The Catholic Thing

By Francis X. Maier

Yes, alas, it's another election year. You know what that means. The free-fire zone, formerly known as our public square, demands that we steal a break from our screens – and think. We think in order to understand. And we best understand the character of our times by tracing the lineage of the ideas and actors who have shaped them. Marx, Nietzsche, and many others are among the usual suspects. But I'd argue that the pedigree goes much farther back.

The late political activist Saul Alinsky named the founder of the modern revolutionary spirit on the epigraph page of his Rules for Radicals: "the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer."

Alinsky was an agnostic secular Jew. He had no belief in a personal devil. He had far more interest in the power structures of this life than in any imagined next. His reference to Satan was thus purely ironic and deliberately provocative.

But his epigraph does capture a distinctly modern (if discreet) sympathy for Lucifer as a kind of Prometheus; a wronged hero fighting for his dignity, insisting on his own path, and courageously resisting tyrannical authority. It's a view that derives from 19th-century Romantic-era writers like Blake, Shelley, and Byron, who in turn drew on John Milton's great epic poem Paradise Lost, recasting Milton's Lucifer as less a villain and more a tragic figure.

Except they got Milton's Satan entirely wrong.

For those who haven't read Paradise Lost or have forgotten it since school, it's one of the great treasures of Western civilization. The story is simple. In Heaven, God exalts His begotten Son and places Him above the angels. Envy and wounded pride drive Lucifer and his followers to revolt. Defeated, they're cast into Hell. In his torment and futile rage against God, Satan attacks and corrupts God's innocent creation: Adam and Eve.

Milton's portrait of Satan is the exact opposite of admiration. Obsessed with his own swollen pride, refusing to accept the reality of his sin and dependence on his Creator, Satan methodically disintegrates from a spirit of immense grandeur and power to a scheming, loathsome snake. Locked in unending frustration and fury, he cannot build or create. He can only posture, seduce, hurt, and destroy. He becomes the father not only of lies, but of nihilism.

On the cultural front, Roger Scruton described the nihilism in our modern appetite for deconstruction – tearing down old truths, reinterpreting literature and history, upending political structures – in a chapter appropriately titled "The Devil's Work." (see here)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky captured the deceit and nihilism of revolutionary politics in Demons (also titled The Possessed or The Devils), his novel of radical agitation and violence in rural 19th-century Russia. For Dostoyevsky, the revolutionary temptation was a "fire in the minds of men." And that phrase, that fire, later became the title of James Billington's great study of the roots of revolutionary thought.

For Billington – the late Librarian of Congress, Harvard and Princeton scholar, and CEO of four federal cultural institutions – the modern revolutionary impulse is a kind of elite virus, the "spiritual thirst of those who think rather than [a] material hunger of those who work." Modern revolutionaries "are believers, no less committed and intense than were the Christians or Muslims of an earlier era."

Revolutionary thought becomes "an object of faith and a source of vocation, a channel of sublimated emotion and sublime ambition. If traditional religion is to be described as 'the opium of the people,' the new revolutionary faith might well be called the amphetamine of the intellectuals." His chapter on "The Occult Origins of [Early Revolutionary] Organization" has special interest for a Christian reader.

So what's the point here? Just this: If we don't see the fire in our own back yard, we haven't been paying a...

By Michael Pakaluk

I wonder if a certain greater sobriety is not asked of us as regards our use of social media. And if so, who is going to tell us so? So much that is stern and chastising has been removed from the public acceptance of our faith today. This is strange when, never before, it seems, has such chastisement been so very badly needed.

To see what I mean, open the pages of the spiritual classic, The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis. St. Thérèse of Lisieux memorized entire chapters of this book. Pope Benedict called it "that golden text of spirituality." St. Theresa of Ávila directed that a copy should be placed in every convent that she founded.

