The Catholic Thing

By Francis X. Maier

Jean Raspail, the distinguished French author, made his early reputation as an explorer and travel writer. He had a special and sympathetic interest in the disappearing indigenous peoples of South America and Asia. Raspail went on in later years to earn several of the highest French national awards: the Légion d'Honneur, along with the Grand Prix du Roman and Grand Prix de littérature from the Académie Française. A lifelong traditionalist Catholic, he died in 2020, survived by his wife of nearly 70 years.

His most memorable work is his 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints, re-published now in a new English translation with a noteworthy introduction by Nathan Pinkoski. The title is ironic. The Camp is a dark fairytale; a sardonic, deliberately exaggerated dystopian fable. One million impoverished refugees from India suddenly board ships. They land in southern France, eager to share in its material plenty, but bringing along their own pathologies and bitter resentments. Paralyzed by decades of comfort, easy moralizing about global solidarity, and unlimited compassion without a cost, French leadership collapses. More Third World millions follow. Europe is overrun; its culture erased.

The Left in France, and later in this country, trashed Raspail as a "racist" and "white supremacist." Nathan Pinkoski, in essays here and here, offers a more accurate portrait. Raspail was well aware, from direct experience, of both the suffering and the sins of the Third World, and the naive imprudence of his own country's secularized elites. Raspail's real theme in The Camp is a leadership class simultaneously overconfident, haunted by First World guilt and self-hatred, and spiritually dead, leading to the wreckage of a civilization. The refugees bring with them not just their problems and appetites but also their souls, their beliefs. And as Raspail argues, in a struggle between those who believe in nothing but themselves, and those who believe in miracles – something or Someone higher than themselves – the latter always win.

The author reserves some of the harshest treatment in The Camp for his own Catholic leaders. Back to that in a moment.

Much more than an ocean separates the American experience from France and the rest of Europe. The United States is barely 250 years old. European civilization goes back millennia, with many of its current nations emerging from blocs of ethnic and linguistic unity. The United States is different; a constructed country held together not by ethnicity or even language, but by laws and – until recently – a broadly Biblical moral code. And unlike modern Europe, we've always been a nation of immigrants.

That continues, and Catholic social services have played an outstanding role in welcoming and helping the newly arrived. I saw that firsthand in 27 years of diocesan staff service. Trump administration cuts in public support for such Church-related work, combined with its overly broad and aggressive immigration enforcement, have done senseless damage. The taunting and belligerence of anti-ICE protesters worsens the problem. So does the refusal of key local authorities to cooperate with federal officers in carrying out the law – law passed by Congress and for which both political parties are responsible. Complaints about ICE ignoring local police protocols are cynical theater when local police decline requests for help.

But put such turmoil aside for a moment. How should Catholics approach immigration law and its enforcement? Some immigrants here illegally are chronic, often violent, criminals. The border collapse under the Biden administration greatly increased their number. They need to be weeded out. In all such cases, the current administration's actions are justified. Yet many other "illegals" contribute fruitfully to American life. Some arrived here as a child. They've grown up in this country and have no other homeland. All have a God-given dignity that demands respect. Blunt-edged enforce...

By Brad Miner

Like many Enlightenment figures, Ludwig van Beethoven was both religious and secular. He was more Catholic than W.A. Mozart, although I'm not sure that means he was less secular.

Secular is probably not the right word anyhow; republican is better.

Beethoven was born in 1770, so he was about 19 when the French Revolution broke out. He may well have agreed with William Wordsworth that, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" Then came the terror, and Wordsworth writes, "And finally, I lost all feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Yielded up moral questions in despair." (The Prelude, 1798-1799)

On June 9, 1804, Beethoven premiered his Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, known as the Eroica ("Heroic") – very much reflecting his enthusiasm for the republicanism of Napoleon Bonaparte, to whom he dedicated the work.

