There are so many Catholics writing so many things that it is hard to keep up, let alone catch up with everything from everybody writing, podcasting and youtubing. Well here is a sampling of some of the various content from a variety of different Catholics writing right now I found interesting and worth sharing. You will find Catholics considered liberal, conservative and everyone in between. The overall purpose of this post is to share what writing I believe shows the Catholicity of everyone who claims to be a baptized Catholic. I try to stay away from negativity and focus on things most normal Catholics will possibly all agree upon. I repeat I try. I hope I succeed.
Please Note because I share one particular blog post as worthy of reading doesn’t mean that I agree with everything that author writes or the website in which they publish.
Laudato Si‘ 10 Years Later
In Laudato Si‘, Pope Francis said sister Earth “cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.” Sadly, this is still true.
But Francis believed that faith convictions can motivate Christians to care for nature and for the most vulnerable of their brothers and sisters. “Everything is related,” he wrote, “and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother Earth.”
“The Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics,” Francis acknowledged in his encyclical. “But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good.”
Thomas Reese –10 years later, Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ is more relevant than ever (June 4, 2025) National Catholic Reporter
The Religious Hippie@HippieReligious (Jun 6, 2025)
Be Catholic.
Do it tired,
happy,
sad,
overwhelmed,
scrupulous,
uncertain,
joyful,
on fire,
hopeful,
disappointed.
Just do it.
Here’s to coffee, confession, and trying again�
I love the Catholic faith❤️
Gifts of Pentecost
Here’s my best advice on becoming a friend of the Holy Spirit:
- Go to Confession often (at least every month, if possible)
- Practice kindness, most especially when you don’t feel it.
- Practice mercy when you want justice or revenge.
- Confirmation is the beginning of living an adult faith life, not the end of faith formation.
- Prayers are always answered. Pray often. Pray for your family daily.
- Ask others to pray for you too. We are, and we will.
- Go to Mass — even, and perhaps most especially, when you’re not feeling it.
Love is not a feeling — it’s an act of the will. It always was. Feelings are transitory. Being ruled by feelings means being ruled by misery, loneliness, anger, hurt, sickness, suffering and disappointment. Life includes bumps, bruises, scrapes, sufferings, agonies, hurts, despairs, injustices, cruelties, wrongs, grave evils and deep sins, because all of these exist as a constant part of simply being human and living in this world. Love makes enduring all these things possible.
Sherry Antonetti – You Have the Gifts of Pentecost: A Letter to the Newly Confirmed (National Catholic Register
Jaws at 50
The summer blockbuster was born 50 years ago this month with Jaws, a film that was marketed as no other movie had been before, which filled seats as no theater chain had seen before, and raked in box-office proceeds that no studio had collected before. Jaws took the summer of 1975 by the leg with its pulsing two-note cello theme by John Williams and an invisible aquatic menace that plunged audiences into exhilarating terror as Roy Scheider famously ad-libbed, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Jaws is a very worthy piece of cinema, even if it opened a floodgate of money-grubbing trash-churners. Besides being a cinematic watershed, Jaws effectively represents a cultural disease of fear, capitalist greed, and ignoring the threat of deadly, driven forces. Just as its towering success was not anticipated, Jaws has continued to surprise audiences over the 50 years since its release by providing a surprisingly suitable metaphor for our world of mindless moneymaking, economic self-destruction, unseen killers, and unforeseen heroes.
Sean Fitzpatrick – Jaws at 50: We’re Still Going to Need a Bigger Boat (June 3, 2025) Crisis Magazine
Steven D. Greydanus @decentfilms.bsky.social (June 6, 2025) Stephen King might as well have written The Life of Chuck for Mike Flanagan to adapt it. At one point he tips his hand that he means his story to be in the tradition of A Christmas Carol, but it’s closer to It’s a Wonderful Life.
The Sacramental Life of the Church
As Catholics, we are a Sacramental people. From Baptism to Extreme Unction, the sacramental life of the Church spans human life from the beginning to the end. It is the entire sacramental life of the Church where the work of the Holy Spirit is most powerfully evident.
Each Thursday, I am in the confessional for an hour, and often for much longer than an hour. Anywhere from 10 to 25 people come each week. While I am in the confessional, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed and another 10 to 25 people are come for an hour of quiet adoration. This is also the time that anyone who is ill can approach me, and I administer the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Just in that one hour, the Holy Spirit is active and alive.