In his chapter on love of solitude and silence, Thomas writes:

Very many great saints avoided the company of men wherever possible and chose to serve God in retirement. "As often as I have been among men," said one writer, "I have returned less a man." We often find this to be true when we take part in long conversations. It is easier to be silent altogether than not to speak too much. To stay at home is easier than to be sufficiently on guard while away. Anyone, then, who aims to live the inner and spiritual life must go apart, with Jesus, from the crowd. . . .No man appears in safety before the public eye unless he first relishes obscurity. No man is safe in speaking unless he loves to be silent.

Let me "operationalize" this teaching, as a modern social scientist might say. Should we say that no one should spend more minutes on social media during the day than he has already spent in prayer? Or consider prayer as like revenue, and you are not permitted to spend any time in speaking, except what you have earned in praying. "Raise your eyes to God in Heaven and pray because of your sins and shortcomings," Thomas says at the end of the chapter.

Then we seem to have forgotten the traditional warnings against idleness. Idleness is definitely not the condition of having nothing to do on the Internet. St. Jerome says, "Always be doing something, so that the devil may find you always occupied."

But are you "doing something" in his sense when you are reading posts or posting yourself? Suppose there is only one chore or task or duty which remains to be done, as you are aware. Doing which of these – that chore or that post – would be "doing something"? If reading to your child, improving yourself in some definite discipline, fixing something, calling a relative or friend – if any of these remains undone, then Internet activity which produces nothing of worth meets the definition of "idleness."

St. Thomas Aquinas and other great spiritual writers teach that idleness involves not simply being "unoccupied," but also turning away from a known good.

Newman spoke sternly about something he called "viewiness" in the Preface to his Idea of a University. We repeat, perhaps too easily, the sense of his opening lines there, about how a university exists mainly to form students, not to advance knowledge. But do we read on and see how he would be horrified if a university's formation led to what he disparaged as "viewiness" in the students?

Yet what else could it lead to, if every view gets affirmed with an "A," and if it's presumed that every student in every submitted essay might reasonably have something "original" to say?

An intellectual man, as the world now conceives of him, is one who is full of "views" on all subjects of philosophy, on all matters of the day. It is almost thought a disgrace not to have a view at a moment's notice on any question from the Personal Advent to the Cholera or Mesmerism. This is owing in great measure to the necessities of periodical literature, now so much in request.

Sound familiar? There's more:

Every quarter of a year, every month, every day, there must be a supply, for the gratification of the public, of new and luminous theories on the subjects of religion, foreign politics, home politics, civil economy, finance, trade, agriculture, emigration, ...

By Amy Fahey

Norwegian soccer star Erling Haaland recently made news not for his playing or pseudo-Viking antics, but for his record-breaking purchase of a 1594 printed edition of the Heimskringla – the lives of the Norwegian kings from legendary beginnings to the death of Magnus V in 1184. Haaland and his father donated the volume to his hometown library to promote reading: "I want the book always to lie open so that people can read about those who came from where I come from. It's easier to feel drawn to reading when you can recognize yourself in the people and places being written about."

His father concurred: "roots are important deep roots that can be found in the stories of Snorre's kings' sagas."

Nearly one-third of the volume recounts the life of King Olav Haraldsson (c.995-1030), now known as St. Olav, whose feast day is July 29, the date he fell at the Battle of Stiklestad in his attempt to unite the region's fractious and petty kingdoms under a single political structure grounded in Christian law.

Almost immediately after his death, rancor and division quieted, and Olav's holiness was confirmed through countless miracles. He was canonized locally by Bishop Grimkell of Nidaros in 1031, which was confirmed by Pope Alexander III in 1164.

St. Olav's Kristenret, or "Christ's law," contained prohibitions against infant exposure and infidelity in marriage, among other common pagan practices. He's a patron saint of troubled marriages – and of woodcarvers. My favorite story about him in the Heimskringla (one that impressed C.S. Lewis, too) tells of his woodcarving on the Sabbath while mentally preoccupied with worldly affairs.

He "fell into deep thought and heeded not the hours," the saga says. His serving boy then reminded him that it was Sunday. Olav asked him to "bring him a lighted taper and he swept into his hand all the shavings he had cut; he set light to it and let the shavings burn in the hollow of his hand. Thereby he let it be noticed that he would hold fast by God's law and commandment and would not set aside what he knew to be right."

