This article comes to 1P5 from an anonymous Catholic. Distributism is an economic theory, articulated by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, that has garnered interest in Catholic circles. While this economic system hasn’t developed in America as a political movement, it received praise in some Catholic circles as “the Catholic third way.” This title seems…
You may have already seen the podcast interview I did with my friend and 1P5 contributor Stefanie Nicholas earlier this year, during which we discussed her conversion story, in which I am humbled to have been given the grace to play a small part. Last month, Stefanie gave an even more in-depth account of her…
One hundred seventy years ago, on October 17, 1849, the Polish French composer and pianist who renewed the sound of the Romantic piano died: Frederic Chopin (1810–1849). His superhuman, sad, and passionate art is well summarized in the following words, beautiful and moving, which the Venerable Pope Pius XII addressed to a large group of…
How long ago it seems now, after six and a half grueling, mind-bending years under Pope Francis, coupled with the shock, from which one will never recover, of Pope Benedict’s abdication. It was like transitioning from a post-doctoral theology seminar to a multicultural kindergarten. But I still remember it clearly: the Eleventh Ordinary Synod of…
At a ceremony in the Vatican gardens leading up to the Amazon Synod, a very strange ritual unfolded. In addition to more ecological symbolism than you could shake a shrinking polar ice cap at, we saw some disturbing scenes, including a pair of naked pregnant statues carved from wood and a group of people, some…
“Women,” writes Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, “are not suited for certain occupations,” for “a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the well-being of the family.” How such statements have…
We’ve heard it before: universities have changed. Professors no longer teach “Shakespeare 101,” but “Shakespeare and Gender in Multimedia” or “Elizabethan Bard Culture.” And poets like Milton and Crashaw have been “canceled.” The classics aren’t just too dead, too white, and too male — they’re too elitist now, too. To delight in the grandeur of…
We are about to republish a very old book, and I thought a much abbreviated history of this effort might be of interest. One day, a little more than three years ago I — not realizing into what a project I was about to launch myself — did a Google search on Armand Jean de…
“Clericalism has a direct consequence in rigidity. Have you never seen young priests all stiff in black cassocks and hats in the shape of the planet Saturn on their heads? Behind all the rigid clericalism there are serious problems.” —Pope Francis, September 5, 2019 address to Jesuits in Mozambique Though it is one of the…
The news of the supreme glorification, on October 13, of Saint John Henry Newman (1801–1890) reawakens interest in this British cardinal, theologian and apologist. Beatified by Benedict XVI on September 19, 2010 in Great Britain, he was born in London to an Anglican family. For 20 years, he was minister of the Anglican Communion at…
Since the news broke early this week that the nonegenarian atheist socialist editor of Italy’s La Repubblica, Eugenio Scalfari, claimed that Pope Francis told him during one of their many conversations that he did not believe Jesus was God, the Catholic commentariat has been engaged in a rhetorical battle to the death over who to believe,…
