Every Ash Wednesday, I feel as though I were attending a funeral Mass. You would think someone had died — and this joyless expression lingers on for many of us until Easter. For years, I held that same expression — that is, until I read The Rule of St. Benedict. Many people have an aversion…
As being the continuation of “true Israel,” the Catholic Church was also structured in a hierarchal fashion. This structure was practical for the purpose of maintaining basic order in worship, as Israel had been practicing from the beginning. This structure was particular in that Jesus gave His apostles (especially the Twelve) similar authority as He…
March 7 is the dies natalis, the heavenly birthday — and therefore the traditional liturgical commemoration — of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, a Dominican friar who combined childlike innocence, guileless humility, and fervent prayer with one of the most towering intellects the human race has ever seen. He has been put forward by…
The Church is in the midst of a battle between warring ideologies in the secular and ecclesiastical courts. One combatant is a certain confederation of groups that push for the normalization of homosexuality in the Church and the redefining of sacramental marriage. The other combatant is the traditional, orthodox wing of the Church that promotes…
I decided to become Catholic in February 1992, a week before Lent started. Naturally, I was excited about my life as a Catholic, and I wanted to dive in headfirst. With Ash Wednesday approaching, I contemplated what I should “give up” for Lent (as a Protestant, I had never participated in Lent before). In my…
I grew up with a deep affection for the pope. My childhood featured Pope John Paul II, and my siblings and I learned to love and appreciate him for being a bold defender of the Catholic faith. Indeed, the pope’s portrait was hung prominently in our home. His Koran-kissing, or further, his appointments of kissing…
If you played football in school, you might remember a little drill call “the gauntlet.” The team lines up in two rows facing each other, trying to smack the ball out of the hands of whoever runs between them. Awaiting at the opposite end is the “tackler.” As I was the smallest kid on the…
There is a clerical crisis, and everyone knows it. Some say the problem is in Catholicism’s doctrine of an exclusive priesthood, which inculcates a spirit of irredeemable “elitism.” This “sin of clericalism” is but a means to make Catholicism more Protestant and egalitarian with regard to the priesthood. Others say the problem is the chaste…
“And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened.” —Matthew 24:22 Do you enjoy sins of the flesh? Are you greedy? Do you believe in the Catholic Faith but are lukewarm? Are you born into a non-Christian faith or part…
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), in addition to being among the widely acknowledged geniuses of the human race, was one of the most eminent modern apologists for the Christian faith. In an era such as ours that denigrates both rationality, man’s distinctive trait, and belief in God, man’s highest dignity in this life, we have much to…
A one-year-old blog known as “Where Peter Is” — a sort of inverse image of OnePeterFive — features writing from ardent defenders of Pope Francis. Recognizing that Catholicism is inherently a religion of Tradition, the blog avoids the awkwardness of patent contradiction between earlier magisterial teaching and Francis’s “creativity” by arguing that Tradition equals “what…
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