I have been starting to get into the thought of the great 20th century Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, and so I found this very good conference put together by the ever-stalwart Franciscan University of Steubenville on his thought. A fascinating moment in particular was this discussion of the thought of Karol Wojtyla (who was very influenced by Hildebrand) on sexual shame, and Wojtyla’s defense of sexual shame. That was very interesting to me, in part because Pope St John Paul II’s theology... Read more

The first verse of the Gospel of Mark: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” This phrase sounds extremely innocuous to us today, but awareness is growing of the profound radicality of those lines at the time when they were written. The word “gospel”–evangelion–typically referred to news from the Roman Emperor–typically some great military victory, or the enthroning of a new Emperor. And the phrase “Son of God”–huios tou theou or divi filius–was also an imperial title since the time... Read more

If you are an Anglophone Christian with the internet and theological pretentions (and a taste for good prose), it’s hard to escape David Bentley Hart. And so eventually you learn that he wrote a magnum opus titled “The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth”, but you also learn that it is a very dense book, that it has deterred many a reader, that it crosses swords with foreboding (particularly, but not only, from an Anglo-American perspective) French... Read more

You often see silly things said or written about the doctrine of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the flesh of our Lord, so I want to clear up what seem to me to be the two most common misconceptions. Instead of what you might read, 1. Transubstantiation Is Just Another Word For The Real Presence The doctrine of transubstantiation does not say anything that was not said in the Patristic era, and indeed in the New Testament, about the... Read more

“No one will hate this book [Atlas Shrugged] as much as the Catholic Church. Not even the Communists.” — Ayn Rand I’ve only recently been appraised that the anti-Catholic writer Robert Tracinski has produced a response to a column I wrote, trying to approach Ayn Rand charitably. To some extent, Tracinski’s critique misses the mark. For example, here’s what he writes: He explains that he doesn’t like the book because, among other reasons, Ayn Rand held that the “parasitic weak... Read more

It seems that a new discovery (h/t YIMCatholic) might be (rather, ought to be, though almost certainly will not be) the last nail in the coffin of the idea that William Shakespeare was anything but a Roman Catholic. Pretty much his entire family was Catholic, including activists; he was likely educated in Catholic school. And his plays contain Catholic themes. Think of the positive portrayal of Friar Laurence in Romeo & Juliet, or the way in which Hamlet’s father’s murder is described as... Read more

The 20th century philosopher Leo Strauss is perhaps best known for his reflections on “esotericism”, the practice by almost all pre-19th century authors to write their books on several levels, with a deeper level underlying the apparent, literal level. As the title indicates, Strauss’s book Persecution and the Art of Writing focuses mostly on the fact that before the late-Modern era, there was no such thing as free-speech guarantees and that, since Socrates, most philosophers knew very well expressing too-unconventional ideas could put... Read more

Whenever a Catholic dares to critique the all-too-frequent supineness of non-Catholic Christian religious bodies towards their respective nation states, an angry accusation of hypocrisy inevitably follows. What about the Renaissance Popes! What about that damned Borgia! (You mean Saint Francis Borgia? Wow, I love him too!) And it seems to me that this rather misses the point. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, the Renaissance Papacy was venal and corrupt and meretricious. And uniting Christendom by the sword is both a... Read more

Over at the Patheos Atheist Channel, the blog “Rational Doubt” has a post titled “The Futility of Biblical Morality“. The post argues that people should not look to the Bible as a moral guide, for two reasons: a. The Bible is not a divinely inspired document; b. The Bible can sometimes be hard to interpret. Of course, this is all a bit vacuous. Obviously, there are people who believe that the Bible is a divinely-inspired document, so one wonders what one thinks one... Read more

These days I am reading an anthology of sermons of Meister Eckhart. They’re wonderful. One of the things that I’m constantly struck by is their traditionality. By this I mean not that they propound or expound traditional doctrines, or that they’re written in a traditional “style”, but rather that the way they are written represents the best of the Catholic Tradition. These are sermons; Eckhart is expounding the readings of the particular day where he is preaching. And the way... Read more