The Catholic Thing

By Robert Royal

Let's begin with a pointed question: Are we, almost all, today, Sadducees? If your knowledge of the groups who appear in the New Testament is hazy, we might put it thus: Do almost all of us now, even Christians who claim otherwise, like the Sadducees in Jesus' day, basically discount eternal life and think physical death the absolute end, and worst of evils? If so, a war may do us a service because it reveals, in its dreadful and severe way, the state of our souls.

War is hell. But does Hell – a place of eternal war – or Heaven – the place of the only true and lasting peace – play any real role in our minds and hearts during a time like this? It may seem heartless to ask the question in the face of so much immediate suffering, but it's precisely because of those human ills that the deeper questions come to the fore.

As C.S. Lewis put it in a similar time: "The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it."

No one should want war except as an absolute necessity for the gravest reasons. Totalitarians love war because they often think it's a remedy for the flabbiness that overtakes people when things are good. Mussolini said that the modern Italians needed a "bloodbath" to recover their ancient discipline and virtue. And he tried giving them one. We know how that, like other programs of renewal through war, turned out.

Peace and prosperity are goods in themselves, but they're not always good for us. Europe's dependence on the United States for its security since World War II, for instance, made it into a continent that finds it difficult to find the will or allocate the resources to defend itself. Many Europeans – and sadly not a few Americans now – even doubt whether it's worth defending our civilization.

A Christian shouldn't be surprised. "In his riches, man lacks wisdom: he is like the beasts that are destroyed." (Psalm 49:20) It doesn't have to be this way. We may be wise even in prosperity. But reason and revelation alike warn of dangers.

Just now, we're rightly preoccupied not only about the justice of the Iran war, but also about its possible spread – along with terrorism. And we try to imagine what a "successful" end might be. We can't help but doubt what we're told by politicians and the media. But in all this, do we lose sight of the truth that neither war nor peace is the last word for us?

Our Christian forbears didn't need to ask this basic question because, until quite recently, bodily death was not considered the worst thing. Some things are worth dying for. Most people knew anyway from daily experience that our years on earth are sharply limited, war or not. And that the next life is, for good or ill, forever.

The traditional classification of sins and virtues reflected this. We cite Dante a lot on this page because. . .one just should, for many reasons. Besides the sheer imaginative beauty of his Divine Comedy, he makes it easy to see crucial distinctions, Christian distinctions, about the state of the soul, both in this life and the next.

For instance, sins of violence and murder are, of course, punished in Inferno, but only about midway down into Hell. There are good reasons in the Christian tradition for this. In the proper Christian understanding, we are a composite of body and soul. Murder or indiscriminate slaughter in war are, to be sure, horrible. But a Certain Authoritative Person made a point of saying (twice): "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell." (Matthew 10:28, Luke 12:4-5)

We rarely hear this these days, even from the highest authorities in the Church. Which is why both just war and capital punishment now appear "inadmissible" to some Church authorities. If you believe in eternal life and the greater importance of the soul than physical life, however, there are still plenty of worse things than the bodily death, wh...

By Fr. Benedict Kiely

As we mark our head, lips, and heart with the Sign of the Cross when the Gospel is solemnly proclaimed at Mass, we signal, by that prayer made with hands, the desire that the living Word of God will touch and convert mind and heart, that we may become those who proclaim the saving message we have heard.

It is an acknowledgement that, particularly in that most serene of liturgical settings, the Gospel is not some dry and dusty volume from ages past, but the voice of the Lord, with His word, as Scripture tells us, "alive and active," with the power of the "double-edged sword," to penetrate the very core of our being.

No matter how many times we have heard or read a particular passage of the Gospel, it is always new, with a message for us, if we have the ears to hear. Despite the greatest exegesis, the wisdom of the Fathers, and preachers, including some, as we know, who can always find a new application for a passage to guard and guide us, there is still an unfathomable mystery when we hear the words of the incarnate God.

