The Catholic Thing

by James Patrick Reid.

Greater than the roar of mighty waters,

more glorious than the surging of the sea,

the Lord is glorious on high.

Truly thy decrees are to be trusted (Psalm 92/93:4)

Destructive floods might tempt one to question the Lord's governance of Creation or the trustworthiness of his decrees. But water holds a lesson for us, a lesson that was not lost on Leonardo da Vinci, whose drawings and notes explore the potential of moving water for good or ill. Leonardo discovered order within the apparent chaos and force of rushing water.

The association of water with chaos dates to the dawn of Creation: "And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep." (Genesis 1:2) In Scriptural imagery, deep water is the bastion of demons. Water represents all matter insofar as it is shapeless and chaotic, prone to rebellion, waiting to be formed and made luminous. In the beginning, the Spirit of God moved over the waters to bring order out of chaos, but then man's sin stirred back up the dark depths of rebellion.

In the end, the Lord will banish this abyss of darkness from the earth; the sea will be no more. (Apocalypse chapter 21: verse 1) Meanwhile, in His Passion and Resurrection, the paschal mystery into which we are baptized, the Lord divides the sea by His strength; He breaks the heads of the dragons in the waters. (Psalm 74:13)

Christ sanctifies the waters by His descent into the Jordan, an anticipation of His death whereby He defeats the devil. The illumined water becomes an instrument of salvation; and, as the Eastern Church sings on the feast of the Lord's Baptism, "today mystical waters water all creation."

In the victory of Christ, the dark, formless abysses are filled with light, and the transformation of all creation is revealed: "Behold, I make all things new." The redemption of man begins with the purification and redemption of matter, in the blessing of the water in which he is baptized, as the Lord "works salvation in the midst of the earth." (Psalm 74:12)

The work of artists imitates the Lord's forming and transforming work. An artist plunges his hands into rudimentary matter to transform it, drawing forth a higher and more luminous form. Form, in nature and in art, always results from movement and expresses movement.

Hence, the key to good drawing is the gesture, the movement of a form, and the choreography of thoroughly coordinated movements in any composite form or group of forms. Look, for example, at this landscape drawn by Thomas Gainsborough (in the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The artist feels the movements of the hills and valleys like rolling waves, sweeping down from the right, recoiling and rising on the left. The rightward surge of the mountain is repeated and amplified by the bright shape in the sky and balanced by the left-leaning tree.

Or consider this watercolor by John Sell Cotman (in the British Museum).

The foreground sweeps in and back toward the factory whose rising smoke rhymes with cloud shapes that move across the sky toward the left, until these meet nearly vertical clouds set within a triangular zone of blue sky that brings us down to the pair of clouds, one gray and one bright and warm, that reach in from the left to balance and interlock with the large gray cloud that pushes from the right.

The bright cloud is augmented by the bright reflective river below it, reaching down and forward towards us on the left in balanced tension with the backward movement of the land on the right. The ship's tall mast, entrained by the mighty sweep of that land on the right, leans in its direction, threatening to unbalance the entire scene.

The bright cloud, however, grabs a hold of it to keep it from tilting any further. (Note that all the layers of space interact within the picture plane, just as near and far, past and present, interact in consciousness.) Balanced tensions manifest thorough organization of powerful forces.

In each of these artworks (as in thousand...

By Fr. Jerry J. Pokorsky

Reverence and contempt for the rule of law exert a reciprocal and formative influence on both Church and secular leadership. When religious leaders exhibit implicit contempt for legal order, they weaken respect for the rule of law among secular authorities; when secular leaders disregard the rule of law – particularly by distorting the meaning of words – they erode moral seriousness within the Church. Genuine cultural renewal, therefore, depends on restoring reverence for truth in language and for the rule of law, both in personal conscience and in public governance.

The teachings of the Catholic Church are grounded in the Deposit of Faith as handed down from the Apostles. This Deposit is preserved and transmitted through Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium. Priests, bishops, and popes, by the grace of Holy Orders, serve as authoritative guardians of this faith. They are stewards, not authors. The laity, in turn, receives the faith through the Church.

Clergy teach principles of faith and morals. The laity then apply those principles to the concrete circumstances of their lives through prudential judgment properly their own. The faithful act as moral agents as free members of the Mystical Body of Christ. The Christian moral life begins with the question, "What does God, via the Church, teach?" It continues with a second, equally demanding question: "With God's grace and through my encounter with the sacraments, how am I to live accordingly?"

