This one will be short, because my point is singular: American Catholics must avoid the Protestantization of the body. This is a pressing concern for me because I’ve met so many (especially young) Catholics who feel a need to give up everything upon entering the Church, as if all things were unclean for the Christian (au contraire). The body is often at the center of this introspection: must I stop playing video games because many involve nudity? What about films... Read more
Lots of people seem to think the “Catholic Left” is a contradiction in terms. Surely some 19th-century bishops looked with suspicion upon socialists, social democrats, and the like who peopled their flocks. Today a portion of U.S. Catholics bandy about the word “Leftist” to the point of near total confusion. From Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders to Karl Marx (and how great the gaps are), Leftists are to be distrusted. This is a position I feel I understand, in part,... Read more
I can’t shake this feeling: Mary said “yes.” She said “yes.” She said, as the Latin Angelus goes, “be it done unto me according to Thy word.” How mundane! How small is the word “yes.” Yes, how many times a day we bandy it about. And yet, this statement shook the world. The Mother of God can be said to be the Theotokos, the God-bearer, a primary means of our salvation, precisely because she uttered simple words of affirmation, precisely... Read more
Extremism is a popular topic these days. For the “Right,” it’s of the Islamic variety; for the “Left,” it’s of the white nationalist sort. Both rely on the abstraction of a small number of particularly violent or offensive actors in order to extract a kernel of truth from the historical opponent of choice. Anjem Choudary becomes the unmoored, secret essence of Islam; Richard Spenser betrays the perverse, unconscious desires of white America. There is, of course, some truth in any... Read more
This post is by a new friend of mine, Ben Martin, a PhD student in the philosophy department at Loyola Chicago (he is Roman Catholic). Below you will find his thoughts on re-union between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. He may be reached at [email protected] for further comment and discussion. Before we discuss the restoration of communion among the churches, we should discuss the terminology with which we speak of churches. I have often heard Eastern Catholics present themselves as belonging... Read more
Times are, to read the news, bleak. And if I needed any additional confirmation, my own recent sourness stands in accusation. I accuse myself: recently I have been less patient, less kind, than I ought. And yet—to rip it out of context—as the old hymn goes: the saints come marching in. Today, February 9th, is the feast (in the Ruthenian Church) of St. Nicephorus of Antioch. Saying my morning prayers, I was struck by the brief comment Archbishop Raya makes... Read more
This is a continuation of my recent “Catholic first” shtick (though I suppose that’s always supposed to be a Catholic’s shtick). I’m interested in something I’ve noted in many groups, though my concern here is obviously my own: Catholics. We affirm the same principles, what some might call lip service, but then demure when it comes to actually agreeing—it’s a sort of equivocation. Take the recent refugee-migrant-immigrant-Muslim (pick your poison) ban. No Catholic can deny that there is, within the... Read more
When I became more rigorously Christian, I recall being plagued by the question of prayer. On the one hand, even the nominally Catholic around me would invoke St. Anthony when they lost their keys; I saw my devout friends at Mass, heads bowed, hands clutched together, assumedly asking for something. On the other, I was haunted by a memory from sophomore theology class in high school: my teacher got in front of us and took to lecturing about Exodus, specifically... Read more
I am, undeniably, a little late to commenting on the first two-plus weeks of the Trump administration. It may even seem a little odd to launch a retrospective when the current appetite is for constant coverage of “news” as it becomes “new.” Apparently not even the president himself is immune to this lust. Yet, time allows for thought; it gives one time to talk with colleagues, to stew in problems often over-simplified in the moment of their emergence. Worse, fast... Read more
It seems I can’t go a day without hearing about the pope. Such is the benefit of having Roman Catholic friends, I suppose. I remember his election well. I was in a course on Crusader Art, went to go to the bathroom, came back, and we had a new pontifex. As a student at a Jesuit college, I saw the Holy Father’s elevation greeted with jubilation. Even one such as I, just coming to the Faith at the time, couldn’t... Read more
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