One of the saints described the Scripture as a fountain that never dries up. That, in itself, should inspire awe. As with the Eucharist, and the mystery of the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, the most profound response to the Gospel is worship and adoration. As we kneel physically before the Lord in His sacramental presence, so we kneel, metaphorically, as we hear His word.

Our Eastern brethren, in naming the Eucharist the Divine Mysteries remind us, who lean on the rational mind of the West – so clear, concise, and categorised – of the word "mystery." This is not hidden esoteric knowledge, imparted to the chosen few, but the reality of Who is speaking when the Word is announced. And that there is, after all our intellectual efforts, much more that we do not know, and never will.

The Gospel chosen for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the raising of Lazarus, is a perfect example of this awesome mystery that we are privileged to hear and read. Let us approach it with the bare feet of the Copts as they enter the sanctuary, as Moses approached the Burning Bush, trembling before the divine.

Jesus, we are told, "loved" Martha and Mary and Lazarus. Along with St. John the Beloved Disciple, we hear of one other that He "loved" in the Gospel – the Rich Young Man. This human love, so deep He weeps at the human death of His friend, encapsulates the very mystery we described earlier.

He will perform a miracle, but not for the purpose of display, or even to convert those who witness it. This miracle, and the Gospel account, is chosen for this Sunday for a reason, expounded by the Preface of Holy Week.

We are approaching, the Preface says, the "days of His saving Passion and glorious Resurrection." This is the time, the Preface continues, when the "pride of the ancient foe is vanquished and the mystery of our redemption in Christ is celebrated." This mystery, the Triduum, which occurs at every Mass, from the smallest hut in the mission fields to the greatest basilica, is why we hear this story of the raising of the one Jesus loved.

There was a time, the Book of Genesis tells us, when the unity and intimacy between God and man, the "original blessing," was expressed by the image of God walking in the Garden in "the cool of the evening."

Humanity – Adam and Eve, clothed with light, is tempted by the ancient foe with the original lie – "you will not die." From that moment until this very day, those who believe the lie and ignore the truth, eat of that fruit, concoct bizarre fantasies to escape reality – from space travel to freezing their brains – and still die.

The ancient foe tarnishes the clothing of light and creates the nakedness of the dark. This nakedness is the fate of Lazarus, the fate of all humanity, no longer in the Garden of peace.

"If you had been here," Martha says to Jesus, "my brother would not have died." There is only One who can counte...

First a note from Robert Royal: Normally, we do not publish columns under pseudonyms. It's a good rule, morally as well as editorially, for people to stand up in public for their ideas. But this column is so helpful about the "liturgy wars" that we decided to suspend the rule this time. The author, be assured, is a priest known to us for decades as a solid citizen, but who, for several reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. He is a North American priest who teaches in a seminary, does parish work, and celebrates both forms of the Roman rite.

Now for today's column, The 'Polar Unity' of the Two Forms of the Roman Rite, by Fr. 'Amare Nesciri' ...

The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007) of Pope Benedict XVI introduced into the contemporary ecclesial vocabulary a distinction that has since become both fruitful and contentious: the "Ordinary Form" and the "Extraordinary Form" of the one Roman Rite. Benedict was at pains to insist that these are not two rites but two usages of the same lex orandi. The Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council constitutes the Ordinary Form; the Missal of Pope John XXIII (1962), standing in organic continuity with the Tridentine codification of Pope Pius V, may be celebrated as the Extraordinary Form.

Benedict's claim was juridical and pastoral, but its deeper import is theological. The coexistence of the two forms within one rite can be understood as a "polar unity" in the sense articulated by Hans Urs von Balthasar: a living tension of complementary principles whose unity is not the flattening of difference but its orchestration.

Benedict himself rejected the hermeneutic of rupture that would pit preconciliar and postconciliar liturgy against one another. In his famous 2005 address to the Roman Curia, he contrasted a "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture" with a "hermeneutic of reform in continuity."

