Search or Browse Commentary
All Catholic commentary from April 2023
Please: the truth about the Pope’s health
Those facts do not suggest bronchitis. Speculation about what they DO suggest is inevitable, when the information coming from the Vatican PR machinery is implausible.
Why each and every marital act must be open to life
One must conclude that there is a key moral difference between the two approaches to this particular question—that is, whether engagiing in the marital act when it is less likely to result in conception is the same thing as using contraceptives to make conception impossible (assuming a general overall openness to having children). But it is difficult for many people today, living in a world characterized by intense technological control, to grasp this difference.
Catholicity, Complementarity, and Communion
The DEI religion rejects human and historical structures and expressions of Tradition. The mission of Jesus is incoherent and often devoid of substance and sacramental realities.
Good Friday’s burden
[Up until last week I had never—ever—written a poem. Then one morning, after Mass, this came to me, pretty much intact, so I wrote it down, and some people liked it, so...] At last I could do no more. The weight of past mistakes—and worse Weighed down my shoulders, More...
The Mysteries of Mary and the Mass
In the celestial wedding feast of the Mass, Mary’s words at Cana take on a new meaning: “Do whatever he tells you.” (Jn. 2:5) Mary’s last recorded words reinforce the words of Jesus during the Consecration: “Do this in memory of me.”
St. Melito of Sardis—On the Passover
"For the one who was born as Son, and led to slaughter as a lamb, and sacrificed as a sheep, and buried as a man, rose up from the dead as God."
Rome, Open City (1945) w/ Elizabeth Lev
Filmed in Rome just after its liberation from the Nazis, while the rest of Italy was still at war, Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City documents a unique moment in the history of the Eternal City. With its story of working-class Italians secretly resisting Nazi occupiers, Open City did much to dispose Americans more kindly toward a defeated Italy, and made the cinematic movement of Italian neo-realism internationally famous.
Patristic Pilgrims’ Progress
Christianity is the odd religion that does not require pilgrimage, but Christians do it anyway, and in great numbers, as they have since the earliest days of the Church. Many of the early Fathers made the journey to the holy sites. They trekked to the Holy Land to walk in Jesus’ footsteps and to Rome to honor Peter and Paul. How can we follow their example?
When I am weak I am strong: Beating Paul at his own game
Paul’s ministry, of course, bore great fruit, not only while he was still on earth, but ever since. And yet, as far as we in the West can tell, he must be as frustrated as the rest of us are (were that possible in Heaven) by how that fruit has declined and rotted in our own time.
What do Germans want?
The Church is growing apace in Africa, where the ideas approved by the German Synodal Path are, quite rightly, viewed as absurd
157—A New Faerie Tale in Verse—Marly Youmans
Marly Youmans joins the podcast to talk about her new verse tale, Seren of the Wildwood, the story's relation to the biblical giants or Nephilim, and the difference between myth and faerie.
Changing the World
We measure our choices by the Ten Commandments that are, at once, inclusive and divisive: A culture either rallies around virtue or rallies around vice.
Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, a violent woke “Catholic”?
It is the advocates of our new “woke” culture—with its destructive notions of sex and gender and its insistence that the natural law is in itself a violent attack on human liberty—who increasingly wink at violence against believing Catholics and their churches. The news is full of violence against pro-life centers, Catholic churches, and Christian believers who publicly express opinions contrary to the latest fantasies about the human person as championed by the secular State.
Senator Kaine’s outrageous ‘misunderstanding’
Would the FBI only propose to send agents to the traditionalist parishes that identify themselves as “radical”? Because I know of no such parishes.
158—City of God vs. City of Man—Timothy Flanders
It's time for a big-picture look at Church history! Timothy S. Flanders joins the podcast to discuss his book City of God vs. City of Man: The Battles of the Church from Antiquity to the Present. The book is a synthesis of the approaches of St. Augustine and Christopher Dawson, whom Timothy calls the two greatest Catholic historians.
Remembering a victory at Harvard: Satan defeated, the Eucharist enthroned
And all this happened because a few deluded students scheduled a blasphemous mockery, and the Catholic community responded appropriately: not with an impotent fit of anger but with a confident show of faith. Satan overplayed his hand, and got burned again.
Does Moses foreshadow Christ AND each of us?
Moses—the single greatest figure under the Old Covenant—was excluded from the Promised Land. This suggests something that I believe I see elsewhere in Scripture as well, namely that Moses is not only a type of Christ for us as we read the Scriptures forward to their fulfillment, but he is also a type of each of us—namely, an imperfect man who struggled to grow into perfect trust in and dependence on God’s love and grace.
St. Ignatius of Antioch—Letter to the Magnesians
"It is not enough to be Christians in name. It behooves us to be such in fact. [...] So let us become his disciples. Let us learn to live the life that Christianity calls for. No one with any other name than this can belong to God."
The Shortage of Theologians
Infallible papal pronouncements never undermine or reject constant Church teaching but extend its reach.
Does Archbishop Paglia illustrate the “lessness” of Francis?
Believing Catholics must continually ask themselves whether the Faith is not the Faith at all. They must continually wonder why, after all these centuries, it is now perfectly acceptable for Catholics to ignore or explain away the dangers posed by the world, the flesh and the devil. They must assume that the right way to evangelize is to paste a Christian veneer over whatever the world wants to hear at each particular moment.
3.1 Cities of God: Introduction to Series 3
With this introductory episode we begin our exploration of the cities where the Fathers lived and taught. At first these were cities that raged against the Gospel and persecuted the Church. The Fathers brought them to faith. Each city was different from all the others — and each became more perfectly itself through its encounter with Jesus Christ.
A ‘conspiracy theorist’—and a Kennedy—as a presidential contender
This Kennedy presidential campaign is going nowhere— certainly not to the White House. But it will be interesting to watch— if the lords of the mainstream media and the censors of the social media allow us to watch it.
The Miracle Maker (1999) w/ Timothy Reckart
The Miracle Maker, a little-known animated Gospel film with Ralph Fiennes as the voice of Jesus, deserves a place in any Christian family's Easter viewing. Its beautifully crafted mix of stop-motion and traditional 2D animation engages the imagination without dominating it in a way that live-action cinema can't. It's also a masterful piece of adaptation which somehow retains the compactness of the Gospel accounts, yet feels fleshed out by subtle touches and connections within the existing material.
Now call it the Synod of Bishops and Selected Others
Back in January, three top Vatican officials— with the Pope’s explicit approval— told of the German bishops that they “are not empowered to create a governing or decision-making synodal assembly” that included clergy and laity as well as bishops. So why are lay people included as voters at the October Synod meeting?
Highlights: Christopher Tolkien, William Byrd, A Hidden Life, poetry-painting collaboration
This episode features highlight clips from episodes 50, 58, 60, and 66 of the Catholic Culture Podcast.
Religious sisters lead revolt against climate crisis. Wow?
All is vanity without Christ. All is vanity unless and until Christ is taken up as the ultimate corrective and the ultimate hope, so that we might fulfill the destiny to which we are called, a destiny which far surpasses even our concern about the fallen state of the earth and its oceans. Only we Christians know that all of creation, as St. Paul put it, “has been groaning in travail together until now.” And only we Christians know why.
Want more commentary? Visit the Archives.
