It is a dark and quiet night, and my family has just finished a rosary in our lonely parish church. Thank God that we have access to the building. As we head to the exit it is impossible to ignore the many little white boxes covering a table near the door, waiting for pick up.…
If you’re a Catholic, you’ve probably seen it: a mysterious series of letters and numbers, looking for all the world like an equation, inscribed in chalk over a doorway at your parish, or at the home of a friend. Maybe you thought you could figure it out. Maybe you were too embarrassed to ask, “What…
If things here at 1P5 have seemed a little quieter than usual lately, that’s because they have been. Fewer submissions have been coming in, and I’ve personally struggled to find more things worth saying, leaving my pen keyboard a bit more unused than I’d like. If you’ve ever lived through a hurricane, the current moment…
Pope Pius XI’s encyclical on atheistic communism, Divini Redemptoris, was promulgated on March 19, 1937, the feast of St. Joseph, patron of the universal Church and patron of workers. Almost 84 years later, his analysis, so far from being outdated, finds disturbing relevance to our own time and place. It seems fitting to take a…
Yesterday, we published a somewhat provocative piece by Suzan Sammons about the March for Life, and why she — as a pro-life mother with a history of participation in that event — thinks that in the wake of this year’s cancellation, the time for the March has passed. Sammons writes: It was a high. For…
Editor’s Note: We believe that considering and discussing multiple perspectives on the future of the pro-life movement and social conservatism in general is important at this time in our nation’s history. The following, therefore, is the opinion of the author and not the position of 1P5. That the national March for Life has been laid…
In one of my weaker moments, I did something rather foolish, born from curiosity. That is, I read Pope Francis’ new motu proprio: Spiritus Domini. It was not so much what the document promulgated that interested me – that women shall be made official acolytes and lectors of the Church – but rather in how…
CNA has the story today on the March for Life going Virtual for 2021. It was sadly predictable, but still a significant first: The 2021 March for Life will take place virtually, organizers announced Friday. The March for Life Education and Defense Fund, the organization behind the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., said…
The COVID-19 lockdown has placed a greater burden on the poor as many have lost their jobs or homes and are seeking assistance. In a previous post I discussed the obligation of almsgiving according to the authoritative sources of the Church. Here I argued that this obligation is binding on all Christians according to their…
Eighty years ago this week, on January 12, 1941, James Joyce (Dublin 1882 — Zurich 1941), a great wordsmith, an Irish writer counted among the greatest of the twentieth century, fell into a coma following an operation for an ulcer performed the previous day. On January 13th, he died. He was less than a month…
Don’t you hate it when fellow Catholics say to you: “The Church has faced crises worse than this one before”? You hate it because you know it’s false. Of several popes who flirted with heresy, only two seem to have crossed a line: Honorius and John XXII. Honorius made one error in regard to Christology;…