The liturgy, precisely because it is the Church's most public act of faith, must embody this continuity in a way that is not merely conceptual but sacramental. The two forms of the Roman Rite thus stand as a visible sign that tradition is not a museum piece nor a revolutionary program, but a living stream whose depth and breadth can be perceived only by holding together its historical strata.

To interpret this polarity in a richer theological key, it is helpful to turn to Balthasar's account of the Marian and Petrine dimensions of the Church. For Balthasar, the Church is first Marian before she is Petrine. Mary, in her fiat and her immaculate receptivity, embodies the Church's contemplative, bridal, and receptive essence. Peter, in his confession and commission, embodies the Church's apostolic, juridical, and governing mission.

These two dimensions are inseparable; yet they are not identical. The Marian dimension grounds the Petrine; the Petrine serves the Marian. The Church is not an institution that happens to have a mystical interior; she is a mystery that necessarily assumes institutional form.

If one applies this polarity to the liturgy, the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms may be seen as sacramental embodiments of Marian and Petrine accents within the one Roman Rite. The Extraordinary Form, with its hieratic language, ritual density, and pronounced orientation toward transcendence, gives privileged expression to the Marian dimension: receptivity, silence, adoration, and the primacy of divine action. The Ordinary Form, especially as envisioned by the Council's Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, gives heightened visibility to the Petrine dimension: proclamation, pastoral intelligibility, missionary outreach, and the gathered assembly's audible participation in the apostolic faith.

This is not to reduce either form to a caricature. Both forms are Marian and Petrine; both are contemplative and apostolic. Yet each manifests a particular accent. In the Extraordinary Form, the priest's orientation ad orientem, his subdued voice in the Canon, and the stability of the ...

By David Warren

In an effort to understand Hieronymus Bosch, I have been reading about the "movers and shakers" who first conceived of our modern world. Bosch presents the fantasies of these heretics, I think, without being entirely a heretic himself.

It is easier to see a heresy from a mile off than when it is right up your nose. Or if you are an ingenious, astounding artist, like Bosch, you can examine it closely.

In his book, The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch (translated, 1952), the author Wilhelm Franger reconstructs that past age by visiting the episcopal courts, and in particular their records of former hippiedoms and heresies.

Especially in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries, they were the paradisal, gnostic cults that flourished across what would become Germany, the Rhineland, and the Low Countries, being known generally by some variation on the theme of "Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit."

These self-proclaimed "Homines Intelligentiae" met literally underground, and were the "Woke" or "Wokists" of that time, believing themselves incarnations of the Holy Ghost, and very devoted – to their own esoteric and changeable notions.

But they were not truly creative. Their "paradise" would always, always depart, generally through corruption and lust, from what exists in a true paradise, or in the witness of the real Mother of God. They strayed from reality, just as modern communists compulsively dictate a parody of the Christian faith.

A violent and evil parody, but an assurance nonetheless that there is an order to this world, and nature. Each deviant movement falls back upon the same cosmic or spiritual shapes and volumes that, I believe, are inevitably representations of immortal things.

This is because we are in a world and nature that is, and thus was constructed, from reality. There is no alternative, in effect, to being a copyist, if there is only one reality to copy, vast and complex as that reality may be.

And one may depict it accurately, in art and in science, or try to improve upon it, and thereby produce something that is definitively wrong.

We thus discover alternative realities, but on close investigation we rather unearth a zero, a form of Nothingness.

The mediaeval scholastics realized that this Nothing is like extreme cold. It is not really an alternative thing, but rather it is the absence of a thing, in this case heat or light.

It does not add, but subtracts; and when it has taken everything away, everything is, as it were, frozen in darkness. And as heat is added – a little or a lot – we begin to see all of nature's effects coming to life, or being spontaneously exemplified.

The same happens when we turn to theology, or even to politics (to present politics in its religious form). As heat is removed – the heat of the divine – everything instead begins to resemble everything else.