A parallel structure exists in the governing framework of the United States. The Declaration of Independence, followed by the Constitution and amendments, forms the philosophical and legal foundation of American law. Congress is charged with enacting laws in a manner consistent with the Constitution. The president executes those laws within constitutional limits. The Supreme Court adjudicates disputes concerning the constitutionality of laws and governmental actions. Like the Church's Deposit of Faith, the Constitution is something received and interpreted, not reinvented anew by each generation.

Ideally, a legislator approaches proposed laws with disciplined moral and constitutional reasoning. First, a wise legislator must ask whether a proposed law or spending plan is constitutional. If it is not, the law must be opposed, regardless of its popularity. If it is constitutional, the next question is whether it advances the policies preferred by constituents. If it does, the legislator should vote in favor; if not, the legislator should oppose it.

A legislator may vote, however, for a constitutional law that does not immediately serve constituent interests. This may support a broader political vision that ultimately benefits both the nation and its constituents. Legislators may rightly invoke conscience and the requirements of natural law (the law of God written on our hearts) and legitimate political exigencies for guidance.

In practice, the American political system has drifted from its constitutional moorings. Legislators rarely oppose measures on the grounds that they exceed constitutional limits. This erosion is most visible in war powers: although the Constitution assigns Congress the authority to declare war, America has not deferred to that authority since World War II, engaging instead in major conflicts – from Korea and Vietnam to the Middle East – without formal constitutional debate.

Similarly, politicians often do not oppose large government spending programs on constitutional grounds. These patterns suggest a significant breakdown in the rule of law, replaced by power politics. Power politics is increasingly rooted in financial influence rather than constitutional principle. Empirical studies consistently show that candidates who significantly outspend their opponents win congressional races at a markedly higher rate.

Meanwhile, a significant portion of voters increasingly expect their leaders to dispense government benefits detac...

By Mary Eberstadt.

But first a Note to readers in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia: TCT's Editor-in-Chief, Robert Royal, will speak about "The Heart of Saint John Henry Newman" at St. Raymond of Peñafort tomorrow after the 9 AM Mass. See the flier for details.

Now for today's column...

In his excellent recent book, Strange New World, Carl Trueman cautions Christians against naïve optimism in our "chaotic, uncharted, and dark era." It's a judicious point. There is plenty in today's culture to shock anyone into sobriety, religious believers most of all. At the same time, there's a case to be made for "informed optimism," or rational grounds for believing that Christianity will receive a more serious hearing in the West in years to come.

For over sixty years, after all, we have lived under the tyranny of a collective declaration that I am my own, and no one else's – that I decide matters of life, and the giving, taking, or preventing of life; that I, and no one else, have the right to do with my body whatever I see fit.

And this repudiation of the truth that we are not our own can now be judged by its fruits, which are everywhere around us. The declaration that I am my own, the fundamental battle cry of the sexual revolution, has rendered life radically different, and in several respects, worse for us than for any other human beings in history.

That is a large claim. The record bears it out.

Living by the credo I am my own, and no one else's has created massive suffering unnoticed until recently by anyone but the believers. That ingrained denial is now changing – and it is changing precisely because the damage out there has become unavoidable.

The toll of the idol of autonomy can be found all over: in today's legions of unhinged young people, in rates of psychological problems that have been rising for decades, in academic studies of loneliness, in social unrest, in the increasingly expressed wistfulness of a world missing its children. The verdict is in.

Further, the declaration that I am my own when it comes to sex and sexual pleasure has resulted in the single biggest impediment to romance and family and marriage today: the compulsive consumption of pornography by large numbers of young men, and some young women.

As therapists know, one result of that obsession is individuals rendered incapable of real-time romance. This terrible outcome, which may be the most terrible of all the revolution's outcomes, turns that declaration I am my own, and no one else's, into an epitaph for love itself.

This brings us, paradoxically, to a first ground for hope. So patent and inarguable is the damage out there that voices outside religious orbits have finally started calling attention to it.

New skepticism, and new indictments of unbridled sexual autonomy, are now issuing – including from writers who say they would rather not align themselves with traditional Christian teaching, but that logic and evidence led them to the same vicinity, nonetheless.

This turn toward revisionism, too, is all to the good. To have secular voices align with Church teaching on social issues, however reluctantly, and regardless of whether they credit Christians or Christianity at all, is a clear win for the Cause.