Perhaps that's a bit of Viking showmanship, but anyone who has read the sagas knows that eradicating from the human heart what Tolkien rightly termed "self and indomitable will" requires radical measures in any age. Both saga writer and saint give us visceral evidence of that.

Someone who followed the desire to "recognize yourself" in the compelling and complicated story of St. Olav and found in it the "deep roots" she had been searching for is Norwegian novelist, Catholic convert, Nobel laureate, and now soon-to-be Servant of God Sigrid Undset. Dealing with the fallout of her own sins and self-will, the young Undset encountered in St. Olav a pattern of perseverance and redemption on which she could rebuild her own life.

In her Saga of Saints (1934), Undset notes: "[Olav] was a man in whose mind most other men could find something akin to themselves, but he had subdued his own heathen nature, had struggled in prayer so that God might mould him as he wished. And so God had lent him the power to become a friend to mankind."

In his 2025 homily on the Feast of St. Olav, Erik Varden, Bishop of Trondheim, remarked, "We revere and love St. Olav not because he was born a saint, but because he became one through persevering battle against all that was untrue, unworthy, and ugly in himself and in the world; he fought to let Christ's peace rule in his heart."

In Sigrid Undset's sweeping and masterful Kristin Lavransdatter, the titular character makes a penitential pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Olav with her newborn son. "She wept so hard that she didn't have the strength to rise when the others stood up during the service; she stayed there, collapsed in a heap, holding her child."

She then hears St. Olav speaking in her heart about his wayward nation: "Lord, hear my prayer for these people, whom I love so much that I would rather suffer exile and want and hatred and death than have a si...

By Brad Miner

Many readers know of my passion for art, especially painting. I'm particularly fond of the work of the great Catholic artists Caravaggio, Rubens, and Vermeer, and some examples of their work are in the collection of my favorite museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. What readers don't know is that nothing at the MET by those greats is my favorite. That distinction, such as it is, belongs to Jules Bastien-Lepage's Joan of Arc.

In fact, when my wife and I visit the MET, I'm like a Great Dame puppy pulling her along behind me as I rush up the Grand Staircase to Gallery 827 to stand in front of Bastien-Lepage's "Joan." And I'm writing about this painting, completed in 1879, in part to figure out why I find it so compelling.

Still, although this column is about the painting, Joan's story deserves a brief retelling.

Jeanne d'Arc, as her countrymen know her, was born (c. 1412) in a small village in northeastern France called Domrémy, which is pronounced like the first syllables of the solfège: do, re, mi (fa, sol, la, ti) – or it is if you glide over the letter "m," as some residents of Rouen do. Rouen is where Joan died.

She was a peasant girl who heard the voices of saints, telling her to find France's Dauphin, see to his coronation, and lead his armies in battle against the English. When we read "dauphin," we may imagine a young boy. But Charles VII was 19 when, by right of succession, he became "king," although he was finally crowned a decade later, and that was thanks to Joan.

Just 16, she led French forces during the Hundred Years' War. She'd been hearing those heavenly voices for several years. They belonged to the Archangel Michael and the 5th-century saints, Catherine and Margaret, both of whom were virgin martyrs.

Armored and on horseback, this astonishing teenage girl successfully led the French in battle – until she was captured by the English, put on trial for witchcraft, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, in part due to the duplicity of Bishop Pierre Cauchon, who allied with the Burgundian allies of England. His name is a homophone for cochon, the French word for "pig."

Movies have been made about Joan, and books have been written – one a novel by Mark Twain, no less, who called Joan "the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced." Her life is legendary, but she is no legend. As with any great figure of the Middle Ages, some questionable facts may adhere to her story like barnacles, but she truly accomplished incredible things.

So, why do I love the painting? To begin with, the subject is fascinating, n'est-ce pas? This peasant girl who rose so grandly and fell so terribly. And Bastien-Lepage's style is compelling, marrying classical naturalism with the most popular movement of his time, Impressionism.