To use the commonplace analogy of deep space, there is no such thing as taking a spacewalk, unless for a very short period one is supplied with warmth and everything else one will need within a hygienically sealed and fitted suit.

Curiously, it is the same on moonwalks, or if one visits Mars. In practical terms, the expense of supplying everything we need to flourish upon earth is, and will always be, very, very expensive.

The same goes if, instead of spacewalk or starwalk (even if we could get to the neighboring star in less than an eternity), we decide to replace our religion, and invent a new one more attractive to ourselves (and not just attractive to an ever-absent God), we get to the point where we are freezing.

The Adamites and other heretical cells, from centuries ago or just the other day, found that they were dealing with a world in which there are two, and precisely two, "biological" sexes.

And after one has decided on the quaint, nonsensical principle of making them equal and interchangeable, or inventing some others, or putting clothes on them or stripping them bare, and calling, for instance, nudity by the word...

By Stephen P. White

I have what I like to think of as a healthy obsession with bulbs. I don't mean the kind you screw into an electric lamp. I mean flower bulbs: tulips, hyacinth, daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops, and the like. I bury them in the dirt in the autumn. And as soon as the frozen ground softens to mud, green things start to emerge.

While the rest of the world (the lingering snow by the curb included) thinks it is still winter, the bulbs are having none of it. The bulbs are unstoppable. Once the bulbs emerge – those little green nibs, sometimes tinged wine-red – there's no going back. Winter is finished, and all the cold snaps and late-season snow showers are in vain.

As we say in our family every year when the first crocuses appear, "Aslan is on the move."

The arrival of spring, of course, is a metaphor for resurrection. Here we are in Lent and what we see around us in nature parallels our Lenten journey. The first flowers of spring are heralds of the coming joys of Easter. The bulbs that "died" and were buried have emerged more glorious and alive than ever.

And so every child knows. At least, it used to be so. I hope children still learn such things.

Right now, winter is losing the same battle it loses every March. And just like every year, the bulbs are pushing the sodden soil aside and emerging clean, startlingly green, and swollen with new life. Somehow the arrival of spring bulbs, the sheer newness of them, is always startling. I know from the calendar that spring is coming, of course. And I planted those bulbs precisely so that I could see them in the spring.

Yet spring arrives and these living things that were not there before (at least not to my eyes) push up through the cold, sweet-smelling earth with a contagious, irrepressible vitality. One could almost believe that the spring sun grows warmer because of the emerging flowers rather than the other way round. Every spring somehow feels like the first.

I recall lines about spring from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden…

But it happens again and again, over and over. Every year, the bulbs drive winter away. Every year, these little floral gems emerge, looking like the newest things in all Creation. Every year, nature's metaphor for resurrection plays out in plain view. Every year, it is startling to see something so utterly new under the sun.

And here is another metaphor, one that is subtler and harder to learn than the first. A metaphor that has taken me many springs – many Lents and many Easters – to understand. It is a metaphor about old things and new things. About things past made present. About grace and nature. About creation and repetition. About the shocking newness and gratuity of something utterly predictable and expected.

The Lord said:

Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.

The seed goes down into the ground. It dies. But then it rises again to bear much fruit. The bulb is buried under dirt and snow and ice. From that death, a glorious new blossom emerges. So far so good. If we were to see this happen once, and only once, we would think it a miracle. If it happens over and over and over again, is it less miraculous?

The Lord said:

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.

An innocent man lays down his life. He dies. He rises again to new life, eternal life. A man takes bread and wine, blesses them, and gives them to his disciples; his body and blood. If it happens once, it is a miracle. But what if that same miracle is made present to us, not once, but over and over and over again?

This metaphor, if you can follow me, gets closer to what I love about spring bulbs. This implacable repetition of the miracle, the outrageous made so commonplace we might hardly notice, is wh...

By Randall Smith.

But first note: TCT's Editor-in-Chief, Robert Royal, will appear tonight on 'EWTN Live' with Fr. Mitch Packwa for a freewheeling discussion about issues in the Church. Information about rebroadcasts is available by clicking here.