This points us to one more source of hope. In another turn that would not have been predicted even ten years ago, religious conversion and observance are no longer unheard of, even on the most elite and secularized campuses. In fact, they are on the increase – as liberal intellectual Mark Lilla noted last year (and uneasily) in an essay for the New York Review of Books about his own campus, Columbia University.

"In the past decade," he observed, "interest in Catholic ideas and practice has been growing among right-leaning intellectual elites, and it is not unusual to meet young conservatives at Ivy League institutions who have converted or renewed their faith since coming to college."

Columbia is not alone. Last spring, I gave talks at...

By Michael Pakaluk

Loyalty is a republican virtue, and more than that. "The American people have been chary of the word loyalty, perhaps because they regard it as the correlative of royalty," Orestes Brownson says, in his great work on our country, The American Republic, "but loyalty is rather the correlative of law."

That fact pops up from a cursory glance at the components of the word. It clearly comes from the French for law,loi. Loyalty is loi-alty. In Medieval Latin, it was simply legalitas. Loyalty is most fundamentally lawfulness.

But loyalty is not simply "a" virtue, if Brownson is correct. Recall he was writing in 1865, just after disloyal men, the "rebels," had been put down, and hundreds of thousands of loyal men gave up their lives for their country. Let us hear him out:

Loyalty is the highest, noblest, and most generous of human virtues, and is the human element of that sublime love or charity which the inspired Apostle tells us is the fulfilment of the law. It has in it the principle of devotion, of self-sacrifice, and is, of all human virtues, that which renders man the most Godlike. There is nothing great, generous, good, or heroic of which a truly loyal people are not capable, and nothing mean, base, cruel, brutal, criminal, detestable, not to be expected of a really disloyal people.

So, the stakes are high for this virtue, loyalty.

And yet, it seems correct to say, our Catholic tradition in its system of ethics at least does not give direct guidance in it. I say "in its system" because who can be a better instructor in the nature of loyalty than St. Thomas More with his martyrdom and "the King's good servant and God's first"?

And yet there is no classical virtue in St. Thomas that quite corresponds to it, and the Catechism is just about silent about it. "Each man rightly owes loyalty to the communities of which he is a part" (§ 1880), the English translation has, but the Latin and French say, more simply, that he needs to be devoted to those communities, which is something else.

Brownson seems to have believed that it was impossible for what we would call "a liberal" to be loyal at all. Define a liberal as someone who believes that we are under no obligation that we have not contracted into. A mother's obligation to her child, then, comes from the fact that she has agreed to bear him to term. A Christian's obligation to believe comes from his commitment to the faith as a mature adult. A citizen's obligation to obey the law comes from the fact that he somehow has participated in a social contract by which he has "alienated" certain claims to a government. He is loyal and lawful only in the sense that he wishes to be true to himself and his word.

But Brownson places loyalty first among human virtues because it is a recognition of the authority of God and his law, flowing down from above, through a government responsible for the common good of some definite people, rooted in some definite place. We are bound by God's law because He is our Creator, and He is true and just, quite apart from what we have agreed to. That is why the self-sacrifice of a soldier on the field of battle in a just cause can be so admirable and even fruitful, because it is a return back to God of the gift of one's life.

Loyalty so understood ethically requires personification. It is for the motherland or fatherland, or for the nation in relation to the Father of the Country.

St. Pope John Paul II's famous homily in Victory Square, Warsaw, before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, is a hymn to loyalty, "I wish to kneel before this tomb to venerate every seed that falls into the earth and dies and thus bears fruit."

And then he generalizes and, without quite saying so explicitly, makes loyalty the animating virtue for the entire life of a citizen and patriot:

It may be the seed of the blood of a soldier shed on the battlefield, or the sacrifice of martyrdom in concentration camps or in prisons. It may be the seed of hard daily toil, with t...

But first a note from Robert Royal: Many people may be unaware that we're in the middle of Catholic Schools Week. As a remedy, we're offering something special today: two columns, one making a strong case for what Catholic education is, and another about how it is equipped to confront a new challenger. Enjoy and be aware.

Now for The Great Abdication by Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg

If you send your children to a Catholic school, you should ask the principal or a teacher if they can answer two questions: "What is a human person?" and "What is the purpose of an education?"

You'll likely hear about "21st century skills," "socialization," or "preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet." So, despite the crucifixes on the walls and religion classes, your principals and teachers generally can't tell you what a student is or what education is ultimately for.