But the bloom quickly fell from that rose also when, six months later, Napoleon crowned himself emperor, at which point Beethoven took the manuscript of the 3rd and, fuming, furiously scratched off the dedication.

Both Mozart and Beethoven found themselves near the end of their lives composing Masses that they would not live to see performed. Mozart's Requiem (1791) was left unfinished (although "completed" by his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr), and the work – deeply beautiful – remains among the most frequently performed of the composer's works. Rarely at funerals, however.

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (completed in 1823) is among the least performed of his compositions. There's a sad irony in this, given that the composer considered it his greatest work. Along with his Choral Symphony (No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125), the Missa Solemnis occupied the last, great creative period of Beethoven's life, from about 1820 until 1825.

Beethoven's judgments about music were notably superb. But great though the Missa is, most musicologists consider the Choral to be Beethoven's best, followed by the Eroica, several other symphonies, and a handful each of glorious piano sonatas and string quartets. Only then do we get to his Masses, the other being the 1807 Mass in C major, written for the episcopal installation of his friend, student, and patron, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia, Cardinal-Archbishop of Olomouc, for whom he also composed the Piano Trio, Op. 97, known now as the Archduke. Beethoven, being busy and distracted, presented the Mass in C to the Archbishop two years afterthe ceremony.

Of the Missa Solemnis, Beethoven wrote to his friend Andreas Streicher (September 16, 1824): "During the work on this grand Mass, my main purpose was to evoke in both the singers and the auditors [listeners] religious sentiments and to instill them permanently."

I wrote above that neither Mozart nor Beethoven lived to see their final Mass compositions performed, but that's not entirely true in Beethoven's case.

On May 7, 1824. Beethoven, 53, entered the auditorium of Vienna's Kärntnertor Theater, took his place on the podium, turned momentarily to acknowledge the audience, then faced the orchestra, raised his hands, and began to lead the musicians through the 11-minute overture, Die Weihe des Hauses ("The Consecration of the House"), which he had composed two years earlier for the grand reopening of another Vienna venue, the Theater in der Josefstadt. The audience at Kärntnertor enjoyed the overture.

Beethoven then conducted just three settings from Missa Solemnis: Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei. And the audience warmly received the music.

Then the great composer led the premiere of Symphony No. 9.

Nearing the end of the nearly 90-minute masterpiece, Beethoven was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and he was unaware that, all through the evening, the frenzied waving of his arms and animated facial gestures affected not at all the members of the orchestra or of the chorus. They had all been instructed to watch only the Kapellmeister, Michael Umlauf, who had been in ...

By Robert Royal

When great people you have known are dead, their influence on you takes a different form. Parents and extended family and even their friends – if you've been lucky enough to have had them in these troubled days – assume an almost mythological status. We didn't need Freud or Jung to spell this out. Most of us already knew it in our bones. Much of later life, then, becomes a series of starts and stops in conversation with persons dead and forgotten, then remembered, again and again, as we make our way through our own dusty days.

T.S. Eliot got it just right in "Little Gidding":

what the dead had no speech for, when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

You may be wondering by now, dear reader, where all this is headed. I won't keep you in suspense. It's the necessary prelude to a subject dear to many hearts: the seriousness of sports.

This past weekend, like a momentary alignment of bright planets in a clear night sky, we saw the opening of the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl. And the dear shade who has been speaking to me (d'outre-tombe, as the French used to say, before they became Sadducees) is the great James V. Schall, S.J., one of the founders of this site, and author of the seminal essay "On the Seriousness of Sports."

Thanks to the hospitality of Denise and Dennis Bartlett, our two families and the Great Schall (as we used to kid him) passed many a pleasant occasion eating, drinking, and watching sports. And for all the warmth and camaraderie, I have to confess that it's taken me a long time to understand one of the great Jesuit's remarks, which I encountered both in print and in person (and sometimes challenged face-to-face). As he puts it in the essay mentioned above :

the closest the average man ever gets to contemplation in the Greek sense is watching a good, significant sporting event, be it the sixth game of the World Series, the center court at Wimbledon, or the county championship of his daughter's volley ball team.

