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 »
On the outskirts of Moscow, there is an Orthodox Christian memorial. The site, known as Butovo, once belonged to a private estate. The Soviets expropriated the land after the revolution and turned it into a firing range. It was there during Stalin’s purges that more than 20,000 “enemies of the . . . . Continue Reading »
I made my first confession last month, and it was easier than I expected. Not that I enjoyed recalling misdeeds from 2010, or that I wasn’t nervous when I stepped away from the parishioners in the middle of Mass that morning in St. Vincent Ferrer and entered the dark quiet of the confessional. But . . . . 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 »
The devoutly Catholic Bruckner dedicated his last symphony to “the dear God,” and prayed in his final illness that the Lord would allow him to finish his masterwork. In the event, his prayer was not granted. Yet in a deeper sense the three movements he lived to complete could hardly be surpassed. The sublime and harrowing third movement makes any further statement, this side of heaven, redundant! Continue Reading »
If torture is wrong, it’s wrong whether or not it works. It’s wrong because it’s torture. Continue Reading »
President Trump deserves our prayers, but not our blind loyalty or trust, because one can never be too careful in protecting and preserving human life—and monitoring politicians who pledge to uphold it. Continue Reading »
Forty-four years after Roe, a reverence for the sanctity of human life still burns in the spirit of far too many people to ignore. Continue Reading »
If the whole world, including our Protestant brethren, accepted divorce—which they have—yet should the Church stand contra mundum. Continue Reading »
If we feel stymied by the imprecision of sonograms and other tools for looking inside the bodies of others, we should feel at least as frightened by the fallibility of our own wills, and the unreliable view they give us of the souls of others. Continue Reading »
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