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All Catholic commentary from February 2015
St. Katharine Drexel shows how spiritual poverty and submission to Providence go hand in hand
After St. Katharine Drexel founded her religious order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, everyone around her urged her to set aside some of her annual income to set up a fund which would endow the order’s works after her death. It would have been easy for her to do so, and certainly the...
The common good: isn't that just a weasel word?
I suspect I'm not the only one who, when learning about Catholic social teaching, has at times found the phrase "the common good" to be frustratingly vague. As a college student, I suspected that it was nothing more than a weasel word which could be used to get away with...
Blaising the Way to Keeping Healthy
February 3rd has the choice of an optional memorial of two different saints: St. Blaise and St. Ansgar. St. Ansgar is a newer addition to the General Roman Calendar for that date. But St. Blaise, the bishop and martyr who died in 316 A.D. has been honored on February 3rd for many centuries. His...
The vaccination debateS—notice the plural
If you’ve only followed the story in the American mass media, you might think that the hot new debate is whether or not children should be vaccinated. But that’s not the interesting question. The real issue—the question that interests me, anyway—is which vaccines should...
Romero’s martyrdom a witness against tunnel vision
The Church’s decision earlier today that Archbishop Oscar Romero is a martyr settles a long-standing controversy which often pitted liberals against conservatives. The Salvadoran Archbishop was gunned down while celebrating Mass in 1980, shortly after delivering a sermon calling upon...
Two cheers for Vatican security
Iana Azhdanova is persona non grata at the Vatican. You may not remember the name, but Azhdanova is the Ukrainian leader of Femen, the feminist group that specializes in topless public demonstrations. On the day after Christmas she tore off her top and grabbed the figure of the baby Jesus from...
Thinking morally about vaccinations: My turn!
In two recent posts, Phil Lawler has ably summarized several important factors in the moral debate over vaccinations made from fetal tissue (see Conscientious objection to vaccinations and The vaccination debateS—notice the plural). In response, critics in some quarters have advanced moral...
The Pontifical Academy for Life did NOT argue it is morally obligatory to use tainted vaccines
If I may be permitted one brief follow-up to yesterday’s essay (Thinking morally about vaccinations: My turn!), it would be to single out a particular portion of the 2005 statement of the Pontifical Academy for Life that has led to confusion. Though I realize the PAL text is...
Shooting the Messenger, Catholic Style
A minor brouhaha occasioned by our discussion of morally tainted vaccines is depressingly illustrative of a larger tendency in human nature to shoot the messenger, or perhaps throw the messenger under the bus. It is an almost paradigmatic example, in that some Catholics (though hopefully not most)...
For teachers: Augustine Institute course on Catholic education
For those who may be interested: the Augustine Institute will be offering a course for Catholic teachers and school administrators during the week of June 22. The course, entitled Philosophy 722: Catholic Education: Ends, Principles and Methods, will be taught at the campus in Denver and also...
O Canada! Assisted suicide, the Christian meaning of defeat, and King Alfred the Great
Last week’s news that the Canadian Supreme Court had struck down Canada’s law against assisted suicide is an object lesson. The justices have become the latest poster children for what is wrong with the world. I wish to consider just two of these serious wrongs, and to identify one...
A caution: beware misleading reports from Islamic State territory
For the 2nd time in a week, a Chaldean Catholic archbishop has debunked sensational reports about an atrocity allegedly committed by the Islamic State. This is an odd phenomenon, and one that bears watching. Last week the Chaldean patriarchate dismissed rumors that a Catholic priest named...
Our most sensational headline ever
Catholic World News has been in business for 20 years now. What’s the most astonishing headline we’ve run over those years? That’s easy; it was exactly two years ago today: Pope Benedict announces...
Honest judges in Italy
Italy may yet save the world. The top Italian court has found nothing in the Constitution that requires government to recognize same-sex marriage. It observed only that same-sex couples have the same right to legal protection as other unmarried couplies. This is a remarkable decision. In many...
Politicized science: the lessons of the Galileo affair
Sometime in grammar school, we all learned the rules of the scientific method, right? You remember how they go: First, form a hypothesis. Next, devise an experiment to test the hypothesis. If the experiment seems to confirm the hypothesis, launch a public-relations campaign to ridicule...