If this doesn't bring you up short, good for you, because Schall himself admits that it's a "startling theory, but one held with tenacity."

It takes some effort to "get" this. Like many people, I like playing and watching sports of different kinds, this side idolatry. But the crass commercialization of the NFL, the gangsterism of the NBA, and the wreck of college football (and loyalty to a college itself) by the "transfer portal" and NIL payouts to "student athletes," all present serious obstacles to the grasping of Schallian Contemplation. (The designated hitter in baseball is beneath human consideration.) But let's look further.

He specified that he was speaking of contemplation "in the Greek sense." So if you balk at comparing it to Christian asceticism and contemplation, you are right to. This is not that. This may even pose a serious distraction from that. So what's the truth here?

As usual, Schall digs deep for reason and revelation:

• Plato's Laws states that when games are played and enjoyed in a city in a regular way "the serious customs are also allowed to remain undisturbed.

• In the Politics, Aristotle sees play as " a cure for the ills we suffer in working hard, " but sports are even more helpful in that they provide time and space to do things just for their own sake.

• St. Paul, in the famous passage (1 Corinthians) is not ashamed to compare spiritual training to " fighters at the games " who run for a mere perishable wreath, while Christians strive for eternal life.

Schall observes, "Such analogies, such reflections, from such sources ought to cause us to wonder a bit about sports."

Indeed, because sports are one of those things that have appeared in every human society, even well outside our Western tradition, often with great significance. As I learned doing a bit of research into the Mayans before Columbus, for example, several tribes had a kind of "ball game" that resembled...

By Robert Lazu Kmita

Among the countless saints of Italy, few enjoy the renown of Cardinal Charles Borromeo (1538–1584). Alongside Francis of Assisi, Anthony of Padua, Rita of Cascia, and Padre Pio, he is one of those immortals whose icons still adorn numerous churches and Christian homes even nowadays. The heroism of his pastoral work – especially during the infamous plague epidemic of 1576–1578, which decimated the population of Milan and its surroundings – was matched by only one other Catholic hierarch of the same moral stature: his cousin, Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564–1631).

Members of one of the most illustrious families of the Italian high aristocracy, the two Borromeo cousins demonstrated the power of supernatural faith embodied by individuals who, in social life, held ranks and offices of the highest importance. It is worth noting that neither of them renounced their aristocratic titles; rather, they used them for the benefit of the entire community. If Saint Charles was a principal architect of the epochal Council of Trent, making remarkable efforts in catechesis and Christian theological formation, Federico, in turn – besides founding the Ambrosian Library – left us an impressive treasure of writings.

Theology, philosophy, moral theology and Christian asceticism, biblical studies and the exegesis of sacred texts, canon law and civil law – in short, all the essential disciplines were areas in which he demonstrated true mastery.

The surprise, however, lies in his writings on sacred art. The first of these, a treatise entitled De Pictura Sacra (1624), is probably the most important work in the entire Christian tradition devoted to the visual arts. Another of his writings, Musaeum (1625), is a genuine work of criticism, undertaken from both an aesthetic and a theological perspective. In fact, this is the point of crucial importance in Cardinal Federico's vision: aesthetic beauty is inseparable from moral beauty.

For a work of art to be truly beautiful, it must satisfy both the demands of the craft that makes it possible, and the demands appropriate to a content meant to raise our souls toward God. The Apostle Paul asked Christian women to respect the primacy of inner, spiritual beauty, to which external beauty must be subordinated. (1 Timothy 2:9) Federico Borromeo asks Christian painters and sculptors to respect not only the eyes of the viewers, but also their souls.

