I was on the phone with my mother the moment when my grandmother died. The two of them, along with my father, were together in the living room of the house where I grew up in Arkansas. My grandmother, having fallen and broken her hip a few weeks earlier, had been brought home, and for several days . . . . Continue Reading »
On Saturday morning, my wife and I took our children to pray outside the Planned Parenthood clinic near our home in Nebraska. Nearly 700 other people joined us—praying on their knees, singing songs of praise, and holding pro-life signs for passing cars to read. Among the signs, I noticed several . . . . Continue Reading »
The worst sinner in Christian history was Judas Iscariot. Of course he betrayed Christ and handed him over to his death. That was bad. But far worse was his internal conviction that things couldn’t get any better, that he and his situation were irredeemable.This is a great analogy for our own . . . . Continue Reading »
In his recent piece, SOS, my colleague Dominic Bouck, O.P., argued that the Church is much like a ship plying the ocean currents en route to her heavenly destination. I was particularly struck by a lengthy quote from Tertullian describing the apostles in their storm-tossed boat: That little . . . . Continue Reading »
The world must have seemed upside down when the disciples left the holy city Jerusalem. Jerusalem was believed to be the “true pole of the earth, the great king’s city” (Ps. 47:2). It was supposed to be God’s dwelling on earth, the city of David, where the Messiah was expected to reign and restore Israel. And yet, the one who they believed to be Messiah and Redeemer had come into Jerusalem, only to die. Now everything was in question. Their disappointment rings through to this day with startling clarity: “We were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel” (Lk. 14:21). We were hoping…A similar lament can be discerned in modern society, in which Christendom gives way to a “post-Christian” world. Perhaps not surprisingly, these words also speak to a profoundly disintegrating experience for any individual: angst. Reflecting on the mental world of the disciples, Cardinal George once commented: “Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we can feel that we are victims of time, fate, circumstances and external factors. We might even feel that our world is caving in on us…[The disciples] were caught in expectations they thought were now doomed…But [they] were wrong to give up on their hope.” Continue Reading »
Advent evokes struggle, the struggle to let in the light and dispel the darkness. Preparing the way of the Lord is not a passive enterprise, but a peregrination to break through the veil with prayers, praises, and lamentations so that the rays of righteousness may peer over the horizon igniting the . . . . Continue Reading »
This term I have been teaching Ancient & Mediaeval Political Theory, a course that is crosslisted between the philosophy and political science departments at Redeemer. Yesterday we heard two fine student presentations on Thomas Aquinas’ writings on the virtues (Summa Theologica Ia-IIae, qq. . . . . Continue Reading »
Lasch concluded that an emphasis upon mercy is perhaps the most difficult virtue for humans generally, and modern man especially, to sustain. And yet it is a message needing repetition and renewal, even in the face of likely failure. Hope demands nothing . . . . Continue Reading »
Christopher Lasch has written a “loose, baggy monster” of a hook. He takes on nothing less than “the western human condition,” arguing determinedly and, to my mind, persuasively that the idea of progress has outgrown its time. Lasch even suggests that progress, as the West has encoded it, . . . . Continue Reading »
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