Church Fathers: The Shepherd of Hermas
The Shepherd (or Pastor) of Hermas, an important second-century Christian text, is categorized as an apocryphal apocalypse; it consists of a series of visions urging repentance and penance in preparation for the end times. It contains of three books containing five Visions, twelve...
Preparing for Lent: Seven Lessons the Flu Taught Me
With the beginning of Lent looming so closely, these final days are the last bastion of celebration, but also time to strategize how we will spend this holy season. Unfortunately, my planning came to a halt last week when I was struck down by the flu. Mothers usually are not allowed even one sick...
Dear Judge Bariso: How do we recognize disordered desires and actions?
Readers may scream or laugh at Judge Peter Bariso’s ruling that a group offering therapeutic services to homosexuals has committed fraud. The New Jersey Superior Court’s argument is that it is fraudulent to present as disordered something modern science claims is normal. A host of...
Whiteout
Want to know what’s on my mind? OK, I’ll tell you. Snow. I know what you’re thinking. You know that I’m a Boston native, and you’ve read all about the pounding that Mother Nature has given to the Boston area in the past few weeks. You think I’m going to talk...
A Snow Victory (a story of the real thing)
You’ve heard the legends of snow in Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, and in Erie, Pennsylvania. This year, these cities hold three of the top five positions for snowfall. However, as one who lived in the Buffalo area until age twenty, I can testify that these areas of the country cheat;...
Upping the Gift Count: A Very Easy Way to Help
In February of last year, CatholicCulture.org received a total of 607 individual donations. Of these, 288 had come in by today’s date, February 16th. But as it turned out, the sum total of all of these gifts left us about $10,000 short of our budget. This year things are looking a little...
Carnival: Part Two, the Final Countdown
See Carnival Part One: A Season of Contrasts which illustrated how the Carnival season provided a spiritual focus but incorporated both physical and spiritual aspects. Last year my husband's co-workers planned a Mardi Gras party at the office, but a snowstorm closed down work...
Unseemly arguments? Conflict in Rome over financial reform
Once again we have a news story emphasizing the disagreements among the various cardinals and offices of the Curia when it comes to financial reform. Such conflict at the Vatican—or even just pointed questions—will always be eagerly reported. It is not insignificant; it makes a good...
THE challenge for the New Evangelization: bringing men back to church
Here’s a simple formula, tried and true, for getting families into church: If the fathers come, the wives and children will come, too. Steve Wood, who founded St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers, cites research done by Southern Baptists on bringing families into churches: If a...
I'm not upset about the #ashtag meme; I'm just baffled
Why is Ash Wednesday—not Easter Sunday, not Christmas, not Good Friday or Pentecost—the day when American Catholics spend the most time talking about being Catholic? Why is it that, after hearing a reading about doing penance in secret, people feel a compulsion to show the world how...
It’s About the Cross, Not the #Ashtag
I was surprised to see controversy arising from the idea of taking an Ash Wednesday selfie showing one’s ashes and posting it on social media. The USCCB had a challenge using the #ashtag as an entry. While I’m not a fan of hashtags, I did find this one rather clever. Before there was...
Philosophy as antidote to anger and fear
At the Huffington Post, Michael Shammas has written an excellent blog piece calling for a renewal of philosophy education in high schools. American politics is increasingly characterized by fear, anger and bitterness; according to Shammas this is caused at root by "the iron certainty we...
Confused California congressmen condemn Cordileone
Okay, I admit to a fondness for alliteration. But it is just as well. The California lawmakers are not actually congressmen. Five are members of the “assembly” (an A word) and three are “state senators” (an SS word). Moreover, they did not condemn San Francisco Archbishop...
More thoughts on the #ashtag meme and the message it sends
Yesterday—Ash Wednesday—I wrote that I am baffled by the popularity of the #ashtag meme. Maybe it would have been more accurate to say that I am fascinated by the phenomenon. Why do so many Catholics want to show off the smudges on their foreheads? Several kind readers have offered...