This is not individual failure. It's the inevitable result of what is properly named the Great Abdication: the systematic elimination of formal and final causes from modern education's theoretical framework.

Following a scheme that goes all the way back to Aristotle and was adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Intellectual Tradition has recognized four explanatory factors or principles necessary to understand anything fully:

Material Cause: What is a thing made of?

Efficient Cause: How is it made?

Formal Cause: What is it? (What is its nature?)

Final Cause: What is it for? (What is its ultimate end or perfection?)

Modern education has eliminated the last two in schools and colleges. It denies fixed human nature (no formal cause) and refuses to name a transcendent purpose (no final cause). This makes authentic Catholic education impossible.

Without formal cause, Catholic schools cannot articulate – and therefore do not even know – what their students are. Instead of affirming that each child is a rational soul created in God's image (Genesis 1:27), such institutions have been conditioned to treat children as if they are self-creating beings whose self-esteem is of the highest importance.

St. Augustine wrote: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." Education that ignores this primary orientation toward God as our final cause cannot form human persons; it can only deform them. Public schools aim at secular metrics like test scores, college admissions, and career goals. Sadly, most Catholic schools do the same. As St. Paul warned, we have "conformed to this world." (Romans 12:2)

A Catholic school must acknowledge the crucial truth that all human beings have a soul that survives bodily death. An eternal soul requires eternal ends. Without true final causes, both natural and supernatural, Catholic schools cannot answer a simple question: "What is the purpose of Catholic education?"

The natural ends of a Catholic education are to acquire the intellectual and moral virtues. The ultimate end (as Josef Pieper reminds us, can be found in St. Thomas Aquinas) is the state in which "our powers are fully realized and fully at rest face to face with God for all eternity."

It may seem impossibly abstract, but True Catholic education aims at the Beatific Vision.

Pope Pius XI wrote in Divini Illius Magistri that Christian education must form "the true and perfect Christian. . .the supernatural man who thinks, judges, and acts constantly in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of Christ."

Can a school form the "true Christian" if it fails to define what a human person is or what human perfection means? While some Catholic schools are recovering the classical tradition, the vast majority have succumbed to the Great Abdication promoted by secular humanist education.

You don't need a philosophy degree to see this abdication. Walk into any Catholic school and observe: When a student misbehaves, do teachers correct the objective disorder in the child's will and guide him toward virtue? (Proverbs 22:6) Or do th...

By Kristen Ziccarelli

From the outset of Pope Leo XIV's pontificate, speculation has swirled around his stance on artificial intelligence (AI). Though an official AI encyclical has yet to be released, the Holy Father has made several comments on the matter, with some most recently in an address to young Americans late last year. Then, he stated definitively that "AI cannot offer real wisdom. It won't stand in wonder, in authentic wonder, before the beauty of God's creation. AI can never replace the unique gift that you are to the world."

As his comments suggest, the dangers of a pseudo-spiritual AI culture are indeed related to the demographic crisis unfolding across the West. A generation that cannot marvel at Creation, without "wonder" and "wisdom," will struggle to welcome new life into it. The younger generation no longer dreams of children, and the consequences are profound. Advancing demographic decline is becoming a serious issue: fertility rates are well below replacement level, populations are aging, and the cracks created by the strained population are starting to show.

Right now, Europe already has an average total fertility rate (TFR) of about 1.4 children per woman, significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1 necessary for population maintenance. Within the European Union in 2023, the TFR stood at about 1.38 live births per woman, and more than a third of EU countries had rates at or below 1.3.

The lingering spiritual emptiness, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, is beset by an air of all-around disenchantment, devoid of a sense of mystery and transcendence. Our ongoing cultural crisis has already produced negative demographic effects and will continue to do so without a recovery of the spirit of self-sacrifice and service that the pope referred to in his address.

Many are quick to relegate the demographic crisis to a problem of economics. But the desire to bear children originates from much more than whether one is financially stable or can afford to buy a house. People have been poor before, and they still welcomed large families into their lives. My generation grew up alongside technology, in an age obsessed with optimization. Now, we're beginning to engage with AI. Our sense of wonder has been definitively dulled. How can anyone expect us to bring new life into the world when we are spiritually unwilling to replenish it?

To the ears of an average secular Gen Z man, having a wife and family is like telling them to take on an all-consuming burden that will only worsen their place in the materialistic, finite universe. If we think our birth is an accident rather than a gift from God, how can we possibly think of children as more than an obligation?