He unifies aesthetics and morality through one of the most interesting notions in the history and theory both of art and of metaphysics: decorum. This word, which we usually understand as referring to outward demeanor and dress, signifies something far deeper in the treatise De Pictura Sacra. Inspired by the thought of Pythagoras as well as by the Christianized Neoplatonism of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, it points to the profound harmony of all the elements that participate in a work's creation. The harmony of all the architectural elements of a Gothic cathedral allows the manifestation of its extraordinary beauty.

As understood by Federico Borromeo, decorum refers not only to the harmony of external elements, but also of the internal ones. What results from observing the rules that allow the creation of a harmonious painting is the manifestation of beauty. Cardinal Federico himself expresses it thus:

An important part of good human conduct has been to seek out the quality known as decorum. It brings particular pleasure to the minds of viewers and can be described as a kind of luminous splendor, or perhaps as a flower growing out of every movement and activity, that refreshes the mind. This pleasure or delight can be implanted into anything that is charming or graceful, and through artistic skill it can inspire images.

The "flower" that blossoms in the minds of those who contemplate a work in which harmony is properly respected is beauty itself, shining like a discreet light that simultaneously delights the eyes, the heart, and the intellect. ...

By Joseph R. Wood.

As I convert, I've heard some wonderful stories of other people's conversions. Many warrant publication because of the unexpected ways that God's grace often reaches us. And interest in conversion, at least among Christians, is widespread, real, and often touching.

My own story is mundane, a version of Walker Percy's explanation of why he chose Catholicism: What else is there? But some conversion journeys are much more riveting. What is conversion, and what does it demand?

In the second part of the Divine Comedy – Purgatorio – Dante and his guide Virgil have emerged from Hell, which presented trials for them and eternal tribulations for those who will never emerge. It was a rough journey through Inferno: hostile demons, treacherous terrain, and worst of all, the horrors Dante sees the damned undergo with no hope of salvation.

Only Dante's poetic genius, aided by the virtuous direction of his fellow poet and mentor Virgil, allows him to convey something of the wretchedness he has observed. Now he looks forward to an easier progress through Purgatory, which will bring its own challenges, including a challenge to Dante to deliver even better poetry than he had in Inferno. Only a better poetic product suits the better place.

Now, the prospect of eternal salvation, however distant but ultimately assured, replaces the despair of eternal damnation.

To run its course through smoother water

the small bark of my wit now hoists its sail,

leaving that cruel sea behind.

Now I shall sing the second kingdom,

there where the soul of man is cleansed,

made worthy to ascend to Heaven.

Here from the dead let poetry rise up,

O sacred Muses.

(Purgatorio Canto 1 1 through 8, Hollander trans.)

Dante opens this second cantica with a comparison of his work to a second, smoother voyage. He trips quickly along to another metaphor, his poetic work as singing, bringing forth a song that will carry the reality of this kingdom of the saved to his reader-listener.

This new song of voyage actually seems to begin at the end of Inferno, with a change in Dante himself. In the final canto of that volume, Virgil has escorted Dante to Dis, the frozen floor of Hell, where Satan, "the creature who was once so fair of face," rests unrestfully after his fall from Heaven:

Then how faint and frozen I became,

reader, do not ask, for I do not write it,

since any words would fail to be enough.

I did not die, nor did I stay alive.

Imagine, if you have the wit,

what I became, deprived of both.

(Inferno 34 22 through 27)

At this moment, Dante is not "dead or alive," as the saying goes, but neither. He is suspended between the only two states of being that we attribute to men.

As Robert Hollander explains in his notes, many commentators see this as a moment of conversion for Dante, when his "fear of Hell becomes the fear of God." Dante passes "from the state of death to the state of living in God's forgiveness." Other commentators describe this moment as "the culmination of the penitential imitation of Christ in the descent into Hell, symbolically the pilgrim's death to sin, that is, the death of the 'old man.'"

Dante's descent to Dis now becomes an ascent, first to Purgatory, then on to Paradise.

