by guest writer Gavril Andreicut, Ph.D. This is a very important question. If Christianity is a human affair, historically conditioned and without a divine message, then Christianity is nothing more than a religious tradition that has changed according to history and its particularities. This article assumes that Christianity is a divinely inspired historical tradition. I do not intend to clarify the question in this short article, but I do believe that we can distinguish between what is from… Read more
January 2, 2021
Christianity, a Divine Religion or Just a Religious Historical Tradition?
January 2, 2021 By guest writer
December 22, 2020
Thoughts on Christmas: Providence and Grace
December 22, 2020 By guest writer
by guest writer Gavril Andreicut, Ph.D. According to Paul, Jesus was born at the proper time, “when the fulness of time had come,” when everything was prepared to receive Jesus. (Galatians 4:4) Paul Tillich, in his A History of Christian Thought, argues that the birth of Jesus happened “when everything was ready for it to happen.” The Gospel of Luke places the birth of Jesus in a historical context, trying to make his gospel appealing and reliable. In addition, most (if… Read more
December 17, 2020
The Birth of Jesus and the Pattern of Christian Life
December 17, 2020 By guest writer
by guest writer Gavril Andreicut, Ph.D. Origins are important in life because they are its most important reference. For the Christian, the birth of Jesus is arguably the most remarkable event of history, the moment when God’s Son enters history in a human form, and it marks the beginning of His earthly mission of salvation, which culminated with His suffering, death, and resurrection. The point of this short article is that the main features of Jesus’s birth story are simplicity… Read more
October 22, 2020
Theological Errors in Catholic Political Analysis, and the Concept of “Intrinsic Evil”
October 22, 2020 By guest writer
by guest writer Jared D. Carl We must be on guard against theological errors lurking behind ostensibly Catholic political analysis and commentary. Too often, partisan politics obscures bad theology. That’s because we like the political conclusion, so we don’t question the underlying theological assumptions, or we accept them as “Catholic” at face value. As a result, pernicious theological errors creep into our lives through our politics, corrupting our faith and moral conscience. A perfect example of this is… Read more
October 8, 2020
Gaudete et Exsulate, Pope Francis, and the Abortion Question in U.S. Politics
October 8, 2020 By guest writer
by guest writer Jared D. Carl Once again, Catholics have emerged as a crucial constituency in presidential politics. Both President Trump and former Vice President Biden are courting Catholics, each one laying out why they’re the true pro-life candidate. Catholic writers and advocacy groups have also joined the fray, arguing for this or that candidate, with some actually trivializing the issue of abortion. Perhaps surprisingly, the apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsulate has become a key component of this strategy…. Read more
August 25, 2020
Navigating Abortion Politics as a Catholic and an American
August 25, 2020 By guest writer
by guest writer William M. Shea, PhD The background to this argument is my acute awareness of the two century long tension between being a Roman Catholic and being an American. I don’t at all think that Catholics thought or felt that there was any difficulty with being both but Protestant Americans surely did and they carped on it endlessly. They thought the papacy was a danger to democracy and lay Catholics were political sheep. A few… Read more
August 23, 2020
Discovering God’s Love After Growing Up In an Abusive Catholic Home
August 23, 2020 By guest writer
by guest contributor For anyone who has grown up in a Catholic household with abusive parents, there is a day of reckoning (many days, weeks, honestly, years of reckoning) that must take place before the love of God can even begin to make sense, before it can be internalized and then become a lived truth. When the foundational aspect of parental love is lacking or broken or conditional or abusive, you’re building your life, and your entire point of… Read more
August 19, 2020
Bernstein’s Mass: Not Just Liturgy, But Cultural and Theological Commentary
August 19, 2020 By guest writer
by guest writer Gregory Moomjy Bernstein’s Mass was written for the opening of the Kennedy center in Washington D.C. As such, Bernstein wanted to write a piece that would reflect something essential about President Kennedy. Bernstein chose to focus on the president’s faith because to date he is the only Catholic president in U.S. history. However, the piece is not a straightforward setting of the Catholic liturgy. Rather, it is a theater piece built around the ritual of… Read more
June 3, 2020
The Role of Theocracy in Verdi’s Don Carlo
June 3, 2020 By guest writer
This is part of a series of reflections on opera, religion, and culture by guest writer Gregory Moomjy Being an opera lover from such a young age, my understanding of my favorite operas deepened as I grew older. For instance, when I first saw Verdi’s La Traviata (1853) when I was eight years old, I had no concept of the importance of family honor in 18th century Europe. (At the time I was more interested in spotting… Read more
May 20, 2020
Personal Faith and Manipulative Religion in Puccini’s “Tosca”
May 20, 2020 By guest writer
by guest writer Gregory Moomjy As an opera lover, I know how easy it is to make fun of operatic tropes. Perhaps none is easier to lampoon than that of the put-upon soprano dying for love in the end. To be sure, there are many operas where this is the case. Unfortunately, tropes have a way of dampening the gravitas of their subject matter. And Puccini’s Tosca (1900) has fallen victim to this pattern. Tosca is a unique opera… Read more
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