Flannery O’Connor knew the grandmother and the serial killer...
She’s not to everyone’s taste. Tuesday was the 100th birthday of the writer Flannery O’Connor. She’s got her own volume in the Library of America series, the writer’s equivalent of the Hall of Fame, but you’re more likely to read her in a classroom than a book club. Her stories appeared not only in the more literary magazines...
Switching My Religion: 20% Around The Globe Have Left Their Childhood Faith...
An estimated one-fifth of adults around the world have left the faith group in which they were raised — with Christianity and Buddhism experiencing especially large losses from this “religious switching,” a new study reveals. The figures — compiled by the Pew Research Center following surveys of nearly 80,000 people in 36 countries...
Does the Vatican have group chats? What about cyber-security and the ‘pontifical secret’?
How to Face Death with Joy — From a Guy Who Stares at a Graveyard Every Morning...
What if your greatest weakness could become your greatest witness? In this powerful, funny, and deeply moving conversation, we sit down with Fr. Augustine Wetta — a Benedictine monk, author, and high school chaplain — who’s living with early onset Parkinson’s. Doctors told him he’d be “non-functional” by now ... but he’s still preaching, writing, and cracking jokes.
The Hiddenness of God and Seeking Signs...
In the movie The Man with Two Brains, Steve Martin plays a widower who is considering getting remarried. His beautiful but greedy girlfriend Dolores artfully conceals her cruelty. One day, Martin stands before a portrait of his dead wife, Rebecca, and begs, “Rebecca, if there is anything wrong with my feelings for Dolores, just give me a sign.” Immediately, lights blink, winds whip, and an earthquake erupts...
The politics of grievance has emerged with a vengeance again...
“Woke,” shorthand for what was once known as “political correctness,” helped fuel a grievance-based progressive politics that did immense damage to the American body politic, while filling young minds with a surfeit of historical nonsense. The New York Times 1619 Project, which falsified the story of the United States by reading our entire national history through the lens of America’s original sin, slavery, was wokery’s Platonic form. It poisoned school curricula and underwrote the race-baiting politics that followed the murder of George Floyd...
Why Men and Women’s Brains Are Wired Differently — And How It Affects Us All...
My brother, a medical doctor, says that I got my MD from Google University. He is not wrong. I’m a theologian, not a doctor. But, like Pope St. John Paul II before me, I have been fascinated with God’s creation of male and female. In particular, as we have been exploring over these past few columns, the differences in the lived experience of being male or female and the questions around how much of that difference...
10 Quotes on the Annunciation from Pope St. John Paul II...
Today is the last solemnity in the Lenten season until we get to the Solemnity of All Solemnities on April 20. Still, today’s solemnity sets the course for what we will celebrate on Easter Sunday. It is a day when the Church gathers to pray and remember when Christ became incarnate within the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is this day when the Angel Gabriel appears to Our Lady and although confused at first by the angel’s announcement, she boldly proclaims her Fiat – her yes, be it done unto me according to thy word.
How to Act When so Many Flaunt Their Cruelty...
10 Quotes on the Annunciation from Pope St. John Paul II...
‘Evangelium Vitae’ Was John Paul II’s Battle Cry Against the Culture of Death...
The End of My Planned Parenthood...
8 Things to Know and Share About the Annunciation...
Indianapolis Archdiocese: Lab Results Indicate Discolored Host Was ‘Not Miraculous’...
The Living Water Jesus Gives...
‘The Chosen: Last Supper’ Debuts in Dallas Ahead of Nationwide Theatrical Release...
Saint Mary's 2025 commencement speaker choice receives pushback...
Intrinsically Evil Acts and Repentance...
We tend to measure the morality of our behavior against the effects of our actions. The criteria seem reasonable, but some evil actions (such as dishonest stock trading) pay rich rewards. Among the most neglected concepts in Catholic moral theology are intrinsically evil acts that offend God. An “intrinsically evil act” is evil in itself...
Spiritual Indifference and the Road to Calvary...
In a particularly striking conversation between Jesus and his disciples, the disciples ask Jesus why he uses parables (stories) to explain what he is trying to convey to the followers around him. The disciples were enamored with Jesus’ methods probably because they were accustomed to the methods of the Scribes and Pharisees. Nevertheless, Jesus explains to the disciples that the premise behind the use of parables is to help them understand the keys to the kingdom...
Spring is calling. Answer, before it’s too late...
Nature, and I mean the wonderful world bursting into bloom and the human nature throbbing within us, is always on our side. It never stops calling us to richer, fuller life. We can listen to our flesh. It has something to say. Yes, we are careful to discipline it, especially in Lent, lest its inclinations run amok and lead us astray. But Aslan is not a tame lion. Nor should we live in the cage in which our hyper-technologized, anti-natural, navel-gazing, comfort-seeking culture tends to trap us.
This is the age of crashing Hollywood empires — like Snow White, Star Wars, Indiana Jones and other pop-culture Marvels...
As a rule, I am not a fan of sequels — other than movies that complete a cycle of stories that exist in some existing form of literature (think “The Lord of the Rings”). I am also not a fan of live-action remakes of classic animated films. In other words, I don’t get to go to the movies much these days. Let me stress that I will pay to see “Casablanca,” “Young Frankenstein,” or “Lawrence of Arabia” on a big screen. If “Interstellar” shows up on an IMAX screen within 100 miles of me, I will be there.
Pope Francis: ‘Even if We Hit Rock Bottom, God Lets Us Start Over With Him’...
Trump Administration Aims to Freeze $120 Million in Grants to Planned Parenthood, WSJ Reports...
The ‘Humble, Hidden Event,’ and Wishin’ for a Commission...
Today’s the Solemnity of the Annunciation, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post. Pope Benedict XVI talked about the Annunciation as a “a humble, hidden event.” “No one saw it, no one except Mary knew of it — but at the same time it was crucial to the history of humanity,” Benedict taught. “When the Virgin said her ‘yes’ to the angel's announcement, Jesus was conceived, and with him began the new era of history...
Why J.R.R. Tolkien Made March 25 the Day the Ring Was Destroyed...
It is unlikely that many people will think that Frodo Baggins, the diminutive hero of The Lord of the Rings, has much to do with the season of Lent. What has a hobbit to do with the habit of fasting? What has The Lord of the Rings to do with the Lord who died for us on the cross? What on earth has Middle-earth to do with the reason for the Lenten season?
Solemnity of the Annunciation: ‘The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us’...
‘It’s all legal!’: How the nuncio installed Detroit’s archbishop by his own decree...
Ukrainian Military Chaplain Brings Christ’s Light to War’s Dark Trenches...
On Feb. 24, an interfaith prayer service was held at London’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family to commemorate the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There were prayers, hymns and addresses from various British Christian leaders. But one contribution was especially moving: a personal testimony from Ukrainian Catholic Father Taras Mykhalchuk, pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Garrison Church in Lviv...
All salvation is local. If you do not repent, you will perish...
The Tomb of Christ and the Atomic Moment...
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