This Eucharist today is a Pentecost. It is the Holy Spirit that gathers us. It is the Holy Spirit that inspires God’s word. It is the Holy Spirit that transforms the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit that brings us from various nations, cultures, races, and languages, and draws us into a communion. At the vigil Mass for Pentecost, we celebrated the convalidation of the Sacrament of Marriage. At today’s Mass a teenager is going to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. After this Mass, an infant will receive the Sacrament of Baptism. The Holy Spirit is having a Pentecost day right here in our midst.
Fr. Satish Joseph Pentecost Indeed (June 8, 2025) Where Peter Is
Georges Bizet’s Te Deum
On June 3, 1875, exactly 150 years ago, Georges Bizet passed away under mysterious circumstances in Bougival, near Paris, at the young age of 36. Despite his short life, his opera Carmen stands as a landmark work that “significantly contributes to the modernization of the genres of French musical theater and influences the developments of late-century verismo melodrama” (A. Rusconi, in Storia della civiltà europea, edited by Umberto Eco, 66, EncycloMedia Publishers, Milan 2014; our translation).
In addition to Carmen, we turn our attention to the Te Deum that the young Bizet composed in Rome between February and May 1858. This work was created for soloists (soprano and tenor), mixed choir, and a rich orchestration that includes 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, and strings.
In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Te Deum maintains its place in the Office of Readings on Sundays outside the Lenten season, during the Octave of Easter and Christmas, as well as on solemnities and feast days. “What is certain is that I am not suited for writing religious music,” Bizet stated. Yet, his Te Deum stands as a captivating and highly expressive work that belies this assertion. Perhaps such a phrase might have been more fitting for other composers, but certainly not for Bizet, whose music continues to inspire and resonate with audiences today.
Massimo Scapin Georges Bizet (June 3, 2025) OnePeterFive
Jchadcf@Jchadcf (, 2025) Truth Social- Billy plays an incredible amount of concerts every year. And those shows are long and hard. I wish him all the best in his fight. He’s one of the greatest composers and performers that this world has ever known! My children love him, and I make sure they know that he’s the Mozart and Beethoven of this age! There will never be another Billy Joel and I give thanks that he lived during my lifetime.
Chicago’s Confident Catholicism
Margaret O’Brien Steinfels – ‘Nice Boy Up from the Parishes’ (June 4, 2025) Commonweal Magazine
90 Years of U.S. Catholic
On Chicago’s far south side in the early 1930s, as the Great Depression was hitting the many steel mill laborers in his parish, Father James Tort started receiving letters and petitions addressed to St. Jude. People sent the letters to the National Shrine of St. Jude, which Tort had just founded at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish. The letters flooded in—a sign people were clinging to faith in a time that felt hopeless.
Tort, a Spanish-born Claretian priest, decided to publish these letters to spread devotion to St. Jude. Following the founder of his congregation, Anthony Mary Claret, who was called the “modern apostle of the good press,” Tort started a publication called The Voice of St. Jude in 1935 to “encourage, inspire, and equip ordinary Catholics to live their faith in everyday life.” In 1963, the Claretians renamed The Voice of St. Jude, and the magazine became U.S. Catholic, inspired by the Second Vatican Council’s call to engage every corner of Catholicism’s “big tent.”
In these pages, through 90 years of the changing tyranny of governments, economies, wars, scandals, and more, everyday Catholics have examined life, wrestled with significant questions, and spoken of the pain and promise of church. Thoughtfully engaging what it means to live one’s faith is a never-ending job, like painting the Brooklyn Bridge—but it seems U.S. Catholic readers, writers, and editors are hooked, and they’re not going anywhere.
Cassidy Klein A history of U.S. Catholic magazine (June 2, 2025) U.S. Catholic
Andrew Likoudis on FB (June 8, 2025) “In Illo uno unum.” (Pope Leo’s papal motto): In the One, we are one.
D-Day Remembered
Today is the eighty-first anniversary of the D-Day invasion. And at every level, it was colossal. But, today, when I consider it, I think less about the array of bombers, the mass of gliders, or the fleet of Higgins boats. Instead, I think about that one soldier strapped with an eighty-pound pack, leaping from the iron floor of the Higgins boat, running, sweating, and ducking with breakneck speed, his heart erupting out of his chest and his strained breathing deep in his ear. As the mortars upend the earth and the bullets whiz by his head, I marvel, “How does he run forward?” Because what was truly colossal about D-Day wasn’t simply the vastness of the operation or the enormity of the evil to be overcome. No. It was also the courage of the everyday soldier and the devotion to duty that led him to run forward, always forward. As a result of that courage and devotion, D-Day claimed the lives of 4,414 soldiers and wounded over 5,000.
