(Robert Royal. The Catholic Thing)
A sometimes-tart critic of this site – a self-described atheist who reads this page regularly for reasons unknown – came to the defense of Pope Francis’ recent remarks in Singapore about all religions being a path to God (in the original Italian, Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio):
(Raymond J. de Souza. The Catholic Thing)
Bespoke clothing is better than off-the-rack, but often rather too expensive. Bespoke liturgical seasons are free and permit the flourishing of a greater liturgical piety. And they can be observed or ignored according to taste
Will ‘Generation Z’ Take Us All to Hell?
(David Warren. The Catholic Thing)
ell done, good and faithful servant,” as we said to ourselves in thinking (here) of Saint Bruno today, that courageous enemy of decadence and filth, and of the Carthusian Order he founded. “Euge!”
(Randall Smith. The Catholic Thing)
At Mass the other day, I heard that passage in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous,saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’” (23:29-30) It makes me wonder if I had lived during the time of the prophets, would I have been one of those who wanted them stoned to death?
(Francis X. Maier. The Catholic Thing)
This was a memorable August in our family for two reasons. Here’s the first: We witnessed something miraculous. Or at least preternatural. One of our nation’s two major political parties had its quadrennial convention. And its nominee for president was transformed, overnight, from an aggressive, cackling clown-harpy to an inspiring national leader – a kind of reverse lycanthropy where the Wolfman turns into a female version of the likable Lon Chaney Jr. (In the just-released, “based on a true story” media adaptation of the event and its aftermath, Donald Trump plays Dracula.)
(Robert Royal. The Catholic Thing)
So, the National Conventions are over. Labor Day is only a week away, after which there will be no rest for the wicked until Election Day. (And beyond.) The final session – miserere, Domine – of the Synod on Synodality opens exactly one month after our celebration of labor, though ten “study groups” will grind on for months after, with (likely) predictable results. And here we all are, like old Noah, still dry in the post-dog-days of August, but expecting the deluge.
God is much more than the nose on our face
(David Warren. The Catholic Thing)
It is an understatement to say that almost everyone was born with a nose. Everyone was. There are few people who would deny this, or are unaware of it. But if they are unaware, they are not, therefore, among our most brilliant skeptics.
The Self-Alienation of Cultural Marxism
(Robert J. Batule. The Catholic Thing)
As students are returning to school this week, chances are very good that campus unrest will return as well with the new academic year. And given the presidential election, the national media – television especially – will bring enormous attention, once again, to the grievances of a class of people that we should call cultural Marxists, whose ideas on alienation harken back to the class antagonism of Europe in the nineteenth century.
American Jews Confront the Catholic Problem
(John M. Grondelski. The Catholic Thing)
Kamala Harris’s decision to tap as her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is a telling sign of the religious and quasi-religious tests at work in today’s Democratic Party
The Importance of Knowing Reality
(Joseph R. Wood. The Catholic Thing)
In the last few months, “thought leaders” in many domains, from elite universities to athletics to airline CEOs to politics (just a few of my complaints), seem to have departed from contact with reality in new and sharper ways.
(Randall Smith. The Catholic Thing).
Everyone else has written about the transsexual parody of the Last Supper at the Paris Olympics, so I don’t need to – other than to say, thank God they didn’t add a transsexual Mohammad to the scene. That would have meant real trouble. Christians are an easy target. And there are fewer riots.
The Church’s Opposition: Hiding in Plain Sight
(Carrie Gress. The Catholic Thing)
Resentment is a powerful thing. Marxist revolutionaries have fostered it in the heart of followers for over a century
(The Catholic Thing. Francis X. Maier).
One of the reasons I spent three years writing a recent book on the Church in the United States was to capture the character, challenges, and real concerns of the men who lead us today as bishops. What I found confirmed my more than 40-year career experience. Our bishops have the same strengths and flaws as the rest of us. But they’re overwhelmingly good men, faithful to the Church and her teaching, and committed to their people. Of course, there are always a few outliers who, whatever their good intentions, don’t quite fit the mold. Simply put, no other U.S. bishop in recent memory has diverged so openly from his brother bishops on sensitive issues, or so obviously ignored the protocols of collegiality, than the Diocese of Lexington’s John Stowe. Jayd Henricks described the overall pattern of Bishop Stowe’s singular leadership in a recent article here. As Henricks – himself a former USCCB senior staffer – noted, Stowe “regularly steps into the most delicate and highly charged cultural and political issues with none of the painstaking care his brother bishops show. He seems determined, in fact, to follow his own blundering impulses, and to kick against the other bishops’ pastoral approach whenever it might rein him in.”