Only that conversion readies Dante for his second voyage through the cleansing of Purgatory to the happiness of Heaven, and prepares him to report that second journey poetically and musically. Dante went through Hell to turn to God and be given the poetic gifts to complete the Comedy.

In his book, Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us, Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen begins with St. Augustine and moves through St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross (and a few other residents of Paradise) to offer a beautiful account of conversion as abandonment to divine will. In his conclusion, he turns his account over to a Flemish priest who describes a radical turning to God:

For years. . .I had a dream. I sat completely alone on the earth. Compl...

By Daniel B. Gallagher

There will be a lot of talk about freedom during this 250th anniversary of our nation. Intellectual elites are already debating whether the Constitution envisions limitations upon citizens' freedom, and if so, what those limitations are. The Bill of Rights ostensibly places limits on government, while subsequent interpretations of the First Amendment place limits on – for example – freedom of speech, curbing obscenity, incitement to violence, and defamation.

Running up to this Semiquincentennial celebration, some have even been questioning whether the political project of liberalism itself presents a false conception of human freedom. If Patrick Deneen's 2018 Why Liberalism Failed didn't make us uncomfortable enough with the Lockean ideas underlying the American founding, his Regime Change: Towards a Postliberal Future, published five years later, made us really squirm. "Liberalism has failed," Deneen writes, "not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself." In other words, liberalism "has failed because it has succeeded."

If there is any hope for a counter-case to Deneen's "postliberalism," it must rely on a robust conception of the relationship between freedom and truth. To put it simply, it's not entirely correct to say that the role of truth is to "limit" freedom, as if the main consequence of a moral imperative against killing, for example, is that it narrows the range of permissible actions towards other human beings; or that the immorality of sexual acts outside of marriage simply restricts what we can do with our bodies and what we can do with the bodies of others.

The recent activities of ICE have provoked vigorous debate over the Fourth Amendment, which acknowledges our right "to be secure. . .against unreasonable searches and seizures." The primary purpose of that Amendment is to limit the power of government, but it also implies limits to a citizen's right to resist the actions of law enforcement. If the search is reasonable, the one being searched is obliged to comply.

These are crucial issues, but they can easily cloud our perception of a deeper relationship between freedom and truth. That is why recent popes have reminded us that truth, properly understood, doesn't narrow our horizons, but broadens them. To say that freedom – be it political or moral – is "bound" by truth does not so much mean that the human will is intrinsically dangerous apart from truth, but rather that the human will is fundamentally ordered to an end, and that end cannot be achieved if not chosen freely.

The difference is subtle but critical. In the moral life, it is the difference between acting only to avoid evil and acting wholly to achieve the good. In political life, it is the difference between refraining from breaking the law and placing oneself wholeheartedly at the service of the common good.

The difference is even more important when we place the relationship between freedom and truth within the context of Christian faith, which, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, allows us to perceive the "'grammar' written on human hearts by the divine Creator." Faith empowers us to understand better that:

the norms of the natural law should not be viewed as externally imposed decrees, as restraints upon human freedom. Rather, they should be welcomed as a call to carry out faithfully the universal divine plan inscribed in the nature of human beings.

The liberating force of truth is all the more apparent if we contrast a democratic republic with an authoritarian state. The real problem for Chavismo in Venezuela, for example, has not been human freedom, but truth. And Chavez's successor, Nicolás Maduro, learned as well (as had Mao, Stalin, Fidel, and other socialist leaders) that you can detain political prisoners, but you cannot deprive them of their will. Figures like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Viktor Frankl, Yeonmi Park, Jimmy Lai, and scores of others prove this again and again.

What you can do is substitu...

by Stephen P. White

It snowed last week here in the nation's capital, and everything shut down. This storm was unusual, not so much for the amount of snow (about five inches where I live) but for the several inches of sleet that piled on top of the snow and then promptly froze into a solid mass, like concrete.

