The Catholic Thing

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia

Are you a hypocrite? Well, it might feel like that at times. At least, it should. Anyone striving for something great should be aware of his failures and how short he falls of the ideal. Even more so when the ideal is Christ Himself. You go to Mass, pray the Rosary, and say grace before meals. But then you snap at your children, covet your neighbor's goods (and wife), eat too much, and so on. Yes, we feel the division between what we believe and how we behave. We can feel like hypocrites at times.

Now, some of that division comes from being children of Adam. Our human nature is wounded. We've inherited the disintegration that's part and parcel of original sin. Our thoughts, words, and actions are not integrated, not whole and entire. But some of this is also our own doing, our own failure to live a life of integrity. And every time we sin, we exacerbate that division.

Of course, Hypocrites! is the classic accusation thrown at serious Catholics or at anyone simply striving for more than the world's paltry offerings. People see that Catholics fall short of what we profess. They see us live in contradiction to what we claim to believe and strive to be. It's hypocrisy, pure and simple. Or so it would seem.

So, the striver and the hypocrite look a lot alike, both saying one thing and doing another. The word hypocrite comes from the Greek for actor. Both parties seem to be just that, actors playing out something that they are not. But we know that there's a profound difference between the two. The sinner is not yet the Christian he desires to be. The hypocrite doesn't even desire it.

The sinner who strives is discontented by the division within him. He wants to be made whole – to think, speak, and act according to what he knows to be true. He wants to live according to the truth of who he is and what he is called to be. His failure to do so is a cause of frustration and, more importantly, repentance.

The hypocrite, on the other hand, has made peace with his interior division. He is not bothered or tortured by his lack of wholeness. He's less concerned about conforming himself to an ideal and more concerned about acting out that ideal to others. . .or reshaping the ideal to fit his behavior. He doesn't strive for the truth, but for comfort, power, or gain.

Which brings us to today's Gospel about two sons (Matthew 21:28-32): the rebellious first son and the seemingly compliant second son. On the surface, they both seem hypocritical. But, again, there's a profound difference.

The first son – representing tax collectors and prostitutes – is divided but capable of repentance. "I will not," he says to his father. But then he changes his mind and conforms himself to the father's will. He was rebellious, to be sure. But he also had the capacity to repent. He lost his way, but not his compass.

The second son – representing the chief priests and elders of the people – is a hypocrite. That's our Lord's preferred term to describe leaders (see, for example, Matthew 23). The second son says one thing – "Yes, sir" – and does another, without any qualms or pangs of conscience. Nor does he repent of the contradiction that he's introduced into his soul and into the world. He's made peace with it.

The point is, the greater defect in the second son isn't disobedience but a lack of repentance. What offends God more than sin is the denial of it and the refusal to repent. Thus Jesus brings the lesson to its conclusion when He rebukes the chief priests and elders, not so much for their initial error but because they "did not later change [their] minds and believe."

The parable reveals why we always find our Lord so patient and gentle with "tax collectors and sinners." It's not because He makes light of their sins (that would be the modern solution). It's because He finds in them a discontent and discomfort, a desire for wholeness, and therefore a capacity to repent and be restored.

By the same reasoning, our Lord is severe with th...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

The saints are always greater, because the Gospel is always greater. Greater than our usual categories, our customary ways of thinking. Archbishop Fulton Sheen was just that, as his beatification in St. Louis on Thursday illustrated. The homily of papal legate Cardinal Luis Tagle emphasized Blessed Fulton as a man animated by a special love for the poor, and with a passion for alleviating poverty.

Fulton Sheen was many things, so many things could be said about him – and many, many things were said in recent days. He was the imaginative evangelist, the mesmerizing preacher, the television star, the brilliant teacher, the penetrating philosopher, the faithful Eucharistic disciple, the priest who intimately knew the sacrifice he offered. He was still more, as the Catholic faith is always more.

Consider just one example. In July 1967, from his cathedral pulpit in Rochester, Blessed Fulton was the first American bishop to call for a withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam. That America's most famous bishop was a staunch opponent of that calamitous war was the solvent to a potential stain on American Catholic history.