Since most of us can remember, our world has been mediated through algorithmic feeds, quantified through metrics, and now tailored by AI. The radical leap of faith required to welcome new life – another human being, a child – is, indeed, unimaginable. If we cannot imagine a world other than the one we already occupy, why imagine children – a choice that inherently admits unpredictability?

As the Church has often stated, technology can make life better and safer. But of course, it cannot replace the innate desire in our hearts for meaning beyond consumption or convenience. With that angle in mind, our present demographic decline is almost inevitable. How do we expect to avoid extinction as a people if we do not value life, do not conceive of parenthood as a vocation, and do not ground our policymaking and culture in the pro-life ethic? If the West truly wants to flourish – not merely survive, but flourish – then the answer cannot be more gadgets, more subsidies, more tax credits.

What's needed is a renewal of vision, beginning with recovering a sense of the sacred in human life, where we open our hearts to mystery, to the transcendent, to miracles. Art, music, nature, prayer, and community are important conduits of culture, and have the power to convey the anc...

By Brad Miner

War is a dreadful thing. If we find glory in it, it's because we admire soldiers for their bravery, prowess, and sacrifice. I've known soldiers who march in parades on Memorial Day or the Fourth of July and are proud of their service, exactly as on Saint Crispian's Day at Agincourt, Henry V (according to the Bard) promised his soldiers:

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.

And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words. . .

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.

But I have also known soldiers and Marines who, though they have love and the fondest memories of the "band of brothers" with whom they served, never march, or wear their ribbons and medals, or even a baseball cap that bears a unit insignia. And they do not "talk about the war." My father (WWII) and my older son (Iraq) are like that, although both were officers who came late to war and were spared the hell of D-Day or the 2nd Battle of Fallujah.

We must think of our Lord's words: "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet." (Matthew 24:6) He further illuminates (7-8): "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs."

America is not at war in Venezuela, or against Denmark in Greenland, but there's an eerie feeling in the air of looming conflicts and serial escalations. President Trump has said (for now) that he won't send expeditionary forces to Greenland, but if he did, would President Putin pour even greater forces into Ukraine? Would President Xi invade Taiwan? They'd like to, and such incursions by the U.S. might embolden them – and morally blunt our objections.

One may doubt that Mette Frederiksen, Denmark's Prime Minister, would deploy Danish armed forces to Greenland to face a U.S. deployment. Indeed, she might be foolish to do so, even if other European nations joined in. But these are our friends.

A frequently stated reason for America's involvement in Vietnam was the Domino Theory: If we didn't stop the communist takeover there, the Red Menace would spread throughout the region. Well, America failed, and the dominoes fell, although, except in Cambodia, the consequences were not catastrophic. And just as happened after World War II, when our enemies (Germany, Japan, and Italy) quickly became post-war allies, we have formed alliances (less robust, perhaps) in Southeast Asia.

These current war scenarios involving the U.S., the former USSR, and Communist China seem unlikely to satisfy just-war criteria, whereas the seizure of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, whose regime was running a narco-terrorist operation directly against the United States, does, I think – although only if any "occupation" ends quickly.

If you look at a map, you may think Greenland is closer to the U.S. than to Denmark (it's not – don't let the projection map fool you), and you may note that Denmark is in the Eastern Hemisphere, Greenland in the Western. Geography is a compelling strategic and geopolitical reality, but not a casus belli.

The population of the State of New York is declining, especially if you subtract the number of illegal immigrants. It may fall further if NYC's socialist mayor's policies create emigrants seeking tax relief. And if Gov. Kathy Hochul were aggrieved by this, she might order National Guard troops into New Jersey and Connecticut to boost the Empire State's position vis-à-vis geography, population, and. . .tax revenue.

If the U.S. needs more and better northern and eastern defenses against attack, why not point our sights at Canada...

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia

In one of the last frames of Wake Up Dead Man (the latest in the Knives Out series), we get a glimpse of the newly edited parish sign announcing, "All Are Welcome." It's a signal to our therapeutic culture that (spoiler alert) the good priest has triumphed over the bad. In a culture that shuns distinctions, boundaries, and limits, there's no surer badge of goodness than welcoming everyone, without exception.