And the canvas is BIG: about 8 feet by 9 feet. That's not the largest painting at the MET. That distinction belongs to another historical scene, Emanuel Leutze's 1851 Washington Crossing the Delaware, which is 12' X 21'.

Joan of Arc is also mysterious, eerily so, with Joan's gaze elevated and distracted.

And there's Bastien-Lepage's own story.

Born in 1848 (he died in 1884), he came from the same area of France as Joan – essentially the ever-disputed Alsace-Lorraine, which has "changed hands" between France and Germany five or six times since the 17th century.

And there was a prophecy, likely contemporary with Joan, although attributed by some to Merlin of Arthurian fame, about the rise of the so-called Maid of Lorraine, a virgin who would restore France to glory. Bastien-Lepage knew the legend: its popularity and its Hundred Years' War context. And that very much resonated with his own experience as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War (July 1870 to January 1871). Both conflicts had been, albeit temporarily, humiliating losses for France.

For one native to the area, as Bastien-Lepage was, stories about the Maid of Lorraine and the girl whom many called the Maid o...

By Kristen Ziccarelli

French existentialist Gabriel Marcel called hope "the stuff of which the soul is made." Dante marked the entrance to Hell by its absence: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate ("Abandon all hope, you who enter here.")

Civilizations are not often measured in terms of hope. We are more inclined to judge them by military might, political stability, or economic outputs – all of which are fair metrics, in a way. Yet at a moment when many argue that Europe and the United States are forgetting their civilizational roots and in need of a revival of faith, love, and law, there's a deeper, lingering question: What kind of future do our people believe is possible?

As an American who travels to Europe frequently, I have noticed how many Americans visit Europe seeking inspiration from her Christian past. Yet when it comes to the present, I have also noticed how many Americans comment that Europe appears worse off in terms of economics, the practice of the Faith, respect for life, birthrates, and optimism about the future.

And yet, as true as this might be, I've found increasing reason for hope, not because of Europe's institutions, economies, or politics, but because I've come to know her Christians.

More than most Americans, my own life since childhood has been deeply intertwined with Europe. I spent my formative years in Slovenia and Germany and fell in love with the opera, literature, and rich history of the Old World. When I moved to Edinburgh to begin my master's degree, I went to Mass at St. Albert's, which served as the home of the university's Catholic Student Union.

Under the wise and intellectual leadership of Dominican priests, I met Catholics from all over Europe whose witness of charity and appreciation of their glorious inheritance inspired me to place the Faith at the center of my life. Still, as beautiful as were the Latin liturgy and the weekly concert Masses at St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral, they were secondary to the transformative effect of the witness of my Catholic friends.

I realized during that time how small the practicing Catholic community had become, even within one of Europe's leading universities. Of 49,000 students at the University of Edinburgh, the chaplaincy has probably around 100 weekly student visitors: about 0.2 percent. From a numbers standpoint, that is not a good ratio.

And yet, the faith has never been solely about numbers. The future of Catholic Scotland or Christian Europe, if it is to have one, will depend far less on the number of registered members, or even the preservation of its structures. I believe it depends on the fidelity of its Christians.

It was first in Edinburgh that I encountered the living faith of European friends who love their Christian inheritance and choose every day to witness to it and defend it. Their witness is an inspiration beyond words – they believe in miracles, and even amidst the world's brokenness, in the triumph of the heart over all else. In Charles Peguy's poetry, he imagined God saying, "[the] faith that I love best is Hope" because "my children see what happens and believe things will improve."

On my side of the Atlantic, most conversations about Europe today are fatalistic. Many are convinced that widespread secularization, demographic decline, the influence of Islam, and mass migration have already settled the question of whether Europe has a future, let alone a strong one. I find myself far less doubtful than many of my counterparts in Washington, D.C. There is no denying the darkness of our present age – but still, I find myself hopeful.