In October 1966, Sheen was appointed as bishop of Rochester, widely viewed as Cardinal Francis Spellman's way of banishing him from New York, the two famously having been at loggerheads.

In December 1966, Spellman told American troops in Vietnam – much to the dismay of the Vatican – that they "were holy crusaders. . .in Christ's war against the Vietcong and the people of North Vietnam."

It wasn't exactly akin to Patriarch Kirill's support today for Putin's war against Ukraine, but it was uncomfortably in that direction. Sheen, no longer serving under Spellman as an auxiliary bishop of New York, was a grand enough personage that he could rescue the Catholic Church from being understood as blessing the war. More than that, Sheen was a great enough character to know that one could be fervently anti-Communist and also condemn the lethal folly then unfolding.

Both conservative and progressive at the same time? Proudly orthodox in his teaching, Sheen himself said, upon his resignation as bishop of Rochester in 1969, "I move too fast, I'm a little too progressive." ("Progressive" then was not entirely the same as what that word implies today.)

Indeed, his rocky tenure in Rochester was marked by Sheen moving too fast on donating church land for low-cost housing and a tax he placed on new church construction to provide alms for the poor.

Cardinal Tagle, certainly aware that so much was known about Blessed Fulton – from the daily Holy Hour to the Marian devotion to celebrated preaching all over the world – chose to highlight Sheen's only speech at the Second Vatican Council, delivered on November 9,1964, quoting it at length. Sheen encouraged the Council fathers to manifest a preferential love for the poor.

"Put your finger on the 30th parallel, and run it around a globe," Tagle quoted Sheen's address. "What do you find? Practically all the prosperity is above the 30th parallel, and the greater part of the poverty is below. . . .As only a wounded Christ could convert a doubting Thomas, only a Church wounded by poverty can convert a doubting world."

The vast congregation in St. Louis applauded that line, and Tagle himself seemed a bit surprised that solidarity with the poor prompted that, adding "Wow!" The very Catholic assembly on hand also knew that the faith is always greater.

Blessed Fulton attracted so many to the Catholic faith because he was a model of so many different aspects that were attractive. What appeals? The aesthetics of sartorial splendour? The dimly lit confessional? Dramatic oratory? Silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament? A passionate commitment to racial equality? Denunciation of Communism? The Holy Mass lavishly photographed by Yousuf Karsh? A soaring sermon at St. Patrick's? Preaching amidst the sunbaked savannah of the missions? A scholarly treatise? A simple reminde...

By Brad Miner

We've all done things we regret.

One of the many salvific glories of Catholicism is the Sacrament of Penance, although, as we all know, the priest's absolution does not make the penitent a tabula rasa – a clean slate.

For one thing, although our guilt before God is forgiven (not erased), the temporal consequences of sin will likely continue. Let's say I commit murder and then, after experiencing remorse, sacramentally confess the crime, turn myself in to the police (likely at the priest's insistence), and am tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. My confessor's absolution would not, because it cannot, erase the effect of my crime on the lives of the victim's family and friends.

In Hamlet, a troupe of players come to Elsinore, and the officious and duplicitous Polonius, chief counselor to the murderous King Claudius, assures Prince Hamlet that the actors (a disreputable profession) will be used "according to their desert," to which Prince Hamlet replies:

God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man

after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?

It's then that Hamlet realizes that their "play's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

That word, conscience, has two meanings in the great play. The first is the one that Jiminy Cricket (a euphemism for Jesus Christ, if ever there was one) tells his puppet pal Pinocchio (in the 1940 Disney version): "Always let your conscience be your guide." Although known simply as the Talking Cricket in the 1881 book by Carlo Collodi, 'he' is the selfsame voice of heeded moral reason.

So, Hamlet is betting that, no matter how depraved Claudius is (very), he still knows right from wrong viscerally.

The other meaning of conscience comes in the World's Most Famous Soliloquy, "To be or not to be . . ." The prince has nearly reached the breaking point, and, though there's been debate whether Hamlet is contemplating suicide (he's not), he certainly is measuring existential matters in his mind: life versus death, with a lot of either-or going on. "Thus," he says, "conscience doth make cowards of us all."

