To teach prayer and holiness to edgy adolescents is no small achievement. To do it under the pressures of a homicidal Nazi Occupation is remarkable. To do it with a future pope means that Jan Tyranowski’s lessons extend far beyond Dębniki and touch the entire world. Continue Reading »
By now, everyone who reads contemporary fiction will have heard of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s acclaimed historical novels about Thomas Cromwell, the powerful advisor to Henry VIII who all but single-handedly disestablished the Catholic Church in England. Anathema to many . . . . Continue Reading »
If the whole world, including our Protestant brethren, accepted divorce—which they have—yet should the Church stand contra mundum. Continue Reading »
For most of his career, Starr viewed the California experiment benevolently, as a phenomenon balanced between utopia and reason. But he was an intense Catholic believer who seems finally to have despaired of California’s grandiloquent and heartbreaking destiny. Continue Reading »
At the heart of what these bishops and others have called a “merciful” path is a frenzied desire for happiness and for the avoidance of pain and suffering, supposing that these people have suffered enough. This stands in direct contrast to the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the saints, whose premise is that suffering is not something to be avoided at all costs—one can learn to live through it. Continue Reading »
Everyone has a right to their opinion about the state of Catholicism in 2017, but no one has a right to invent their own Church history. Continue Reading »
“A man will give his life for a mystery, but not for a question mark.” Immediately after Vatican II, the North American College was a house of question marks—and worse-than-question-marks. The Catholic Church in America paid, and is paying, a heavy price for that season of deep confusion. Continue Reading »
2017 promises to be a challenging year for the Catholic Church. Thus some new year’s wishes: Continue Reading »
Readers of First Thoughts will know by now that Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Silence by Shūsaku Endō was released in select theaters on December 23. The novel warrants the attention it is getting. Set in the 1640s at the end of Japan's “Christian Century” (1549-1639), Silence is a haunting journey through one priest’s struggles to remain faithful in the most challenging of circumstances. Continue Reading »
Beautifully filmed and acted, Silence is as powerful as it is ambitious. Continue Reading »
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