Hope is a misunderstood theological virtue. It is often mistaken for optimism, which depends upon favorable circumstances. Hope does not. St. John Paul II turned repeatedly to young people, calling them "the future and the hope of the Church and of the world." His words describe people I have been privileged to know.

My Christian European friends are not necessarily winning the "culture war," but...

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia

Two of the parables set before us today are traditionally understood as lessons in the cost of discipleship. The treasure buried in the field and the pearl of great price signify the Kingdom of God. (See Matthew 13:44-46) They are worth spending all we have to obtain. Though this interpretation is profoundly true, the great modern scholar and Scripture translator Monsignor Ronald Knox suggests another.

According to Knox, we can understand Christ Himself to be the man who finds a treasure in the field and the merchant who finds the pearl of great price. Fallen man is the treasure. We are the pearl of great price. Christ has found us and sells all He has to purchase us.

Now, this interpretation is not contrary to the traditional. But neither is it merely an alternative. Rather, it is prior. It precedes and enables our own discipleship, our own finding and buying. We cannot bear the cost of discipleship, we cannot sell all we have, until and unless we ourselves are purchased. We must be found before we find, bought before we can buy.

This is the structure of salvation. God takes the initiative; we respond. "In this is love. Not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10) The kingdom of God is not only – or even primarily – about our finding and treasuring Jesus Christ. It's first and foremost about God's finding, loving, and purchasing us.

So, Jesus found us buried under the dirt and filth of sin. Our sins so cover us that our glory and nobility cannot be seen. But He found us, drew us out of the dirt, and found us to be a treasure. To purchase us, He set aside His heavenly glory, left peaceful Nazareth, suffered torture and humiliation, and died on the Cross. "You were bought with a price." (1 Corinthians 6:20)

Interestingly, the man in the Gospel buys not the treasure but the whole field. Just so, by His death, Jesus has purchased not only us but also our surroundings, everything about us. There is nothing in our lives that He has not died to redeem and make holy. Our families, friendships, finances, work, rest, play, past, present, and future – all of this is the field around us that He has redeemed, bought for Himself.

Jesus is likewise the merchant in search of fine pearls. We are that pearl of great price. He looks at us and sees beauty, goodness, and infinite worth. He seeks us not because He needs us (nobody needs a pearl), but simply because He desires to have us for Himself.

Notice, He is searching. This is one element that distinguishes Christianity from every other religion. All others are man's search for God; Christianity is God's search for man. Just as the Lord God once asked us in the Garden, "Where are you?" (Gen 3:9), so Jesus now comes into this world in search of us, the fine pearl. "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost." (Luke 19:10)

When we understand these parables as first about Christ, then can we more accurately apply them to ourselves. We can seek Him because He has already found us. We can buy the field and purchase the pearl because He has given everything for us.

The treasure and pearl cannot hide. Unfortunately, we can. We can avoid the One Who seeks us. We can seek not to be found. Indeed, the habit is deep within us: "I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid." (Genesis 3:10)

We're experts in hiding. We hide in our work or family obligations (I'm too busy to pray). We even hide in prayer – when we recite prayers instead of praying, when we skate on the surface of our faith, when we use our structured prayer as a way of keeping Him at arm's length. (Leave me alone, Lord, I'm saying the Rosary.)

Our salvation is wrapped up in being found – known – by God. Saint Paul reminds the Galatians how they have "come to know God" – and then immediately corrects himself: "or rather to be known by God" (Galatians 4:9). The more important part isn't knowing, but being ...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

Kraków, Poland – Poland is a nation that has endured by memory, a land therefore where anniversaries are marked with extra care. It's where I learned how to observe anniversaries as a means of keeping vital the lessons of history. The anniversary, with its annual recurrence, has chronos ("time") as its referent, but it makes present anew past moments of kairos (the "right" moment). The liturgy itself has an anniversary character.

For more than thirty years, George Weigel has been leading a three-week seminar in Kraków on the free society, founded in 1992 together with his late colleagues Michael Novak, Father Richard John Neuhaus, and Father Maciej Zięba, OP. Since Fr. Richard's death in 2009, I have been part of the faculty here, though I certainly cannot take his place.

