Search or Browse Commentary
All Catholic commentary from July 2025
Stream of mercy: the forgotten feast of the Most Precious Blood
For over 100 years, the Church celebrated the feast of the Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in July. Then it fell victim of a strange irony: the post-Vatican II commission that was established for revising the liturgy, while seeking to implement Sacrosanctum Concilium 55 that admitted the faithful to receive the precious Blood of Christ at certain Masses, eliminated the feast of the Most Precious Blood. But we need not wait for the feast to be restored to receive its graces today.
Bureaucratic synodality vs. a style and an attitude
Most people would agree that either a new sense of mission is communicated by a good leader, or it doesn’t get communicated at all. Most often, mere meetings and reviews do not energize; they enervate. Meetings to create or receive “marching orders”, of course, can be very effective. But endless meetings for sharing and group-think are invariably time sinks, except for those participants who are seeking to use them to wrest control away from effective executives—such as bishops.
Soul of the Apostolate | Ep. 1—Active Works & the Interior Life
"If God calls me to apply my activity not only to my own sanctification, but also to good works, I must establish this firm conviction, before everything else, in my mind: Jesus has got to be, and wishes to be, the life of these works. My efforts, by themselves, are nothing, absolutely nothing."
Discerning the movie “Independence Day,” 28 years later
Are the coincidences in pop culture and real life really just coincidences? Or is there more going on here?
Preach Like Elmer Gantry
Whether a homily is interesting or boring, or muddles the distinction between Catholic principles and prudential judgements that belong to the laity, the priest, like the 72 disciples, prepares the way of Jesus.
Leo XIII on the restoration of Christian philosophy
This is the first in a series of articles surveying the great encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. In his third encylical, Aeterni Patris, Leo launched the Thomistic revival with a call for the restoration of Christian philosophy, which was then in a state of disrepair.
Pope Leo XIII on the restoration of Christian philosophy
This is the first in a series of episodes surveying the great encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. In his third encylical, Aeterni Patris, Leo launched the Thomistic revival with a call for the restoration of Christian philosophy, which was then in a state of disrepair.
God’s sarcasm, our credulity, and Christ’s Church
Sometimes we need to learn to distrust ourselves. (In this it helps to have a religious superior, or a wife!) A priest once told me that I had a streak of Protestant individualism in my personality that was potentially dangerous. I sometimes wonder if this has failed to prove deadly (or so I presume) only because the Church herself had so many people who advised going in the wrong direction when I was slithering toward adulthood in the late 1960s. If I was told to go one way, I went the other.
The US bishops denounce ‘the most significant pro-life law ever’
Rather than focus on the concrete achievement of cutting taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, Archbishop Broglio produced a fair copy of the vague rhetoric that Democratic lawmakers had used to denounce the Big Beautiful Bill.
5.15 St. Anthony of Padua: Doctor of the Gospel
St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) is called the Doctor of the Gospel, or the Evangelical Doctor, because he is known as both an expert in biblical interpretation, as well as one of the greatest preachers the Church has ever produced.
Praying for the ‘conversion’ of climate-change skeptics?
Notice here the bumptious confidence that natural disasters can be remedied, unlike the “acts of God” of the past—the implication that if governments take the appropriate actions, we could be spared from hurricanes and earthquakes.
Apologetics alone is never enough
Being aware of the basic arguments is not enough. A great many people throughout Christian history have had at least a general idea of the nature of the overall argument for Christ, even though the vast majority have not been taken through it in any sort of systematic way. No matter how strong the logical arguments are for the Divinity of Christ and His foundation of the Catholic Church, very few people care enough to wonder seriously whether any of this should change the way they live.
Want more commentary? Visit the Archives.