Now, our Lord's first words in public ministry were not "All are welcome." They were the seemingly less inviting "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." But these two phrases are not as opposed as some might think – or want – them to be. This Sunday's Gospel (Matthew 4:12-23) gives us occasion to consider our Lord's curious invitation to all.

The Christian message has two fundamental parts: sin and redemption. Jesus' words capture them. Repent – because there is such a thing as sin, and we commit it. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand – because God has sought us out to bring us back to Himself. Let's take each of these in turn.

First, Repent. Our culture values religion only to the extent that it makes us feel better about ourselves. So, the command to repent sounds harsh and forbidding – anything but welcoming. In fact, however, repentance is the most universal invitation. What we all have in common – without exception, beyond any distinction of race, class, or sex – is our sinfulness. There is nobody who doesn't need to repent.

In this regard, consider the Penitential Rite at Mass. The priest invites all, without exception, to acknowledge their sins and then together, as one, to pray I confess to Almighty God. . . .It's one of the most egalitarian prayers. By making no distinction among people, it therefore distinguishes the Mass (and the Church in general) as radically different from any other human gathering. We are not together because of a shared worldly interest (politics, sports, music, etc.) that might exclude others. We are gathered because of the universal need for mercy.

Second, For the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is what repentance leads to, the Kingdom. And that Kingdom is at hand – no longer a theory, idea, or pious aspiration but a reality. It is, in effect, there for the taking, extended to anyone who truly desires it. The only thing necessary for attaining it was stated before.

And that gets to the heart of the Gospel message, which must be sin and redemption, repentance and kingdom in equal measure. They are necessary to each other. The call to repentance is an invitation to recognize one's dignity, one's capability of reaching the Kingdom. We have behaved below our worth, but we still have the ability to change course. If man were not capax Dei, there would be no point in the call to repentance. The command to repent is not a scolding but a calling back of all to their dignity and worth.

This is a universal call. All are welcome – indeed, invited – to the dignity of repentance that leads to the Kingdom. It is not by accident that our Lord begins this proclamation in the "Galilee of the Gentiles" (Isaiah 8:23; Matthew 4:15) – that is, a region of Israel, of God's People, that was also a crossroads of cultures. The net that figures prominently in today's Gospel (mentioned three times in four verses) also hints at this universality. For a net is not selective. It is tossed into the sea (a Biblical figure of the nations) to catch whatever swims into it. All are welcome into that net.

Repent Kingdom. There are always some who would eliminate one part or the other of the Gospel message. Some preach the condemnation of evil very strongly but forget about the Kingdom's mercy and forgiveness. Others preach mercy and forgiveness but fail to mention sin at all. One without the other does damage. A call to repentance without a kingdom is cruelty. The Kingdom without repentance is presumption.

There is an internal logic at work here. If we do not repent, we cannot enter the...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

The patron saint of journalists is St. Francis de Sales – whose feast is today, 24 January. The Holy Father's annual message for the World Day of Social Communications is dated for the feast in his honor.

St. Francis (1567-1622) was certainly a writer, but not every writer is a journalist. He was assigned the patronage because, barred from entering his own city of Geneva by the Calvinist authorities, the Catholic bishop used instead the media of the time to reach his flock, writing pamphlets and spiritual letters – his Introduction to the Devout Life is a collection of those. While we await the proper patron saint of journalists – GK Chesterton – we already have unofficial patrons in St. Titus Brandsma and St. Maximilian Kolbe, who were proper journalists as well as priests.

Saints Titus and Maximilian were priests who considered journalism not only compatible with their priesthood, but essential to their mission. Kolbe founded a magazine, Knight of the Immaculata, which had an astonishing circulation of one million in 1938. While the circumstances of his martyrdom in Auschwitz are unrelated to journalism, Kolbe was sent to Auschwitz in the first place in large part due to his influence as a journalist.

Journalists and priests are both storytellers. We often think of "stories" as works of fiction, but journalists write nonfiction and file their "stories." The priest, even more than the journalist, is a storyteller.

A recent murder mystery movie made that point well.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery premiered last September at the Toronto International Film Festival and then hit Netflix in December. It got considerable Catholic attention as the murder takes place in an upstate New York parish – Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude! The older monsignor is killed, and the young, newly ordained priest is a suspect.

It's not much of a murder mystery, really, as most of the film is not concerned with the intricacies of the killing. It's more a character study of the various players struggling to figure out the place of religion in a secular, even hostile, age. Given that the two main characters are priests, a lot of priests have commented on our cinematic portrayal.

