The Catholic Frequency

Christopher Hitchens needed Mother Teresa to be a fraud. The Church kept the nun who picked dying people off the street.

Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle is a confession: the respectable father who provides and postpones catechizes by delay. The son inherits the form, not the apology. Saint Joseph is the contrast.

Edward Gibbon wrote the English obituary of Rome as the triumph of barbarism and religion. In 590 a reluctant monk-pope named Gregory fed the city the empire had already abandoned.

The modern West is tearing beauty down on purpose — in buildings, music, journalism, and the body. That is not freedom. It is what happens when beauty is unhooked from truth.

Herma Hill Kay helped write America's first no-fault divorce law — then taught a generation of lawyers that the exit was the grown-up answer.

A girl asks her boyfriend what his friends say about her. Then she asks the only question that counts: what do you say? Jesus asked the same two questions at Caesarea Philippi. A short Catholic Frequency essay on the difference between a poll and a confession.

Self-care can support health, rest, and ordinary human flourishing. But modern wellness culture becomes a rival religion when self-actualization replaces sanctification. Beginning with the Human Potential Movement and the Esalen Institute, this Catholic Frequency essay contrasts the promise of self-salvation with the objective grace of Confession, the Eucharist, Anointing of the Sick, and Baptism.

A people loses its soul before it loses its city. After Rome fell, Augustine refused the pagan story that blamed the Church. Feast of Saint Augustine.

The culture applauds the woman who leaves. Saint Monica stayed, prayed, and never gave up. Feast of Saint Monica.

One man’s villain is another man’s hero. A Senate hearing on the COVID years showed how fast America turns public men into saints or demons. Catholic Frequency on justice, vengeance, government power, and why the same habit runs on Trump and Pope Francis.