Now for today's column...

Augustine admits in Confessions that when he was young, he did not like the Scriptures; he found the language ugly and uninspiring. He preferred Cicero and Virgil. Worse yet, some things in the Scriptures caused him to think Christianity was ridiculous. Who would be so naïve as to think that God has a right hand? God doesn't have a body! What a bunch of rubes Christians must be.

It was not until he got older that he realized that the Scriptures made use of figures of speech, metaphors, analogies, and other poetic devices. Christians don't believe that God has a physical right hand; rather, this is an image suggesting the intimate union between the Father and the Son.

He had been laughing at Christians when he was the ignorant one whose pride had blinded him to the richness of Biblical language and imagery. "My inflated pride shunned their style," he writes, "nor could the sharpness of my wit pierce their inner meaning. Yet, truly, were they such as would develop in little ones; but I scorned to be a little one, and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as a great one."

It is not uncommon for people who pride themselves on their scientific sophistication to find the Church's manner of speaking, especially in the liturgy, bizarre, perhaps even childish, something acceptable only to unsophisticated people who believe whatever they're told, no matter how ridiculous.

I can imagine someone of this mindset asking: "Do you really think that there are choirs of angels 'soaring aloft upon their wings," singing 'Holy, Holy, Holy'?" As an adult convert, I can understand how skeptics from outside the Church might view this sort of language. It seems like something out of a children's book, like talking about Harry Potter's "sorting hat" or flying on a Hippogriff. Fine for children, but not for serious adults.

Since we live in what is largely a dull, unpoetic "information age," I understand why the Church's language might seem this way. But perhaps there are things that simply can't be said in ordinary speech of the sort one gets in the newspaper or the latest magazine article. Perhaps some things simply transcend our normal, everyday ways of speaking and require a different mode of discourse, one that communicates realities that transcend our usual ways of speaking and writing – as when Robert Frost says:

The land was ours before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people.

Or when T. S. Eliot writes that,

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Or when the Psalmist proclaims:

The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

In verdant pastures he gives me repose;

beside restful waters he leads me;

he refreshes my soul.

If you don't "get" the many ways language signifies – if, for example, you don't "get" poetic speech, and it seems like a bunch of meaningless twaddle – then you probably won't "get" the language of the Scriptures and the liturgy. Much of it will likely seem as silly to you as it did to St. Augustine when he imagined that Christians thought God had a physical body.

I could say, the phrase "at the right hand of the Father" means that the Risen Christ is intimately united in the oneness of Being with the One from whom He, the second "person" of the Trinity, is eternally generated, being loved fully and eternally and loving fully and eternally in return. But that's not better.

That language might have a useful role to play to help us better understand the language with which the faith has been expressed to us. But after we have used the more "scholarly" words to explain those Biblical and liturgica...

(As told to Jeremy Lott)

You may have heard the legend that Saint Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, but I'm here to tell you it ain't, exactly, 100-percent true. Now it's true that Ireland has no snakes today and it's also true that Saint Patrick is the one that done it. But here's the thing: He didn't drive them snakes out.

Nope, he outsmarted them.

The snakes were always sinking their fangs into Irish people. And the people, well, they didn't like being bit one bit. So they all said, "Patrick, caaaan't you do something about it?"

Back then, Ireland was crawling with snakes from Donegal to Cork and from Galway to Wicklow. But there was one place the snakes liked best, and that was on the banks of the River Shannon in Limerick.

Them Limerick snakes were so thick on the ground that the fishermen couldn't cast their lines or launch their boats. If anyone so much as looked at them funny, the snakes would snap and hiss and generally start a stir.

And that's what they done when Patrick came up on them and said, "Snakes, we have to talk." Patrick let them go on for a bit and then he snapped back, "I said talk, not hiss."

