communion at the Novus Ordo church, some children at our…