The storm dumped much more snow farther north and much more ice farther south and west, causing massive power outages, taking down trees, and the like. The storm even spawned a handful of tornadoes. Well over 100 deaths have been attributed to the storm, which already has its own Wikipedia page.

Chances are, unless you live out West or in Southern Florida, you have your own stories about this storm.

In my neighborhood, the storm was a significant inconvenience, but hardly rose to the level of a catastrophe. Almost two weeks later, much of my street still has not been plowed. Sidewalks are mostly un-shoveled and impassable. Street parking is nearly impossible except after great excavations. My children were out of school for a solid week, followed by several days of delayed starts. They are only just now returning to something like a normal schedule.

Meanwhile, the piles of snow and ice stacked everywhere give every indication that they intend to hang around well into March.

But this is not really a column about the weather, however noteworthy that has been.

Scheduled holidays – Christmas break, for example – have a way of filling up with the usual business of carefully planned activities. But the unplanned suspension of the rhythms of ordinary life that we've had, this past week and more, had the opposite effect. Instead of our days filling up with long-planned activities, these days have been a time of extended and delightful spontaneity.

The night before the snow began to fall, Mass at the local parishes was unusually crowded as families and neighbors who rarely attend Saturday night anticipatory packed in to meet their Sunday obligation before the weather set in. One local parish even added an extra Saturday night Mass at the last minute to accommodate everyone.

It is one thing to see the usual faces at your usual Sunday Mass time. But to see the whole parish crowding into the church as if it were Christmas Eve created a palpable sense of real solidarity. There we all were, at an unusual hour, to do the last but most important thing in preparation for the coming storm.

Neighbors, at least where I live, got an extra opportunity to help one another out. Checking in before the storm, chiseling one another out from the ice afterward. Friends trudged down the half-cleared street to share an impromptu happy hour while the kids sledded down the hill. Our hoard of supplies (mostly snacks and hot cocoa) was quickly depleted.

There's something wholesome in the way a community shows its character when the comforts and self-sufficiency of modern life are threatened (just gently, but enough to notice) by the forces of nature. The need for solidarity – in the parish, between neighbors, etc. – rises to the surface. There is a delight in being consciously aware that my neighbor needs me and I need him – and that we are in this together.

When reminders of this sort come without too much danger to life or limb, it is a grace. The superfluous nature of so much that fills our everyday lives becomes evident. So much busyness, even busyness about good things, comes to a halt, and we suddenly see what we must have and what we can do without.

One of the joys of having a wood-burning fireplace is that, when the weather turns really nasty, simply remaining inside, toasty and warm, feels like an achievement. One is accomplishing a feat of survival. It is also an incitement to gratitude for things otherwise taken for granted; things like a roof over one's head, electricity, and central heating.

But there is also a kind of excitement in having to do without all our usual comforts and conveniences (again, so long as the danger is not too great...

By Auguste Meyrat

What is a feminist? This used to be an easy question to answer. When feminism simply meant equal rights and opportunities for women, most people felt comfortable identifying as such. After all, who could be against women having the right to vote and owning property?

Even as feminists have broken glass ceiling after glass ceiling, however, it has become less clear what their goals are anymore. Worse still, the rise of transgenderism has undermined the core claims of feminism by questioning the objective reality of womanhood.

Perhaps the touted benefits of the movement were overblown, and its history and underlying principles deserve more scrutiny. Perhaps those currently embracing this movement should reconsider what exactly they have accepted.

One person to guide this reconsideration is Dr. Carrie Gress, a sometime TCT contributor, in her new book Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can't Be Fused With Christianity. Far from being an unalloyed good that has empowered and liberated women, without any tradeoffs, Gress exposes the very roots of the feminist movement, which make it incompatible with the Christian Gospel. As she dismantles the many myths of feminism, she opens up much-needed inquiries into what a true Christian feminism would look like for people today.