Give the man credit; he's in a helluva bind, what with fratricide and incest as prohibited by Leviticus. As Hamlet says:

O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!

And the richness of Shakespeare on the matter of guilt, conscience, and forgiveness doesn't stop there. Hamlet, still blameless in his own behavior, comes upon the murdering, fornicating King Claudius at prayer. The king whispers: "O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven," and the prince thinks, now's the time. Hamlet's next words are tricky for an actor:

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;

And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven . . .

Is this false conscience on Hamlet's part? If so, actor, recite it quickly! If, however, the prince is thinking out loud (as everybody in the play seems to be), then go slowly; let that last phrase rise almost as yet another existential question. After all, Hamlet knows he can't open the Pearly Gates, nor can he judge the usurper king's soul. Unresolved, Hamlet makes his exit; too soon to hear Claudius reject his own prayers, wallowing in his sins:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

So far, Hamlet has done nothing that would demand he present himself for Confession. Earlier in the play, the ghost of Hamlet's father is clearly in Purgatory – by the ghost's own account. Hamlet Sr. even says he is there because he died with unconfessed sins. This is straight from the Catholic Catechism. Of course, Hamlet Jr. later hedges: maybe the apparition he saw was really a demon! This is why "The Mousetrap," the play the visiting actors will perform for Claudius, is essential: Claudius' reaction will betray him. And does! Seeing his murder of his brother precisely depicted sends him running and calling out, "Give me some light: away!"

It's easy to say Hamlet should have run through the kneeling Claud...

By Michael Pakaluk and Christopher Reilly

St. John of Antioch, called Chrysostom or "golden-mouthed" (d. 407), "is generally considered. . .the greatest preacher ever heard in a Christian pulpit," according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Or are homilies even more golden if they are concise? Nearly all the surviving works of the 5th-century Bishop of Ravenna, Peter, are homilies noteworthy for their conciseness as much as their eloquence. Tradition has it that this Peter received his nickname, "golden-worded," when the Roman Empress heard him preach and pronounced him "Chrysologus!" Venerated as a saint and later declared a Doctor of the Church, today he is called "Doctor of Homilies."

Not that golden words are the same as holiness. They ring hollow and appear manipulative, like a cheap clanging cymbal, unless they express sincere devotion. St. Paul sets down the principle: "my speech and my preaching were not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in shewing of the Spirit and power; that your faith might not stand on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God." (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)

Fulton, the 20th-century Bishop of Rochester, New York – to be pronounced Blessed today – understood the point full well. A necessary condition of his preaching was to spend an hour before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer, which he did without fail for over 60 years.

He was a philosopher and theologian first, but also – and this is quite rare – he was an orator, and recognized as a great one, when traditions of oratory were still being passed on, although dying out, within Catholic colleges and universities. He would say that he never spoke from a written text. Persons had to be addressed by persons, not texts. He would quote what an old Irish woman said about a bishop reading his speech: "If he can't remember it, how does he expect us to?"

In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, he tells how above all he studied for style G.K. Chesterton – "who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox and avoided what was trite" – but also C.S. Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge.

After writing his dissertation in Louvain, Belgium, he taught at the seminary of the Westminster archdiocese in England, St. Edmund's, where Fr. Ronald Knox was his colleague. Perhaps it was Knox who introduced him to Chesterton in 1925. In any case, Chesterton later agreed to write an Introduction for Sheen's first book, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy (1925).

The book is based on Sheen's Louvain dissertation. But it is very far from a dissertation, or the dissertation was a most unusual one, because it is not written in a flat-academic style, but sparkling with Chestertonianisms and quasi-paradoxes. From the start, Sheen's words were golden on the page as well as from the pulpit.

Its opening paragraph is a riff on Chesterton's "Wanted, An Unpractical Man," from What's Wrong with the World:

Modern philosophy has seen the birth of a new notion of God. There is nothing of greater importance, as there could be nothing more ultimate. Even the very attitude of one man to another or of one nation to another varies with the conception of God. The outlook on the world changes the moment the outlook on God changes. And if we had intellectual vigour enough to ascend from effects to causes, we would explain political, economical and social phenomena less by credit sheets, balance of trade and reparations, than by our attitude towards God.