St. John Paul the Great, a son of Poland, deepened the Church's ancient intuition about anniversaries, declaring in the first words of his first encyclical that his pontificate would be oriented toward the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. He had lived the millennium of Poland's baptism in 1966 as a time of spiritual renewal, national unity, and cultural resistance to Communism.

In Poland, anniversaries come to mind more easily. This year I have been thinking about four Polish cardinals who shaped the life and ministry of the Polish pope.

August 3rd marks the 125th anniversary ("quasquicentennial") of the birth of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the Primate of Poland for thirty-three years, 1948-1981. He was, in Weigel's estimation, "the undisputed leader of a Church that became the safe deposit box of Poland's national identity during four decades of Communist efforts to create New Soviet Man."

Beatified in 2021, Wyszyński is known widely as the "Primate of the Millennium." He was arrested at his residence in Warsaw and confined in rural Poland for three years, 1953-1956. Upon release he announced the Great Novena, nine years of preparation for the thousandth anniversary of Poland becoming a Christian nation with the baptism of Mieszko I on Holy Saturday, 966.

The millennium celebrations demonstrated definitively that Polish Catholicism was stronger than Soviet Communism. Karol Wojtyła would be ordained a bishop and be appointed archbishop of Kraków during the Great Novena; from Wyszyński, he would learn something of how to deal with tyrants.

Wyszyński's approach earned him suspicion in Rome. Under Pope Pius XII he was thought to be too accommodating toward the new Stalinist regime by seeking room to maneuver; under St. Paul VI, he was too resistant to the (more accommodating) papal Ostpolitik.

The dominant figure in Wojtyła's formation was the bishop who ordained him a priest in 1946, Adam Sapieha, the prince-archbishop of Kraków. The longest-serving successor of St. Stanisław, Sapieha for forty years (1911-1951) endured the greatest carnage imaginable – two world wars, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany (Auschwitz was within his diocese), and the Soviets, who would "liberate" Poland after the war.

While the Polish primate, Cardinal August Hlond, went into exile during World War II, Sapieha remained. His cathedral sat across the square on Wawel Hill from the royal palace where Nazi governor Hans Frank had taken up residence. Sapieha, a nobleman by birth, was the "unbroken prince" of Polish resistance, hiding his clandestine seminarians in his residence. Amongst them was Wojtyła, whom he would ordain in his own private chapel.

Seventy-five years after his death this July 23rd, Sapieha is not as well known as Wyszyński, but he was the more important figure in John Paul's life.

Wyszyński and Sapieha were created Cardinals by Pope Pius XII; Sapieha after a long delay due to being in disfavor with Pope Pius XI. Cardinal Marian Jaworski, whose centennial of birth falls on August 21st, was first made a cardinal in pectore by his friend, John Paul, in 1998 and subsequently revealed in 2001.

Jaworski was born in Lviv, now Ukraine, in 1926...

By Joseph R. Wood

Recently, I read an author's claim that "as Christians we can't simply ignore politics. We're supposed to be leaven in the world. So we can't just retreat to the hills as St. Benedict did."

Actually, people nowadays do "retreat to the hills" to live under the Rule of St. Benedict. Benedictine communities in many places, especially in the hills, are thriving; likewise Carmelites. So are orders such as the Dominicans, Franciscans, and others who blend retreat from the world with action in that world. They are all a powerful leaven.

Maybe the author intended that as a throw-away shot at the so-called "Benedict Option," with its much-discussed merits and blindnesses. But he seemed to convey implicitly that contemplative life is obsolete. Yet the Catechism still endorses this life, even in the case of hermits, whose retreat is perhaps the most severe.

The author paraphrased Pope Benedict XVI in support of Christian political engagement. Pope Benedict was also a loving advocate for contemplative life. His burial ring bore an image of St. Benedict, "founder of Western monasticism and patron of my pontificate."