Gress begins her case with the founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, who applied the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality in her celebrated pamphlet A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In line with her rationalist unitarianism, Wollstonecraft believed "that priests, pastors, or any kind of male authority – even Jesus – were an obstacle to female potential and divine life. Instead, reason. . . was women's access point to God." Thus, from the very beginning, the main goals of feminism were liberation and empowerment, and the main obstacle was Christianity.

Even so, Wollstonecraft and other like-minded feminists often made common cause with Christian social reformers like Hannah More, combating the evils of slavery, child exploitation, and mass alcoholism. Secular feminists, however, eventually came to dominate the movement, readopting a generally hostile view of Christianity. Many of them, including American heroines Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were even involved in spiritualism and the occult.

This in turn laid the groundwork for feminists afterward to equate true feminism with a total rejection of sexual boundaries and roles. Luminaries like Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Sanger, and Betty Friedan all concluded that sex was a social construct that was fabricated and reinforced by patriarchal institutions. Therefore, it was their job to dismantle these institutions, disempower men, and become their own gods. Autonomy, the "new idol" of the feminist movement, demanded nothing less.

Thus, a movement once associated with temperance, suffrage, and protecting the family degenerated into one dedicated to promiscuity, misandry, and witchcraft. Whenever this inevitably resulted in further misery and exploitation for women at large, feminists would reflexively blame systemic sexism and demand still more privileges for women to remedy the issue.

Beyond leading so many women astray with false promises and incoherent arguments, Gress shows how modern feminism has completely obscured the deeper realities of womanhood. Instead of compromising with this ideology, Gress recommends reframing the issue with non-ideological language:

Words like woman, anthropology, male and female, common good, complementarity, equal in dignity, subsidiarity and solidarity, and even patriarchy could be used with precision. It would also have the advantage of forcing us to find new ways to describe complex realities beyond sound bites.

In other words, women should stop trying to deny their own femininity by closing their eyes and trying to be the same as men.

Gress fits this idea within the Christian context as she confronts the effort...

By Randall Smith.

Philosophers since the time of Plato have spoken about the "transcendental" properties of being – properties that all beings have, such as Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Something we might learn from this list is that truth is a good.

No one wants to be lied to. We want bread; we want the truth. We may even want the truth more than we want bread. The truth is desirable, like beauty. The truth moves us the way beauty does. We are happy when we get the right answer in math or figure out how to solve a problem. But we are also drawn to things that seem true but aren't. These are illusory goods. Pursuing them is like running after a mirage of water in the desert.

Christians believe that the ultimate source of truth is God, since He is the ultimate source of all being, goodness, and beauty. We might describe this as the vertical dimension of truth: truth as it exists in the mind of God. But since, apart from the important bits we get from divine revelation, we cannot know the mind of God, we must have recourse to what I will call the "horizontal" source of truth.

We gain knowledge through our senses and by reasoning about the created world. But contrary to the hyper-individualism of thinkers like Descartes, who imagined he could build up a store of knowledge by himself through his own deductive logic, we come to know things in communion with others. We learn by conversing with others and by having our thoughts, presuppositions, and conclusions challenged.

According to Thomas Aquinas – following an idea he found in the works of Cicero and Aristotle – human beings have an inclination proper to their nature to know the truth about the highest things and to live in society. They are related. We gain the truth by living with others.

And we can only live successfully with others if we have a common dedication to the truth. But a common dedication to the truth means that I cannot merely rest in "my" truth. If I want the truth, I must be open to correction, and I must resist the temptation to rest in the comforts of an illusory "truth."

To fail to do justice to the truth would be an offense not only against my neighbor, but also against God, the source of all truth. We are commanded in the Decalogue not to lie, but we must also be positively devoted to the fullness of truth. It would be foolish to imagine that this devotion to God and the truth would not require much from us – no patience, no sacrifice, no discipline. It almost certainly will.

In this spirit, let me recommend a book with some useful, practical advice: May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do about It by Alex Edmans. Edmans reviews some of the biases that divert us from the truth.