The new notion of God is not that of a divinity who is, but of one which becomes. But to accept this notion, Sheen says, is necessarily to accept a changed view of human intelligence. How we understand God and how we understand our own intelligence rise and fall together: "What happens, then, when a philosophy rejects the intellect? It breaks the link between the world and God, denies a hymn of divine praise to the Creator, and knocks the world into an unintelligible pluralism."

Though it was published in 1925, one cannot find a book m...

By Francis X. Maier

The plane from Dakar into Guinea-Bissau was ninety minutes late and, as luck would have it, half a dozen other Americans had flopped themselves around the waiting room. They were kids in their late teens, part of a high-end adventure travel group, the sort that specializes in appealing to enlightened cultural elites. They were on their way to a three-week "cultural plunge" into the achievements of African socialism. A former Portuguese colony on Africa's western hump, Guinea-Bissau had won its independence just a few years before. Now – in the summer of 1981 – it was a magnet for a new congregation of political pilgrims.

"They're really doing something new and different in [Guinea-Bissau]," one of the teens said earnestly. "I only hope we can learn something to bring back home. I don't want these people thinking that all Americans are bad." Then he wandered off to buy scotch at the duty-free shop.

Not everyone shared their youthful enthusiasm. I struck up a conversation with a pasty white couple guarding a pile of groceries and suitcases stuffed, they said, with canned goods. He was an aid officer with the U.S. embassy in Bissau. She was his wife. They liked Bissau, they said unconvincingly, but it was "hard on families because there's nothing to do. No food either, so we always load up when we go to Dakar."

I mentioned the unpleasant 1980 coup in Bissau that had happened just eight months before. "Oh, that wasn't very serious," he shrugged. "Couple of people got shot; the rest were just reshuffled."

We climbed aboard a seedy Air Senegal DC-6, jammed with restless bodies and cardboard baggage held together by rope. A lone, lackadaisical stewardess reminded us to check the safety instructions in the seat pocket in front of us, but of course the card had been missing for years.

The plane crossed a river into Guinea-Bissau. I stared at the landscape below: deserted swamps, isolated dry patches veined by tangled rivers with silver-smooth surfaces, submerged forests and wet mudflats. It looked familiar. It looked like Vietnam.

Bissau, the capital, was just as engaging. The city (and the country) had one bookstore lined with Marxist-Leninist texts gathering dust; one bank with fantasy interest on deposits; half a dozen gas pumps; and a theater showing kung fu movies. The Soviet Union had donated the national monument memorializing Guinea-Bissau's independence: a huge black marble fist surrounded by eternal flames, overlooking the docks where a strike had first ignited the revolution. But the nation lacked propane, so the flames had gone out.

Weeds had begun to take over. Across the street, a small international-class hotel had been abandoned in mid-construction. So had an aluminum factory. So had a modern highway into the capital. An automobile manufacturing plant had closed down when the market was quickly saturated. The local "People's Store" lacked rice, meat, and bananas, but had an entire wall of Chinese Communist dolls, an obscure form of foreign aid. The only factory that couldn't keep up with demand was the brewery.

I was there to write about the local Church. And so, a few days after arriving, I joined Bissau's Italian-born bishop for a drive into the countryside. After twenty minutes, we stopped, walked half a mile into the bush, and came to a series of parallel gashes in the earth. In each of these gashes were hundreds of bleached human bones – skulls and clavicles, ribs and femurs. There were other such sites all over the country.

The political murders had started just after independence in 1974. In a nation of less than 760,000, as many as 50,000 men, women, and children were butchered before the 1980 coup. And while the new regime, expressing shock, had opened up the mass graves to discredit the government it had overthrown, "everyone in the new regime had known about the [murders] all along," according to one missionary priest. "They were all implicated."

On the scale of modern horrors, what ha...