"That ssssssilly human thinkssssss he can talk to ussssss," said one pit viper to the other snakes, who all had a good snake laugh at that.

"Yes, that is what the silly human thinks," said Patrick.

Them Limerick layabouts were stunned into shutting up. A human who could speak snake was a new thing to them. Finally, a large python cleared its throat. "Well what issssss it that you want to ssssssay to ussssss, human?" the python asked.

"The Irish have been talking to me, and they think it's time for you to go," Patrick said.

You may wonder why Patrick said, "the Irish" and not "we Irish." It's because he didn't come from here, but that's not what the snakes were wondering at that moment. They weren't wondering because they were coiling mad.

"Then we'll bite them! We'll bite every lasssssst one of them," one rattler said. Many others joined in with threats and hisses.

Again, Patrick let them get it off of their scaly backs for a minute before he spoke up. "My slithery neighbors, Ireland is a wet and chilly place for us humans, and we're warm blooded! Aren't you cold?" he asked.

"Yessssss," a few snakes answered.

"And wouldn't you rather go to where it's warm?" Patrick asked

"Yessssss!" many more snakes said.

"Rattler, wouldn't you like to slither through a nice Texas desert? And Adder, wouldn't you rather lounge on the banks of the Nile? And mamba, doesn't a sky island in an African rainforest sound good?" he asked.

Many snakes nodded their snaky snouts.

"Well then let us give you all a long vacation, and if you don't like it there you can always come back," Patrick said.

Some snakes started to say "yessssss," but then the biggest, baddest one of them all spoke up.

"You reek of liessssss, human. Why shouldn't I ssssssimply eat you insssssstead?" asked the anaconda.

Now, I gotta give Patrick some credit here. He did not give into the fear that he must have been feeling. No, he told that great big snake, "I'm too much for you to swallow." And, well, that did it.

"Ssssssurely you jesssssst, human. I can eat anything that movessssss, from a mousssssse to a rhinocssssserosssssss," the anaconda announced.

So Patrick made a bet then and there. If he could name something that moved that anaconda couldn't eat, all the snakes would all go on that vacation. And if not, well then, he was supper.

There must have been a twinkle in his eye when he said, "Eat the river."

Anaconda hissed. Trapped by its own boast! Still, the great big snake gave it a shot. It slithered out into a ways into the river and opened its great mouth and tried to suck the water in.

It wasn't long before the current carried it off. And I don't know much about snake religious notions. But if they have saints too then Patrick is one of them, because of what he did next.

He'd won. The snake that was gonna eat him was a goner, but Patrick went right went i...

By Robert Royal

When Notre Dame de Paris almost burned down in 2019, owing to a fire started (accidentally?) by workmen, the world was stunned by the near loss of one of the West's iconic monuments – and a religious landmark at that. But churches around the world are burned or subjected to other types of attack these days, year after year, not by accident, but deliberate anti-Christian acts. Never heard of it? Thereby hangs a tale.

It's no surprise to anyone that Christian churches suffer frequent attacks in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. They've been going on for years, with a sharp rise since 9/11 and the emergence of radical Islamic groups, as I've documented in my book The Martyrs of the New Millennium. And these attacks often add insult to injury by being timed to take place at major Christian feasts like Christmas and Easter.

What is surprising, however, is how little attention is paid to the ongoing violence by Western media. In Nigeria, the wholesale slaughter of Christians – thousands in 2025 – and the assaults on churches and Christian schools, together with kidnappings and ransom demands – couldn't be ignored any longer by news outlets and governments. But the plight of Christians in a dozen other countries never draws serious attention. That failure clearly has a two-fold cause: reluctance among journalists – newsrooms are overwhelmingly progressive – to contribute to "Islamophobia," and a soft anti-Christian bigotry.

The American political scientist Samuel Huntington asserted that Islam has "bloody borders," evident not just from recent times but the long interactions between Islam and Christians, Hindus, etc.) Modern analysts often try to deny that these conflicts are religious – in a materialist age political and economic causes are believed to be real, religious motives at best secondary. But the only way to believe that is to be ignorant of centuries of history – and the Koran itself.

