EMILY: There is a huge shift between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Where God was once fire and brimstone and eternal damnation, Jesus is water into wine, and healing and forgiveness. Why, then, do we continue to read from the Old Testament? GRANDPA: Emily, my reading of the Old Testament and the New Testament does not see them that way. For one thing, I can’t really understand Jesus without understanding His own religious commitments, and the teaching... Read more
My first three priorities for 2016 are jobs, jobs, jobs. And if you are with me on that, then let me specify that the only way to get new jobs and more employees – is to get more job-creators, entrepreneurs, employers. You can’t get more employees without getting more employers. And most new jobs – about two-thirds – are created by small businesses. So it is incredible to think that the number of new small businesses started under Democrats (my... Read more
It is fitting that a Catholic priest and saint is still celebrated 1,800 years after his death – and for his help to lovers. At the heart of the Catholic faith is love. For the Catholic tradition (the richest, deepest tradition of understanding love in the entire world) the proper name for God is that most creative form of love, Caritas. This love is the energy that pulses through all other loves. This love is the love that gave birth... Read more
Adapted from remarks given February 7, at the closing dinner of the annual conference of the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria University in Florida. The conference celebrated the university’s graduate program in theology, alumni of which presented very moving and learned papers. This year’s conference paid special tribute to Father Matthew Lamb, the bold and pioneering founder of the program. * * * As a quite young monk from the Trappist monastery at Conyers, Georgia, the neatly... Read more
We left off last time with Emily: Grandpa, I find your answer on the Bible somewhat unsatisfactory since the hinge of your explanation is that the Bible asks a person to face moral choices and free will; yet nearly every coming-of-age story could be said to do the same thing, just in a more structured narrative. . . . Why is the Bible treated so differently from other books of moral fables, especially given that there are many “kid-friendly” versions... Read more
Those who watched the Super Bowl on Sunday took part in a national liturgy – that is, a public, communal sacred rite, in which more Americans participate at one televised event than at any other (on a mystical screen in the family shrine). Don’t let anybody tell you this gathering is just for entertainment. At least not at “the high holy moments” when only seconds remain and the score is close, and both teams are fighting for the tiny lift... Read more
When preparing myself for prayer, and to awaken my sleeping awareness of being enveloped in the presence of God, I like to remember the words with which the great philosopher-theologian of the twentieth century Romano Guardini (1885–1968) defined the sacred prayer of the Church, the liturgy. The liturgy, he suggested in that immensely stimulating book, The Church and the Catholic, is “all creation redeemed and at prayer.” We do not pray the daily liturgy one by one but together with... Read more
Communism died as an idea fifteen years before the Berlin Wall was pushed over. Communism was a regime of lies. Economically it didn’t work. And for the physical environment it was a disaster. “Scientific Socialism” turned out to be pseudoscience, masking the self-interest of those elites designated by the term nomenklatura. Something like this is happening again. Last Thursday, January 22, hundreds of thousands of mostly young people marched in Washington, DC, for the pro-life cause, and with a new... Read more
EMILY: What separates the Bible from a book of moral fables such as Grimms’ Fairy Tales? GRANDPA: The Bible confronts you with a choice about your future. It lays a challenge before you: to accept God as God, or not; and to accept His offer of friendship with Him, or not. The wonderful books of fairy tales and folk tales in many different languages amuse you, frighten you, delight you – but they do not give you such an abrupt... Read more
Dear Bishop: This letter has been building up in me ever since the first session of the Synod on the Family last October (October 5-19, 2014). The tone of clerical discourse on such a subject seems woefully abstract and remote, as is no doubt fitting for bishops. But that leaves the language far out of touch with the realities of marital sexuality experienced in the lives of ordinary Catholic spouses. I certainly discovered this disconnect in my own life. As... Read more
Coming down to Earth
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