One common one is called confirmation bias. This is when we accept a claim uncritically if it confirms what we'd like to be true, even if there might be alternative explanations. We also do the reverse: we reject claims we dislike and invent alternative explanations to justify our initial convictions and dismiss contrary evidence. It is common in contemporary disputes that someone who doesn't like information will find a reason to ignore it, while a supporter will view it as the gospel truth.

Not only is bias found in the interpretation of evidence, it is also found concerning what information we gather in the first place. We only look for evidence that confirms our initial hunch and don't dare poke around for something that might contradict it. Studies suggest that more knowledge rarely makes people more aware of the need to consider both sides; rather, it often gives people more reasons to praise opinions they share and deride those they don't.

Edmans perceptively analyzes the different problems that arise when we mistake statements for facts, facts for data, data for evidence, and evidence for proof. People accept statements as facts, even if the information behind them is unreliable or if the statement is broad and vague...

By Robert Royal.

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Now for today's column..

Several friends have recently asked for prayers as mothers, friends, even distant acquaintances are seriously ill or lie on their deathbeds. News comes, too, for those of us with memories of storied moments in sports that the great Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz (undefeated in 1988 and a national championship) has entered hospice care. We talk a great deal these days about the loss of the "Christian anthropology," which is to say the deeper meaning of being human in this world. But one reason for that loss, surely, is that we've also lost the main part of the story, the truth that there's an afterlife, in the next world. And that, therefore, what we do has meaning here and eternal consequences.

The recent prayer requests happened to coincide, for me, with seeing, by chance, on an overladen shelf, Seamus Heaney's lively translation of Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid. And pulling it down for yet another re-reading. It's where Aeneas enters the underworld and learns things about souls in the afterlife and the future of Rome.

I've loved Virgil since I first read him at fifteen, and when I discovered Dante a few years later, it was easy to appreciate their deep natural affinity. Dante is probably the only poet whose portrayal of the afterlife surpasses Virgil's. But that's because the "Christian anthropology" tells a larger story about life after death than even the best of pagan speculations (e.g., Plato and Cicero).

St. Augustine, too, loved the Aeneid and felt guilty, as a Christian, about an attachment to a pagan poem. But he was, maybe, over-scrupulous. The phrase anima naturaliter christiana ("a naturally Christian soul") was early applied to Virgil. That was just one of many reasons why Dante (in the Divine Comedy) could take Virgil as his guide through Hell and Purgatory (though, out of respect for Virgil's paganism, Dante has him depart before Paradise).

In fact, before Dante and Virgil enter the underworld, Dante wants to beg off. He tells Virgil that it's understandable why St. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, went to Heaven and came back. As St. Paul himself had said:

I know someone in Christ who, fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows), was caught up to the third heaven. And I know that this person. . . .heard ineffable things, which no one may utter. (2 Corinthians 12:2-4)

And Aeneas, says Dante, was worthy to go there, too, since his travels (at least in Virgil's telling) led to the founding of Rome, which was to become the capital of an Empire and seat of the Catholic Church.

Yet Dante, understandably, sputters:

But I? To travel there? Who grants that?

I'm not Aeneas, nor am I Paul.

For that, neither I nor any other thinks me worthy. (Baxter trans.)

Virgil explains: this is willed in Heaven, and a whole series of saints – including the woman Dante knew as Beatrice on earth – has set it all in motion.

And as other indications suggest in that greatest of Christian poems by the greatest of Christian poets, this is a journey that we all must make. Worthiness or unworthiness is not the main point. How we live here in the brief time allotted us has a deep historical significance and an eternal destiny – for some, as even Virgil's pagan vision of the underworld made clear, eternal punishments, for others perpetual joy.

Indeed, the phrase anima naturaliter christiana, which was said especially of Virgil because of his leanings, even as a pagan, towards Christian truths, was used even more broadly in the early Church.

I only discovered this recently, but it was the early Christian theologian Tertullian who coined the phrase – and...