Still, it's surprising that those same media also manage to pass over quickly or, more typically, to ignore outright anti-Christian acts even in the West.

We need not look far for striking examples. Earlier this month in "celebration" of International Women's Day, churches in Mexico – Catholic Mexico! – came under literal fire by feminist extremists (see video here). But it's not only there. Throughout Latin America, including Argentina during the reign of Argentine Pope Francis, similar things have happened owing to feminist rage and radical ideologies of varying kinds. In Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, we've even seen the continuing saga of Marxist repression of the Church – holdovers from the totalitarian nightmares of the previous century. And those regimes are supported by old-style state Communism in China, which notoriously persecutes religion.

One Mexican feminist proclaimed, "I fear those who pray the Rosary more than I fear criminals." It's heartening to see, as in Mexico, Catholic men forming human shields around Church buildings. But where was the coverage – outside of Catholic news organizations – of something that is a clear public fact about our time? It's not mere Catholic special-pleading to point out that if the target had been a synagogue or mosque, our sharp-eyed watchdogs in the press would be investigating and relentlessly reminding us about systemic prejudice.

Sad to say, the Church itself has sometimes been all-too-willing to blame Catholics for past misdeeds – sometimes when they didn't even happen.

In 2021, reports in Canada surfaced that ground radar had discovered over 1000 graves – sometimes called "mass graves" – near "residential schools," government institutions often run by Christians, which took "First Nation" children from their parents and tried to integrate them into the Canadian mainstream. A sensitive subject, of course. But subsequent investigations have uncovered no "mass graves." Yet many people – including Pope Francis, who made an apologetic visit t...

By Fr. Robert P. Imbelli,

However fervent or fitful, our Lenten journey is moving toward its culmination. Of the many symbolic riches of the Paschal Triduum perhaps none resonates so affectively as the raising high of the Paschal Candle in the darkened church. And the minister intones the ineffable saving mystery: "Light of Christ!" While the jubilant assembly responds in grateful wonder: "Thanks be to God!"

Less dramatic, though equally significant, are the words pronounced just prior to the proclamation. As the celebrant lights the Paschal Candle, he prays: "May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds."

Christ's light reveals not only our vocation to glory, but, inseparably, our dire need for salvation. So, St. Paul exhorts the Colossians to give thanks to the Father "who has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins." (Colossians 1:13-14) Only through Christ do we pass over from the domain of darkness into the promise of transfiguring light.

Hence, in the patristic tradition, baptism was also referred to as "phōtismos" since it signified the new Christian's enlightenment by Christ. Thus, it is fitting that, on this Sunday of the second scrutinies of the catechumens, themes of light and sight permeate the readings. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, joyfully exclaims: "You were once darkness, but now you are light [phōs] in the Lord," thereby disclosing their new identity in Christ. But this is immediately followed by the imperative that governs this section of the letter: therefore, "walk [peripateite] as children of the light!" (Ephesians 5:8) In effect Paul exhorts the Ephesians: Be all that you are called to be! Fulfill your destiny in Christ.

In the seven verses of today's second reading the word "light" appears five times. It becomes manifest in lives of "goodness, righteousness, and justice." And it displays stark contrast not only to the "darkness" [skotos] of believers' former lives, but also to the darkness of the surrounding culture.

The Letter to the Ephesians is noteworthy in its emphasis on the ongoing growth of the Christian community, the building up of the Body of Christ. "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." (Ephesians 4:15) Baptismal renunciation and conversion are both the conclusion of a process of enlightenment and the beginning of an ever-renewed growth in the Lord. Saint Gregory of Nyssa famously characterized the Christian life as an ongoing dialectic of endings and new beginnings, every end [telos] giving rise to a new beginning [arche].