By Robert Royal

Deo volente, and if air traffic disruptions spare me, I'll be home this morning following a late pilgrimage in America after an overcommitted summer. I planned to follow El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") in California starting from San Diego and heading up north, stopping at several missions mostly founded by Spanish Franciscans, all the way to San Francisco and the final two locations across the bay, San Rafael and Sonoma. The faith is dogma and worship, but it's also a lived experience of what is still sacred history. Our bishops would have done well to remind us a lot more about the significant, continuing, but now often forgotten, Catholic presence in this land as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary.

California's coastal highways and walkways began as 18th-century footpaths, mostly forged by Franciscan friars (a "royal" road only in aspiration back then). Today, California 101 basically traces out what the missionaries carved out on foot. All those saint names up and down the Pacific – and a capital named Sacramento – reflect the long and storied history of the Church's missionary work in the Americas.

It's fitting that we started in San Diego because Diego is a variant of the Spanish name for James. That first of the missions recalls the Camino of St. James in Compostela, the most famous of Christian pilgrimages. The missionary friars, though, weren't on spiritual pilgrimage, but were relentless and intrepid in pursuing the dominical injunction to preach the Gospel to all nations.

Revisionist histories these days often reduce their efforts to mere collaboration in colonization – even the saintly acts of the great St. Junipero Serra. The missions did have to rely on some backing from Spanish soldiers. But the California of the 18thcentury was beautiful, yet rugged territory, not a place that lent itself to exploitation. Pairs of Franciscans and a handful of soldiers at each mission carried out exploration, development, and – most of all – evangelization.

The best way to learn about all this is, of course, to make the effort physically to visit some sites yourself. But we also have the works of the great American Catholic historian, Kevin Starr, who taught at several universities and was for a decade the official Librarian of California. In California, and especially Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholics in North America, Starr tells a fascinating and stirring Catholic story.

I'd visited some of the missions before, but never in a deliberate way. San Juan Capistrano is one of my favorites both because of its sheer beauty and because the California wine industry got its start there. Our Lord's first miracle, at the wedding feast in Cana, turned water into wine of great quality and abundance. And at the Last Supper, He gave us both bread and wine as His body and blood. So let no teetotaler or grape-juice fundamentalist deny the Christian gift.

Several missions were damaged by earthquakes – and rebuilt – over the years. Parts of Capistrano, for instance, remind you of the kind of evocative ruins you see in Rome. But some are still functioning – there were funerals at Capistrano and Santa Barbara these past days, and a wedding at Carmel.

The Carmel Mission (more properly San Carlo Borromeo) is the most striking. There is a deeply contemplative Carmelite church along the ocean in Carmel-by-the-Sea, which gave the town its name. But in the Carmel "mission" lie the mortal remains of St. Junipero Serra in a church lovingly restored by local artisans. Serra is mostly forgotten, even by Catholics these days, but his contributions to the state of California and America almost pass belief.

He was born in Mallorca to poor farmers, but knew early that he had a vocation. At seminary, he excelled academically and became a professor of theology. At age 35, he felt the call to missionary work. He left a comfortable university life, took the 70-day sail to Vera Cruz, studied at the missionary school in Mexico City,...

By Robert J. Kurland

In a few weeks (as I write this) the Jewish Holy Days will be here – Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. [Editor's note: today, September 21] And again I wonder, am I a Jewish Catholic or a Catholic Jew? There is a difference. The noun, the second word, conveys the fundamental identity; the adjective is a modifier.

An Irish Catholic is not the same as a Catholic Irishman. Until 32 years ago, I would not have entertained any thoughts about what the two phrases in the title signified. I was an agnostic Jew who fasted on Yom Kippur and celebrated Passover with a family Seder, but otherwise – no religion.

My wife, a cradle Catholic who loved all things Jewish (including me), could cook kugel, matzo ball soup, etc., better than my mother or grandmother ever could, so the ethnic yearnings I might have had (primarily culinary) were satisfied.

After my conversion, the place of Jews and Jewish history started to matter. Studying Catholic teaching, I discovered that Judaism was the foundation of the Catholic faith. And I began to wonder: what was my identity – Jew or Catholic?