D-Day was colossal because its heroes were colossal.
May we, likewise, answer the call to greatness whenever it may come.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.Amen.
Dr. Tod Worner Why D-Day Was Colossal (June 6, 2025) Word on Fire
1700th Anniversary of the Council of Nicaea
As the International Theological Commission observed in its recent Document for the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea, the year 2025 represents “an invaluable opportunity to emphasise that, what we have in common is much stronger, quantitatively and qualitatively, than what divides us. Together, we believe in the Triune God, in Christ as truly human and truly God, and in salvation through Jesus Christ, according to the Scriptures read in the Church and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Together, we believe in the Church, baptism, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life.” (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, n. 43). I am convinced that by returning to the Council of Nicaea and drawing together from this common source, we will be able to see in a different light the points that still separate us. Through theological dialogue and with the help of God, we will gain a better understanding of the mystery that unites us. By celebrating together this Nicene faith and by proclaiming it together, we will also advance towards the restoration of full communion among us.
LEO XIV 1700th Anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (June 7 2025) Vatican.VA
Pope Leo XIV@Pontifex (June 8, 2025) May the strong wind of the Spirit come upon us and within us, open the borders of our hearts, grant us the grace to encounter God, enlarge the horizons of our love, and sustain our efforts to build a world in which peace reigns. #Pentecost
3 Stigmatist Saints
When posthumous biographies are written about kings, movie stars, and great military leaders, the final chapters inevitably discuss how and when these persons died. But in the case of saints, to do this would fail to tell the whole story. Though the soul departed from the body, the saint may still have work to do on earth from the vantage point of eternal life.
Such was the case with many stigmatists.
The bodies of some of the stigmatists have continued to exhibit miraculous wonders hundreds of years after their deaths. The principal miracle has been bodily incorruptibility—that is, miraculous preservation. We live in an age in which we Catholics are almost ashamed of miracles, lest we embarrass ourselves in front of the smart kids at the front of the class: the free-thinkers, the scientists who practice scientism, and so forth. But instead, we should respond with wonder and delight that God loves us enough to send us visible miracles. We should be inspired by, and proclaim the beauty of, the stigmatists.
3 Stigmatists Who Became Miracle Factories ( 6/6/2025) Catholic Answers Magazine
Friar Mario Conte@FriarMario (June 8, 2025) Dear friend, I prayed for you, your personal intentions and world peace in front of St Anthony’s Relics. I’ll remember you again at 9AM during the Holy Mass I’ll celebrate in Saint Anthony’s Church in Yonkers, NY. Have a great week! Peace and all good �
Augustine Spirituality
I hate the titles ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal.’ If you want to talk about Augustinians, we’re authentically Catholic. If you want to know who an Augustinian is, watch what Pope Leo is saying and how he does it.
People who want to know if he’s liberal or conservative, I think they’re going to be disappointed. Because he’s going to be authentically Catholic. I think you’re going to see the way he lives that out is the way he cares for people, the way he’ll be a true pastor.
I love the gospel of the woman caught in the act of adultery. The people that were going to stone her were doing what was legal, right? Moses said she should be stoned. But Jesus steps in with unbelievable mercy, love and forgiveness. Now, he doesn’t let her off the hook — he still challenges her. He says, ‘Go and sin no more.’ And so that’s not being liberal or conservative, that’s being authentically Christian.
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Working with young people, I see loneliness as a real tangible feeling. Their lives are sometimes only behind a screen. Community and friendship are core to Augustinianism. That is a message the world needs to hear and embrace.
You see Augustine holding the heart that’s on fire. The heart shows love, care, respect. The fire shows the restlessness, because the flame is never still. Restlessness means we’re all going to be moving forward. So challenge people, build people up, people who are living life, you keep encouraging them. Those who need some help or encouragement, you say, come on, let’s do it, and we’ll do it together. And that comes right from the rule of Augustine.