The decline and fall of the Person: Musings on my stack of unread books
It is no coincidence that there are four new books on my desk which are all centered on the human person. It is not a coincidence because the loss of a clear sense of the person is the overriding tragedy of modern history. This tragedy lies at the root of the gradual collapse of our secular...
Can the 'new evangelization' succeed while cradle Catholics are leaving in droves?
Writing in the Catholic Herald, Stephen Bullivant suggests that we should “Put the New Evangelisation on Hold until we try to figure out what is causing a mass exodus of cradle Catholics from the Church. Bullivant is addressing a British audience (did you notice the “s” in...
Pope Pius XII's Apostolic Exhortations on the Ideal Film
Recently the Catholic Artists Society shared on its Facebook page a link to two Apostolic Exhortations of Pope Pius XII, given in 1955 to representatives of the film industry...
Sex in Leviticus
The Book of Leviticus is a tough read, filled with both ritual and moral prescriptions. The two are closely connected, but it is not always obvious where ritual holiness ends and moral holiness begins. For example, the rule outlawing those who “kill” or “slaughter” an...
The Missing Element In My Lenten Penance
On Ash Wednesday my youngest son asked if the next two days were Holy Thursday and Good Friday. His question reflects my initial feelings of Lent: “We have to do this for 40 days?” I start looking for any kind of respite because I give in to “Brother Ass” (as St. Francis...
Do Christians need to defend "religion"?
Over at Aleteia, David Mills comments on the oft-repeated cliche that religion has been the source of manifold evils - wars, persecution, bigotry, superstition, etc. Rather than trying to disprove that claim, Mills points out how absurd it is for Christians (or indeed members of any particular...
NCIS Toes the Pro-Gay, Anti-Catholic Line
I’m a big fan of NCIS, the most-watched television show in the United States last season. It was also voted America’s favorite show in 2011. It has spawned two popular spinoffs, NCIS: Los Angeles and NCIS: New Orleans. As a card-carrying contrarian, I’m not proud of my attraction...
The dangerous slide toward further US military involvement in the Middle East
The gruesome record of atrocities committed by the Islamic State, and the urgent need to save our fellow Christians from persecution, explain the growing support for US military action, recorded in this Pew Research survey. Supporters of some sort of US military intervention now outnumber...
Solidarity Campaign: Going well, thanks! And how can you help?
When I decided to stress solidarity as the theme for February fundraising, I did not know how popular it would be. The idea is to stress participation rather than wealth. It is not so much how much you can give, but whether you are willing to lend a helping hand to our mission. To emphasize...
Former Israeli ambassador explains how to make 'two-state solution' realistic
Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the US, has a refreshing perspective on Israel-Palestine peace prospects in today’s Wall Street Journal. International leaders call for a “two-state solution,” Oren writes. But neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority can accept a “two-state...
Another awkward 'clarification' from the Vatican
Every reasonable person understands what Pope Francis meant when, in a private message to a friend in Argentina, he used the term “Mexicanization” to refer to the troubles of a country torn by drug trafficking. Among other things, we understand that the Pope did not intend this message for public...
Two good publishers, six new books for Lent
I try to follow the new titles coming out from both Ignatius Press and Sophia Institute Press, because I trust the judgment of these Catholic publishers. Particularly in the realm of spirituality, they will typically make sure their authors are firmly rooted in the Catholic tradition, and they...
Notre Dame has lost two contrasting giants
On successive days, death has claimed two giant figures in the history of America’s most iconic Catholic university: two revered men, with very different ideas about that university’s proper role. The death of Father Theodore Hesburgh on February 26 will claim headline coverage, and...
Ukraine: A great lesson in thinking like a Catholic.
The current competition for sovereignty in Ukraine is apt to bring out the worst in armchair quarterbacks. I’ve heard Catholics rant on all sides of this issue, but every position seems to me to be determined by preconceptions. The clearest thing about the conflict in Ukraine from a distance...
Ad Imaginem Dei: a gem of a blog on Christian art
Readers who wish for an entry point into the vast (and sometimes intimidating) domain of Catholic sacred art may want to take a look at Margaret Duffy's blog, Ad Imaginem Dei. The blog, which has been active since 2008, focuses on Western Christian art, taking liturgical readings as a...
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