At the first Mass I thought: This is like a Seder, the wine, the washing of hands, all the phrases. I concluded I was like an Irish Catholic, an Italian Catholic, not like the group I associated with in the first years of my Catholic life, the Hebrew Catholics who insisted on retaining a Jewish identity and some Jewish religious practices.

I was uncomfortable trying to be both Jewish and Catholic. Didn't I refuse to be Bar Mitzvah'd because, in my adolescent intellectual arrogance, I felt the fur-coated ladies at the Reform Temple were hypocrites?

As a child I had suffered bullying and unkind remarks because I was Jewish. And I could not, at 65 (when I was converted), focus on Hebrew, the Torah, Friday candles; they were as unfamiliar to me as if I had been raised a Baptist.

I wonder now whether that childhood experience was, in fact, the actual reason I rejected the religion of my rabbinical great-grandfathers. Perhaps trying not to be a Jew runs in the family. My maternal grandfather ran away from his Russian shtetl to Paris because his father, the village rabbi, would not let him study calculus instead of the Torah.

My grandfather went to Paris, lost his religious faith, but remained Jewish. Another Jew came to France as a child, converted to the faith as a teenager while being sheltered from the Nazi invaders, became a priest and rose, as a friend of Pope St. John Paul II, to the rank of Cardinal.

This was Jean-Marie (born "Aaron"), Cardinal Lustiger. He maintained his Jewish identity to the end of his life and after – he requested that Kaddish, the ceremonial Jewish prayer for the dead, be said outside the church before his Catholic funeral Mass. Responding to criticism from French Jews that he should not claim a Jewish identity, he said, "I was born Jewish, and so I remain."

Both my grandfather and Cardinal Lustiger agreed: a Jew remains a Jew. Would that I had their certainty about who I was and who I am.

If my fundamental identity is not that of a Jew, why do I fast? Let's first examine that phrase "fundamental identity." Fundamental means primary, before any other quality. Cardinal Lustiger said, "I was born Jewish, and so I remain." Did that mean his fundamental identity was that of a Jew, that being a Jew in all things took priority? I don't think so.

My Jewishness is my family background, third-generation Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe – a background that is formative, but not determinative.

The Church itself has said in a Declaration of Vatican II (Nostra aetate) that the covenant between Israel and God has never been revoked. Indeed, Cardinal Lustiger went further, to assert that Israel's vocation was to bring light to the nations and that Christianity was the means to do that. His Catholic faith defined his Jewishness.

So, what about fasting? I claim it is a means to demonstrate and ...

By David G Bonagura, Jr.

At first glance, it does not seem hard to be Catholic. Go to Mass on Sunday. Pray. Keep the commandments. Love others. Sounds easy enough.

People like easy – it's the key adjective in every advertisement these days: easy meals, easy programs, easy payments, easy installation. The implication is clear: what is hard is undesirable, unpleasant, unnecessary. What sane person would spend hours preparing dinner, completing a task on a computer, or assembling a new gadget when the easy way will whip things up in no time?

But if we dig past the surface, being Catholic is not so easy. Go to Mass every single Sunday throughout my 70 to 80 years, even in horrific weather and when traveling? Pray – who has time for that? Keep the commandments – I haven't killed anyone, but am I really liable to judgment and to Hell, as our Lord warned, if I get angry with my brother or call him a fool? (Matthew 5:22) I haven't born false witness, but do I really have to refrain from gossip and calumny too? Love others – even the obnoxious neighbor, the reckless driver, the crazy guy screaming on the subway?

To be a Catholic means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. He brokered a deal for us to do so: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) And the reward for following Him in this life? "You will be hated by all for my name's sake." (Matthew 10:22)

For our Lord's commandments, easy is not the first adjective that comes to mind.

Yet I do see "easy" tossed around in lots of Catholic marketing: easy apps, easy steps to prayer, easy ways to incorporate the faith into our lives. "Easy" has a cousin, "simple," that is used synonymously to make the same point. "Just follow these easy steps and you will be a saint in no time – it's that simple!"

So let's offer a clarification: the general principle of being Catholic may be easy to comprehend – that is, follow Jesus – but to be Catholic in practice, that is, to follow Jesus as He commands us, is hard. Quite hard. And we should know that and accept that. For if we live our faith without struggle or challenge, we are not living it correctly.