Speaking to Carthusians with their profound solitude and silence, he described the "deep bond . . .between pastoral service to the Church's unity and the contemplative vocation in the Church." He went on:

Dear brothers you have found the hidden treasure, the pearl of great value (cf. Matthew 13:44-46); you have responded radically to Jesus' invitation: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Matthew 19:21). Every monastery – male or female – is an oasis in which the deep well, from which to draw "living water" to quench our deepest thirst, is constantly being dug with prayer and meditation.

Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, no stranger to political engagement, offered similar thoughts on both Eastern and Western contemplative life in his 1996 Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata:

Men and women hermits, belonging to ancient Orders or new Institutes, or being directly dependent on the Bishop, bear witness to the passing nature of the present age by their inward and outward separation from the world. By fasting and penance, they show that man does not live by bread alone but by the word of God (cf. Matthew 4:4). Such a life "in the desert" is an invitation to their contemporaries and to the ecclesial community itself never to lose sight of the supreme vocation, which is to be always with the Lord. Institutes completely devoted to contemplation, composed of either women or men, are for the Church a reason for pride and a source of heavenly graces. By their lives and mission, the members of these Institutes imitate Christ in his prayer on the mountain, bear witness to God's lordship over history and anticipate the glory which is to come.

The kind of reflexive rejection of contemplative life that I noted above sometimes comes from those who, at the end of careers in or near the political maelstrom, find themselves wondering what it was all about. What gaps does a life of intense concern with that "passing nature of the present age" leave, especially for those whose hopes of progress in the earthly city may have been more expansive than St. Augustine told us to expect?

"My kingdom is not of this world" can't be shrugged off while looking at the latest polls.

But the author I've cited touches on a real problem. How is it possible to live a more contemplative life if heading for the hills is not a "realistic" option in one's circumstances? That can be especially urgent for those who find themselves both repelled – negatively – by what now passes for politics and reason in our culture, polity and Church, and called – positively – to closer union with God.

One rich source to consider this question is the work of Fr. Donald Haggerty of New York. In his book, The Contemplative Hunger, Fr. Haggerty wonders if a "conte...

By Stephen P. White

I'm old enough now to be the sort of person who will occasionally observe, in all apparent earnestness, that being around young people makes me feel young at heart. This is a concession to the realities of middle age which I am loath to make, but here we are.

I have just returned from two weeks lecturing on Catholic social teaching in Poland with some three dozen young people, mostly in their early to mid-20s. By any measure, this group was exceptional relative to their peers: they were academically excellent, religiously serious (mostly devout Catholics), vocationally minded, and incredibly diverse (we had students from both Peoria and Papua New Guinea).

Yet for all this, they were consistent in their evaluation of their own generation: anxious, fearful, and generally unsettled. More than the normal uncertainties of youth, this generation seems unsure of who they are, who they are supposed to be, and whom they might look to for answers. In short, they have inherited a profound doubt about even the possibility of hope.

The horizon against which they are taught to understand themselves seems to be shrinking. Young people feel the longing for greatness but increasingly seem to fear that such longings are illusory, that the call to greatness is unanswerable.

They are taught to strive for passing things – money, status, academic excellence – not because these passing things will satisfy, but because these things are all there is. It is a miserable lesson taught by a frustrated and cynical age that, having lost its own confidence in human possibilities, has inoculated a younger generation against hope.

My students are more immune to all this than most, but they see it all around them and cannot help but be touched by it. And that should unsettle all of us.

Youth, we older folks sometimes like to tell ourselves, is wasted on the young. I suspect this is mostly sour grapes on the part of people who are surprised to find it difficult to touch their own toes. The physical advantages of youth are obvious. But there are disadvantages, too.

Ronald Reagan – then 73 years old and seeking reelection against the 56-year-old Walter Mondale – famously joked in a debate: "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." The joke is, if anything, even funnier after four decades.

Youth (and its necessary companion, inexperience) is not, it turns out, much of a qualification for anything. Surely physical health and beauty, which come more easily to the young, are good things, but they are not reliable indicators of character or virtue. The measure of man is to be found elsewhere.