All the priestly commentators I have seen focused on two scenes as key to the film – a telephone conversation where a distressed woman asks the priest to pray for her and, as one would expect, a dramatic confession scene. (The latter even includes the updated American formula for absolution, so give the writers credit for that.)

That's fine if you think of priests as primarily leaders in prayer and as ministers of the sacraments. Which we are. But if we are primarily storytellers – and if you prefer cinematic priests played by Robert De Niro rather than Bing Crosby, as I do – then an introductory scene written by Rian Johnson is the most important one.

Detective Benoit Blanc arrives after the murder of Msgr. Wicks. He meets Father Jud, the young priest, and introduces himself, after a fashion, when Father Jud asks him if he is Catholic.

"No, very much not, no," Blanc says. "Proud heretic. I kneel at the altar of the rational."

"The architecture, that interests me," Blanc says of the church itself. "I feel the grandeur, the the mystery, the intended emotional effect. . . .And it's like someone has shone a story at me that I do not believe. It's built upon the empty promise of a child's fairytale filled with malevolence and misogyny and homophobia and its justified untold acts of violence and cruelty while all the while, and still, hiding its own shameful acts. So, like an ornery mule kicking back, I want to pick it apart and pop its perfidious bubble of belief and get to a truth I can swallow without choking."

Against that indictment of the Church as a fantastic storyteller at odds with the truth, Father Jud speaks of the mystery at the very heart of the Church's mission.

"You're right," he concedes. "It's storytelling. And this church, it'...

By Stephen P. White

One of the advantages of living in the suburbs of Washington DC – and, yes, there are some advantages – is that I am able to attend the March for Life almost every year. This year, while many would-be Marchers are wondering if their return flights are going to be cancelled by a massive winter storm, I have no such worries. I'll be there again this year, marching and praying and taking solace in the tens of thousands of smiling young faces, families, and not a few friends.

The March provides an opportunity to reflect on what has been accomplished in the defense of life, as well as a chance to reflect on what remains to be done. Often this work is understood in the context of our politics: pro-life politicians elected, laws changed, court cases decided, policies that are praiseworthy or blameworthy.

The pro-life movement, which sprang up in the wake of Roe v. Wade and which has persisted in this country for more than half a century, is a remarkable accomplishment of citizen activism. Few countries can boast such a broad-based and durable coalition in defense of the unborn as we have here in the United States.

Pope Leo recently underscored the importance of this work, both for the sake of the lives involved but also for the well-being of society as a whole:

The protection of the right to life constitutes the indispensable foundation of every other human right. A society is healthy and truly progresses only when it safeguards the sanctity of human life and works actively to promote it.

Of course, the pro-life movement is more than political activism, as important as that is. Think, for example, of the enormous networks of crisis pregnancy centers that have done, and continue to do, such noble work for mothers and children across the country. Think of the Sisters of Life, who embody in a particular way the Catholic commitment to serving the very least among us. Think of the countless parish pro-life ministries where thousands upon thousands of rosaries are said every week for mothers in need and for the protection of their children.

These immense, broad-based efforts in defense of life are bolstered by the Church's witness to the dignity of human life in other arenas, too: in her defense of the elderly and terminally ill; her solicitude for the poor, the homeless, the incarcerated, and the stranger; her care for sinners.

Each of us is loved by God, a God who, though we were sinners, loved us first. To acknowledge this fundamental reality, this basic realization of the Christian life, is to know the twin consolations of gratitude and humility. From such grace flows the imperative to love in imitation of Christ.

The imperative to love – which ought to inform the whole of the pro-life movement and is certainly on display every January at the March – also leads us to reflect on the enormity of what abortion has wrought in this country. The cost in lives is almost incalculable – almost, but not quite: somewhere between 60 and 70 million abortions in the United States since 1973.

The cost to the relationships between men and women, the desolation of families, the pain of regret and loss, the poisoning of our politics, the coarsening of the soul of our nation. All of these are real costs to the sin of abortion. These are spiritual costs which affect all of us (even those never directly touched by abortion) because they profoundly shape and affect the families, communities, and even the Church to which we belong.

Mother Teresa, in her 1979 Nobel Prize speech, famously spoke in defense of the unborn. But her words were not just a lament for abortion or a call to defend the most vulnerable among us (though she did both). She also identified the poverty – the greatest poverty – of those nations which embraced the abortion license:

The greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other? To...