If we are honest about this point, are we communicating to Catholics and would-be converts that our faith is undesirable, unpleasant, and unnecessary, like everything else that is hard to do today? If being Catholic is not easy, doesn't there at least have to be some joy or fun in it? Is there any truth in that famous ditty of Hilaire Belloc:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,

There's always laughter and good red wine.

At least I've always found it so.

Benedicamus Domino!

We can reconcile that being Catholic is both hard and joyful by turning to the sports world for an imperfect parallel. Golf is an incredibly hard game to play well. That fact did not stop the 48 million Americans who played golf in some capacity in 2025, and their average scores prove that most stink at the game. The agony, the cursing, the grumpiness that ensue on a golf course for bad shots happen more frequently than the triumphs, joys, and high fives for the good ones. Everyone knows golf is not easy. Yet players keep coming back. The game is hard. Quite hard. They love it anyway.

Faith does not thrill the soul like sports, which sharply prick the senses. Faith is primarily a matter of the intellect, or, more colloquially, of heart knowledge. The acts of faith – prayer, attending Mass and receiving the sacraments, doing good deeds – satisfy the heart and mind in the manner of a good book or beautiful sunset. "Satisfy" is the optimal word. Sports thrill. Faith fulfills.

We do not perform the hard works of being Catholic because of that cliché: "If it's not hard, it's not worth doing." We do them because that is what God asks of us. There may not be joy in performing these in the moment – prayer can be a slog, bearing another's burdens can be terribly burdensome. And, by definition, there is no joy in the act of...

By Elizabeth A. Mitchell

Sacrifice is a paradox. A compelling paradox. In his new book, Sacrifice: Religion and the Revitalization of Christian Life, Clemens Cavallin dives headfirst into the historical, theological, and salvific nature of sacrifice throughout the human and divine story, calling his readers to a renewed embrace of the true nature of God's redemptive plan.

This compelling book is a reflection on the reality of sacrifice, both secular and religious, and its lamentable absence from modernity. Cavallin examines the modern world's attempt to eliminate sacrifice, and the consequent attempt by some within the Church to reconstruct Christianity without sacrifice. This endeavor, Cavallin argues, must ultimately prove futile because there is a fundamental human need for sacrifice, and hence for a priestly office and mediation with the supernatural.

Cavallin contends that our non-sacrificial, modern civilization has shaped the Christian churches themselves, weakening their understanding of sacrifice as a fundamental reality. Modern culture fosters the illusion that peace is possible without a serious reckoning with evil. When catastrophic violence erupts, many modern Christians are therefore left bewildered.

The secular narrative assumes that history should keep moving steadily upward: materially, socially, and psychologically. Yet when that promise fails – when suffering, violence, and disorder persist – dismay naturally follows.

For Cavallin, this confusion points to a deeper loss. To understand civilization honestly, Christians must recover the centrality of sacrifice. Only then can Christian life regain its vigor and renew its capacity to direct civilization beyond itself, toward the supernatural.

Evil, Cavallin observes, involves the sacrifice of others as one pursues one's own selfish interests. The gas chambers of the Third Reich, the Soviet Gulags, or the ubiquitous abortion mills of the West are just a few salient examples.

But the reality of violent evil, of course, is nothing new – it's as old as Cain and Abel. This is why all the ancient religions contained some form of sacrifice. Indeed, as Cavallin posits, the need for sacrifice, in response to evil and as a means of communion with the supernatural, is inherent in what it means to be human. Cavallin presents an informative study of comparative religion, seeing sacrificial religion as a general human phenomenon present throughout human history, a phenomenon that is indeed even prehistoric.

Cavallin builds all this on a solidly Thomist foundation, finding much that is positive in natural religion, even while acknowledging the effects of the Fall on the human intellect and will. The human heart has a natural religious inclination which is ultimately fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, but the Christian can undertake careful discernment and find elements of profound truth in other religious traditions on the philosophical, theological, and spiritual level.