Young people, moreover, seem to know this. They understand, with all the hope and anxiety that comes with it, that they are not yet the men or women they will become. That space – the space between the person one is and the person one is becoming – is where the ultimate drama of every human life plays out.

This knowledge ought to be a source of wonder and of hope, for both the young and not-so-young alike. But it can only be that when human life is set against its proper horizon.

Christian faith broadens those horizons – far beyond the temporal and material – to their uttermost limit. In the light of the Incarnation, we perceive the fullest possible reach of human aspiration: perfect union with God himself.

This union is not an obliteration of self but a fulfillment. As Pope John Paul II observed in his first Urbi et orbi: "For God and before God, the human being is always unique and unrepeatable, somebody thought of and chosen from eternity, some called and identified by his own name." To be holy is to become conformed to God and, in so doing, to become truly, perfectly oneself.

I said that being around young people has a way of making me feel young at heart. What I mean is that young people tend to perceive more easily the drama into which we are all summoned. If the young are less calloused by the inevitab...

By David G Bonagura, Jr.

I was listening to the Bible in a Year Podcast when these lines came up from 2 Chronicles 28:3: "[King Ahaz] burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel."

"Pause that," interrupted my six-year-old. I hadn't noticed that he was listening more attentively than I was. "Why did he do that?" My son understood the gravity of it, and his tone revealed abhorrence and confusion. "Because he was evil," came my startled, less-than-inspired response. But little kids have a way of outsmarting their parents, especially when they receive unsatisfying answers. "Why was he evil?"

"Because he chose to disobey God," my wife chimed in. "When we don't follow God's will, men's hearts can turn to darkness, and then they do evil things as a result." Our son, well-schooled in The Lord of the Rings and improperly schooled in Batman, courtesy of his older brothers, comprehended the connection between darkness and evil. The conversation ended there.

But I continued to consider, not so much his question – the perennial problem of evil – but how the reality of evil impacted him on a visceral level. I typically think about "the problem of evil" in academic and apologetic contexts – not a bad thing, though the classroom evacuates evil of its shock and gravity.

When we face evil squarely, rational responses, though they certainly play a role in grappling with it, can clang like a bamboo arrow striking a steel tank. Which may explain why, when I encounter news of horrific evil, I move on to the next thing as quickly as possible rather than dwell on it.

The academic and apologetic answer to the problem of evil is correct. God, who is infinitely good and complete in Himself, created the world and the beings within it to share in His love. All that He created is, unlike Him, finite and subject to change; the intellectual beings made in His image possess freedom through which they have the power to choose the good. But change can cause destruction, as with natural disasters and diseases; freedom can be misused to inflict evil on others. God permits evil to happen only because He can bring a greater good from it.

This is a rational argument. But given the haunting force of evil, this argument requires firm faith to be truly accepted. Those without faith stand befuddled at best, angry at worst, as they watch evil unfold or endure it themselves. Twenty years ago, the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald, a nonbeliever, wrote that attributing good to God but giving Him a pass for evil seems like "double standards of a kind that would make even affirmative action look just."

A major ingredient to forming a firm faith is a proper understanding of God, who cannot be understood as just another person, or even a super person, subject to the same judgments, or double standards, that we are. He is fundamentally other than what we are.

When we judge Him by human standards – including asking why He did not intervene to halt an evil – we make a huge category mistake akin to judging dogs by human standards. Should a pet dog that attacks and kills a human being be read his rights, placed in jail, assigned a lawyer, forced to wait months for a trial, given a selection of fine clothing for the occasion, and allowed the choice of whether to testify on his own behalf?

To us, the fact that God allows evil seems absurd, contradictory, unjust, cruel, tyrannical. But God inhabits a realm beyond our comprehension. Acknowledging this fact is not giving Him a pass; it's recognizing the reality of who and what He is.

God's being includes His omniscience. To Him, unlike us, the past, present, and future comprise a single moment. He knows the good that will follow an evil before the evil occurs; we have to wait and wonder whether that good will ever come, and even speculate what that good may be. "Under our conditio...