As Catholics we know that we have received life from God Who reveals Himself to our minds and hearts in two ways: by nature, or in the finality (referred to in theology as “the Wisdom of God”) inscribed in the very nature of things. This is called the Natural Law and includes in part what…
In 2006, I had a bit of a lucky break. Coming off of a bad run of underemployment and a housing market crash that ramped up just as I was getting my real estate license, I landed a job working for an elite crisis communications firm just outside of Washington, DC. The firm in question specialized…
It was the last weekend in October, 1999, and my friends and I were on a four-day break from classes at Franciscan University’s Austrian campus. We had journeyed half-way across Europe to Normandy, France, stopping first in Bayeux on that Thursday to see the magnificent 11th-century cathedral and its eponymous, world-famous “tapestry“. After a night spent trying to…
I like lions. I like whales, cephalopods, glow worms, wildebeests, butterflies, stick insects, frogs and all types of cnidaria (that’s jellyfish, son). I was kind of sad when I saw Cecil the lion got shot. You wouldn’t think it from my professional writing, where human rights violations are my primary interest, but I go helplessly…
The sharpest irony of the everyday feminism that has trickled down to all levels of society is simply that men—and certainly not the best men—stand to profit most from the so-called liberation of women. Indeed, as a moment’s reflection can show, it is no exaggeration to say that the movement from the very start has…
Now is the time to defend marriage and family. We are still feeling the effects of Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, with the widespread use and acceptance of contraception and the propensity to resort to abortion when the contraception fails. Although reports tell us that abortion numbers are down, we know that we…
There’s a very peculiar thing happening at The Church of Our Savior in Midtown Manhattan. Beautiful sacred art — icons commissioned in 2004 by Fr. George Rutler, the parish’s erudite and well-loved former pastor — have been disappearing from the columns surrounding the sanctuary – quite literally under the cover of night. This clandestine desecration of the holy of holies —…
When I was about ten years old, I came across a story in a Catholic magazine about the secretive inner workings of a Satanic Mass. The specific incident described involved a sort of ritual torture of some teenagers as part of the ceremony, and it detailed the gruesome things they were forced to consume from the chalice and…
“Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Mt. 6:33) For several centuries now, there has been an intense “cultivation” of the town and an under-cultivation of the country. Industrialism has been the focus of our economy, creating a mass exodus from the country as…
As the presidential aids open the large case, Pope Francis stares into it, quizzical, examining the two medals laid therein. An aide of Evo Morales (the Bolivian president and leader of that nation’s Socialist Movement) then turns, draping first one, then the other, around the pontiff’s neck, the latter a four-sided cross inlaid with a hammer and sickle, superimposed…
Miserando atque eligendo: these words, chosen by Pope Francis as his motto, seem fitting, as his emphasis on the theme of mercy has been clear since the very beginning. And so, it should come as no surprise that he has announced a Year of Mercy—in fact, a Jubilee Year of Mercy—that will begin on December…