(The Catholic Thing. Bishop James Conley).
In December 2019, Bishop Conley writes, “I was granted permission by the Holy Father to take a leave of absence to attend to my mental health. It was humbling to admit that I didn’t know how long my healing would take – or if I would even return – but I wanted to combat the cultural stigma around mental health issues (and my shame) by sharing my suffering openly. The outpouring of support and prayer I received from the good people of the Diocese of Lincoln was beyond what I could’ve imagined. I would need all that grace since the hardest part of my journey was still ahead.”
My Story of Pursuing Mental Health https://whatweneednow.substack.com/p/pursuing-mental-health-as-a-catholic Since my conversion to the Catholic Church in college, I have always known my total dependence on God, recognizing this as a defining feature of the human condition. I believed Jesus’ words, “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5), but this truth became twisted with a lie. I had been raised according to the common American stereotype of the self-made man who solves every problem himself. When things aren’t going well, he doesn’t show weakness, he just works harder. As a Christian, I adapted this to: he prays and works harder. God offers grace but, with that aid, I mistakenly thought I had to do the rest. Such ungodly self-reliance inevitably led to my unraveling.
Continue reading… Pursuing Mental Health as a Catholic.
Continue reading… My Story of Pursuing Mental Health
(The Catholic Thing. Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.).
CBS’s 60 Minutes is the premier television interview program in the United States. Over the years, it has held conversations with politicians, heads of state, royalty, celebrities, actors, athletes, and other people of note. This past Sunday, May 19, it aired an interview with Pope Francis, the first time that 60 Minutes has interviewed a Roman Pontiff. Pope Francis appears to enjoy giving interviews, and he is very good at giving them. He has a common touch in his manner of expressing himself, employing words and phrases that catch the imagination of his listeners. He comes across as one who understands and can speak to ordinary men and women. In so doing, he elicits an affectionate response. This was evident in the 60 Minutes interview. He smiles. He makes people laugh. He can even tell a good joke. He endears people to himself. People cannot help but love Pope Francis, and this is a good thing. That said, there is also another trait that has become apparent when the topic of the Catholic Church in the United States arises. On this subject, one can be assured that Pope Francis will offer some criticisms. He perceives the American Catholic Church as conservative – particularly many of the American Bishops. This concern again became evident in the 60 Minutes interview.
When asked by Norah O’Donnell about the criticisms he has encountered from American Catholics, Pope Francis first stated that a conservative is someone who “clings to something and does not want to see beyond that.” Conservatism has no future. It only has a past to which it tightly cleaves. In this light, Pope Francis made two further inter-related points. He emphatically stated that to be closed to change is “suicidal.” This suicidal mindset appears to rest on the presumption that, if one is not open to the contemporary work of the Holy Spirit, one dies as the Church continues to develop.
(The Catholic Thing. Brad Miner).
Father Marko Rupnik’s work reminds me of the art attributed to Walter Keane, the American artist who was popular in the 1960s. His paintings of big-eyed girls and women, and of animals remain enduringly popular on posters, prints, and plates.
Keane and Rupnik are also alike in being frauds. In Keane’s case, he took credit for work actually painted by his wife, Margaret. In Rupnik’s case, the fraud was more moral and canonical; he’s been credibly accused of being a serial fornicator and a kind of spiritual rapist. We could categorize the artistic work of both Keane and Rupnik as “Naïve.” That term is defined by the Tate – London’s leading museum of modern art – as “simple, unaffected and unsophisticated. . .art made by artists who have had no formal training in an art school or academy.” This doesn’t mean Naïve art cannot be great. Among the artists lumped into the category are Henri Rousseau and Anna Mary Robertson, aka “Grandma” Moses.