Hence the crucial importance of ongoing discernment – "discerning [dokimazontes] what is pleasing to the Lord." (5:10) The believer must carefully examine his or her own behavior, learning to put on the mind of Christ, not yielding to the spurious enticements of those who are "darkened in their understanding and distant from the life of God." (4:18)

In many ways, then, the final chapters of Ephesians are an extended commentary upon what Paul had admonished the Romans. "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, discerning [dokimazein] what is the will of God, the good and well-pleasing and perfect." (Romans 12:2) Such discernment fosters an ever-greater realization of Christians' new life in Christ and what it entails in the everyday.

Not only the newly baptized, but those who have lived the Christian life for some time, are called to realize ever more fully the glorious vocation that Paul celebrates in the great benediction with which his Letter begins. "God has called us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and without blemish in his sight."(Ephesians1:4)

Sons and daughters of light, Christians stand forth as a "contrast society," that will often require of them a countercult...

By Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy,

Like many people years ago, as a child, my brother and I, together with our dad, always prayed in our "night prayers" the traditional prayer to our guardian angels: "Angel of God, my guardian dear to whom God's love entrusts me here, ever this day (or night) be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen."

I still ask my guardian angel at night when I go to bed and, in the morning, when I get up, to watch over and protect me. Moreover, before writing, I always ask my guardian angel to give me clarity of thought and expression and to whisper the right words into my ears. Sometimes when I am struggling to find the right word, he places exactly the right word in my mind.

Prayers to one's guardian angel are Biblically based:

• God instructs Moses, as the Israelites set off for the Promised Land: "Behold I send you an angel before you, to guard you on the way and bring you to the place which I have prepared. Give heed to him and hearken to his voice." (Exodus 23:20-21).

• Psalm 91:11 affirms that one need not fear, "for he (God) will give his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways."

• Jesus himself states that we should not despise the little ones, "for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 18:10)

• In the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter escapes from prison and knocks on the door where the faithful were gathered, his brethren wrongly think: "It is his angel!" (Acts 12:13-15)

Although most of us will never see our guardian angels, many saints have. Padre Pio frequently conversed with his guardian angel, who would defend him against demonic attacks. Gemma Galgani was in daily contact with her guardian angel, who taught, protected, and corrected her. Sr. Faustina Kowalska spoke of her guardian angel accompanying her on her journeys. She also saw him when she was immersed in prayer, often asking her to pray for the dying.

The point of the above examples is not to say that one has to be a "saint" to speak with or behold one's guardian angel. Rather, it is to illustrate that we, too, can converse with and be assured of our guardian angel's protecting and guiding presence.

Moreover, we should dispel the romantic and "cute" notion that guardian angels are only relevant for vulnerable children. Adults are in as much need of their guardian angels – maybe even more so, for their temptations and affairs are often of a more serious nature.

Our guardian angels are therefore present to strengthen, to encourage, and to guide us in living out our respective vocations, whether single, married, religious, or priestly. To dismiss them as only suited for what is childish is to place ourselves in harm's way.

The question has been asked: After death, do our guardian angels cease to be with us once we enter into Heaven? Obviously, we no longer need to be guarded. Do they, then, get recycled to someone newly conceived?

According to Catholic tradition, our guardian angels even remain with us in Heaven and together we give praise and glory to the most holy Trinity – to our heavenly Father who is the ultimate source of life, to the risen Jesus, the Father's incarnate Son, who is our loving Savior and Lord, and to the Holy Spirit who cleanses us of sin and makes us holy.

With all of our brothers and sisters in Christ, along with our respective guardian angels, we will sing forever a glorious hymn of praise and thanksgiving.

Here, we perceive the confluence of the earthly and the heavenly liturgy. At the conclusion of the Preface at Mass the following, or something similar, is said: "And so, with the Angels and all of the Saints we declare your (the Father's) glory, as with one voice we acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory."

With one voice, our earthly human voices, the heavenly voices of the saints, and the host of angelic voices, we all together declare that both Heaven and earth are filled...