Cavallin leads the reader through such a careful discernment, examining themes of sacrifice present in natural religion; the distinction between what is sacred and profane; the relationship between violence and sacrifice; and the ultimate fulfillment of natural sacrifice and its transformation by Christ on the Cross.

Ritual sacrifice, Cavallin observes, requires a sacred place and time in which the sacrifice is accomplished. The ritual unites humans with the gods. At the center of the ritual is the offering of the victim, an action which requires violence because the victim must be slain. The victim being slain may serve as a scapegoat, a substitute that offers redemption and fellowship with the gods as a result of its sacrifice.

This is why the sacrifice necessarily also includes a meal, a meal to which the gods are also invited. Even when the prophets critiqued the sacrifices of ancient Israel, pointing out that they did not correspond to the necessary interior conversion and obedience to...

By Dmitri Solzhenitsyn

But first a note: This summer, the Faith & Reason Institute held its first "Enrichment Days" – conversations about the relations between Eastern and Western Christianity – in Kosice, Slovakia. We're hoping to make this a regular activity in order to promote the presence of all orthodox Christians in the world. We're delighted to have this first column in what will be a series from Dmitri Solzhenitsyn, grandson of the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Now for today's column...

In August 2026, America Magazine reported that "the liturgy wars are back (and never really left)." The fight Catholics have been having on and off – regarding the Traditional Latin Mass versus the Novus Ordo, Traditionis Custodes versus Summorum Pontificum, and so forth – is nearly six decades old. Yet where the Orthodox are concerned, the original liturgical-canonical divergence goes back more than twenty-five times further.

In the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, liturgical matters are not usually as contested as are theological questions. (Among the latter are papal authority and the filioque, as I explore in my book Reuniting Rome with the Orthodox.) Nevertheless, differences in rites can hinder the ability of communions to claim the same experience of worship and, at the extreme, can even make it harder for them to identify with one another as fellow Christians. Accordingly, the gradual East-West divergence is worth exploring.

Rome and the East still had more in common than not throughout the early Christian period. Significant differences, however, were appearing by the fourth century.

By the end of the 300s, invoking the Holy Spirit in the Liturgy of the Eucharist was more emphasized among Constantinople and the Greek Churches than among the Western Churches, which instead focused on the words of institution.

Also, during the later 300s the Greek liturgy was uniquely refined: garments like the sticharion (a kind of long tunic), hymnography like the short troparia, and sophisticated vessels were a much more prominent feature of Byzantine rites than of the simpler Latin rites.

Language differences, too, arose: while Rome had initially used Greek, Latin was added in the third century and became dominant by the fourth. To express its faith, the West preferred the pre-Nicene Apostles' Creed (the "Roman Symbol"); the Greeks adopted the Symbol of Faith produced at Nicaea.

By the end of the seventh century, East and West had diverging prayers, hymns, cadences, and even iconography. And by the 9th century, the West had switched to unleavened bread in the Eucharist, while the East maintained leavened bread. All of this established the Roman rite as distinct from the Byzantine.

Meanwhile, from the fourth century on, East and West also developed starkly different attitudes toward clerical celibacy. Priests throughout the communion of orthodox Churches had been allowed to marry prior to ordination. Rome campaigned, however, to make celibacy universal. By the 700s papal decretals had solidified the Western practice.

On the other hand, the Apostolic Canons, better received in the East, forbade clergy to divorce their wives on grounds of celibacy – on pain of excommunication – and the Synod of Gangra anathematized certain radical proponents of clerical celibacy. At the Quinisext Council of 692 under Justinian II, Eastern Churches limited celibacy to the episcopate.

Those differences could be tolerated for a long time. But in the eleventh century, when cultural contacts became more widespread, the combination of erstwhile isolation and sudden contact dramatically soured East–West relations. Long-endured differences in discipline – unleavened versus leavened bread, fasting, clerical celibacy – came prominently, and painfully, into view.

Patriarch Cerularius of Constantinople wrote combatively to Pope Leo IX in 1053, critiquing the use of unleavened (azymes) bread in the Eucharist and Saturday fasting. And the infamous schism of 1054 was at least i...