We heard recently from two disparate Catholic authors who surprisingly agree about the current condition of the Catholic Church. One of the authors is Ross Douthat, self-described conservative Catholic and author of To Change the Church (subtitled “Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism”), a recent book that explores “what exactly constitutes the Catholic core.”…
Summer Theology Program 2019 St. Thomas’ Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians August 12–16 in Wausau, Wisconsin Hosted by the St. Albert the Great Center for Scholastic Studies, in collaboration with The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, and the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. The annual…
At the Solemn Mass on Easter Sunday at the FSSP parish in Philadelphia, the transitional deacon made a fascinating observation in his homily. The paschal joy, he said, too often remains on the level of emotion without apprehending the mystery of the Resurrection in its integrity. While it is true that there was a Baroque…
When news got out that Notre Dame was burning, I headed to Twitter. I arrived there as the first reports of the blaze that was soon to destroy much of the roof of the Notre Dame de Paris were still only beginning to roll in: early enough for me to initially assume that the few…
It is of the utmost importance in the Catholic household that Catholic children have good Catholic friends. A likely reason for the increasing laxity in the practice of Catholic evangelization, and normal Catholic behavior in general, is the fact that many Catholic children find themselves in schools that are either a mix of religions or…
Christopher Krysak is a US Marine and a devoted Catholic husband and father. We attend the same parish, and he’s taught one of my sons in CCD. A couple years back, Chris made a considerable investment of his own money to hire a professional voiceover artist to create an audiobook version of My Catholic Faith,…
Last night, I was having a chat with a Catholic friend. We were discussing something I had tweeted a couple of days ago: I still can’t figure out how they haven’t figured out how problematic these optics are. https://t.co/4IEVLCfzDb — Steve Skojec (@SteveSkojec) April 15, 2019 “It honestly baffles me,” my friend says. “I am…
During my senior year of college, I took a class on the French Revolution — my first real academic exposure to that seminal period since a brief survey in high school. Going into the class, I was confident in my understanding of the Revolution, a narrative more or less predicated on the traditional historiography: the…
It was a video that brought so many of us to tears: a crowd kneeling and singing “Ave Maria” while Notre Dame burned. “Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,” they beautifully sang as the camera panned to a shot of raw fire. The juxtaposition between the two images was surreal: at the very moment when devastating…
Near the end of the last academic year, the school I teach at was perplexed. Datasets, and even the general feel of the school, revealed that our students were struggling. Academic success was decreasing. Anxiety was rising. Administrators and teachers alike were puzzled as to why this was happening. As a grade five teacher, I…
It’s been interesting to observe the evolution in the way people have responded to my conversion to the Catholic faith. One year ago, upon public announcement of my plan to be received into the Church, I was met with near universal support if not outright encouragement by people of various belief systems. The longer I…