Michelle La Rosa Who are the Augustinians, anyway? – (Jun 06, 2025) The Pillar Catholic
Mark Shea on Facebook– Ntege Nasser‘s orphans, after a month of struggle, paid off their May food bill–and must immediately start raising money for their next $1500 food bill. And now, they are very sick and need $200 for care. So they need $1700 to cover costs for food and treatment. Please give generously *now* so they do not (as they did last month) run out and have their meals reduced to a bowl of gruel a day for an entire week. PayPal.Me
The Ritual
In 1928, Father Joseph Steiger, a priest at St. Joseph’s in Earling, Iowa, was approached with an urgent concern. A 46-year-old woman named Emma Schmidt was experiencing blackouts, aversions to holy objects, and other terrible afflictions. After years of extensive psychiatric treatment provided no relief, Schmidt’s priest suggested an exorcism.
Father Theophilus Riesinger, a Capuchin friar, was assigned to perform the exorcism while Steiger would be the stenographer. After a 23-day battle, Schmidt was freed from her affliction and able to live the rest of her life in peace.
The exorcism of Schmidt remains the most thoroughly documented and widely publicized exorcism in American history and now a new movie has been made to tell the story. “The Ritual,” starring Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, Ashley Greene, and Patricia Heaton, will be released in theaters on June 6.
catholicbard@catholicbard (June 4, 2025)Replying to @MrKing59 and @ThePostMillennial
Trying to find a comment worth liking on Truth Social is like looking for a needle in an ocean. Thanks for calling out uncharitableness, which permeates this platform
Hiding in the Wounds
Christ calls us to hide away in his wounds. Why? Because they are supernatural openings where divine Love flows into human experience. He calls us to escape from our frailties — not by denying them or wallowing in them but by fleeing to his frailties. Because his frailties, unlike ours, are the proof of his love of us. They are where we truly see Love incarnate.
When we hide in his wounds, we rest in his love.
, Hiding in the beautiful wounds of Christ (June 06, 2025) Our Sunday Visitor
SayTheNameRedskinsSayItSayIt@SayTheNameRedskinsSayItSayIt Truth Social (Jun 05, 2025)
Catholic Salvation: Can We Earn Our Way to Heaven?
We can’t earn salvation. Jesus gave us Reconciliation because we need to receive it.
If we could earn it, it would be the Sacrament of Try Harder, not the Sacrament of I’m Broken.
Carlo Acutis Movie
In a world of 24/7 digital connection, a startling number of kids and young adults feel more isolated than ever. Gen Z—people roughly between the ages of 12 and 27—report the worst mental health of any generation, according to a recent study by the Gallup and Walton Family Foundation. In 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared the mental health crisis among youth a national emergency, and, according to Pew, nearly half of U.S. teens are online “constantly.” Almost half of U.S. teens have experienced online bullying. One in five have considered suicide.
It’s into this aching landscape that “Carlo Acutis: Roadmap to Reality” speaks—not just as a portrait of a pious teen, but as an attempt to answer a deeper question: Within an age of digital overload and spiritual vacancy, what might a roadmap back to reality look like?
Aside from the first-hand recollections of Carlo’s life on earth, a significant portion of the film follows a group of teenagers from North Dakota on a two-week pilgrimage to Rome, Italy, where they visit Carlo’s tomb. During this journey, the students are required to disengage from technology, leaving their phones at home, which allows them to immerse themselves fully in the experience.
“Carlo Acutis: Roadmap to Reality” is now on CREDO, a faith-fueled entertainment platform free for its users worldwide.
Grace Lenahan –A documentary on Carlo Acutis offers a spiritual roadmap from the first millennial saint (June 06, 2025) America Magazine
Traditionalist Catholics Are Normal People
Now I’ve known people who’ve suffered deeply and personally from Radical Traditionalism. Their stories aren’t pretty. They point to a problem, and we shouldn’t deny it. But these are much like the stories of people getting messed up from other forms of Catholicism, including strands of progressive Catholicism. Let’s not overgeneralize.
In my experience, most Traditionalists are not hardliners or radical Traditionalists or Vatican II repudiators or Novus Ordo invalidators. They may have concerns and questions about Vatican II, doubts and uncertainties about this or that in the Novus Ordo, but most want to be in full communion with the Church. And even some who are radicals are at least willing to talk.
H. L. Mencken famously (but unfairly) described Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Well, certain Catholics seem to operate from “the haunting fear that some other Catholic, somewhere, is attending the Traditional Latin Mass.”
“All are welcome,” right? Why shouldn’t that welcome include our brother and sister Traditionalist Catholics? Todos, todos, todos! A Traditionalist Catholic I know has started praying for Pope Francis’ intercession for an end to the TLM restrictions. What if his prayer is answered?
Mark Brumley Imagine Liturgical Peace Catholic World Report
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