Where Does Belief in God Lead Us?

  Robert Cardinal Sarah offers this challenging answer to what faith demands in his book God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith with Nicolas Diat: “The man who believes agrees, like Abraham, to become the prisoner of the invisible God; he agrees to let the Father possess...
Read More →

Control?

  Today, the desire to control—in both public and private spheres—seems to be intensifying. Consider the pandemic. When it began, the public-health establishment told us the goal was to “stop the spread,” suggesting that officials believed they could control the virus by...
Read More →

The Burning Bush

  It’s hard for the pro-life movement to meet the high standard the world sets for it. Pro-choicers and even agnostic bystanders, irritated by the social and political conflict, are tempted to use any reason they can find to dismiss us as crackpots and cranks. We are...
Read More →

The Optimism of Adam

When ashes are imposed at the beginning of Lent various words are spoken, but the traditional ones are “Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” These reach back to the first human being, the Adam, into whom God breathed life after forming him from...
Read More →

Go to the Funeral

  “There was a funeral at school today.” I don’t suppose that’s something you often hear, but that was how my youngest son answered a recent “How was school?” query. Usually, since he’s sixteen, his response is mundane, often a little cynical. Why describe the school day...
Read More →
Photo 169328830 / Ash Wednesday © Vetre Antanaviciute-meskauskiene | Dreamstime.com

Ash Wednesday

  On Ash Wednesday of 1996, at Santa Sabina Basilica in Rome, Pope John Paul II placed ashes on my forehead while repeating the familiar words, Remember, man, that you are dust and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:19) In his homily, the pope had asked, “Why does the...
Read More →

Sacred Space

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the...
Read More →

God Is At Work

The Season of Epiphany should help the Church to see God’s work in the world.  On the Epiphany of the Lord, on January 6, the Church celebrates God the Father revealing God the Son to the first gentiles (in this particular incident Wise Men from the East).  This event...
Read More →

Put Out into the Deep!

“Put out into the deep: duc in altum!” Barely a generation ago, Saint John Paul II repeatedly invoked this Gospel imperative to prepare the worldwide Church for the third millennium. Now, suddenly, these words take on new meaning for prolifers, who are facing a new era in our...
Read More →

The Apostolate of Joy

On January 14, the renowned Catholic author and philosophy professor Alice von Hildebrand was called by God from this world to Himself. She was just weeks short of her 99th birthday. The widow of the brilliant Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, Alice was an...
Read More →