The Catholic Thing

By St. Pope John Paul II

Through work, man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family.

And work means any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself.

Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth.

Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature. . . .

The Church is convinced that work is a fundamental dimension of man's existence on earth. She is confirmed in this conviction by considering the whole heritage of the many sciences devoted to man: anthropology, paleontology, history, sociology, psychology and so on; they all seem to bear witness to this reality in an irrefutable way.

But the source of the Church's conviction is above all the revealed word of God, and therefore what is a conviction of the intellect is also a conviction of faith. The reason is that the Church – and it is worthwhile stating it at this point – believes in man: she thinks of man and addresses herself to him not only in the light of historical experience, not only with the aid of the many methods of scientific knowledge, but in the first place in the light of the revealed word of the living God.

Relating herself to man, she seeks to express the eternal designs and transcendent destiny which the living God, the Creator and Redeemer, has linked with him.

The Church finds in the very first pages of the Book of Genesis the source of her conviction that work is a fundamental dimension of human existence on earth. An analysis of these texts makes us aware that they express – sometimes in an archaic way of manifesting thought – the fundamental truths about man, in the context of the mystery of creation itself.

These truths are decisive for man from the very beginning, and at the same time they trace out the main lines of his earthly existence, both in the state of original justice and also after the breaking, caused by sin, of the Creator's original covenant with creation in man.

When man, who had been created "in the image of God. . . .male and female," hears the words: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it," even though these words do not refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world.

Indeed, they show its very deepest essence. Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe.

Work understood as a "transitive" activity, that is to say an activity beginning in the human subject and directed towards an external object, presupposes a specific dominion by man over "the earth," and in its turn it confirms and develops this dominion. It is clear that the term "the earth" of which the biblical text speaks is to be understood in the first place as that fragment of the visible universe that man inhabits.

By extension, however, it can be understood as the whole of the visible worl...

By Brad Miner

There was once a monument in Rome called Milliarium Aureum: the Golden Milestone. The Emperor Augustus erected it in the Forum in about 20 B.C. All distances in Ancient Rome were said to be marked from (or to) that spot. There's still a round remnant of it in the Roman Forum.

It gave rise to the phrase, "All roads lead to Rome," for the very good reason that they did. The 12th-century poet-theologian Alain de Lille was the first to use the phrase, as Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam: Qui dominum toto quaerere corde volunt ("A thousand roads lead forever to Rome, the men who desire to seek the Lord with all their heart."). Chaucer (A Treatise on the Astrolabe in 1391) was the first to recast de Lille's proverb into English as "Right as diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome."

And, my friends, this was never about geography.

Jump ahead to the 16th and 17th centuries (and later), and artists found their many ways to the Eternal City along earthly roads to discover ways of expressing the glory of God. Some – painters especially – were merely talented copyists; others were visionaries who found inspiration in the work of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and other greats of the Renaissance, but also the Baroque greats, and the greatest of those was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

I wrote here recently about my favorite work of art, Joan of Arc by Jules Bastien-Lepage, but that is not the painting I consider the greatest. That dubious honor (dubious because it's simply my opinion and because no serious art historian would ever plant such a flag) belongs to Caravaggio's The Incredulity of St. Thomas. I'm merely an art lover and have my reasons for esteeming this great work.

The painting was commissioned by Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1627), a successful banker, financier to the Vatican, and a patron of the arts, who acquired 15 paintings by Caravaggio.

(An interesting aside: Giustiniani's first Caravaggio purchase was Saint Matthew and the Angel after it was rejected by the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, intended for the Contarelli Chapel there. Giustiniani bought the painting to protect Caravaggio from a financial loss, and the painter did another, more glorious version, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, which is now the center panel in the Chapel, flanked by The Calling of Saint Matthew and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. Years later, Saint Matthew and the Angel ended up in Berlin, where it was destroyed by fire near the end of WWII.)

Rome is clearly the place Caravaggio wished to call home. It was the center of the Faith he loved, and it was where the money was. He first came to Rome at 21, and he was on his way back to Rome when he died at 38.

Giustiniani must have found this moment in Scripture utterly fascinating. He didn't commission the painting for a church but for his own villa.

We all know the moment Caravaggio is capturing because John tells us (20:24-29). Christ had appeared to the Apostles, but Thomas was not among them. So, when they told him the Lord had returned, Thomas said, "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." And then:

Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"

It's interesting to me that Caravaggio puts Peter in the painting. It makes sense that John would be there: he's the one who has given us the story. For me, the extraordinary scene (a proof for "doubting" Thomas of the divinity of Jesus) is frozen in the moment when Thomas believes – so much so that his proclamation of faith trumps Peter's earlier one. The Rock upon which C...

By Robert Lazu Kmita

In a world where formal pronouns have disappeared from almost every language, and where good manners are not merely rare but actively ridiculed, we are gradually turning into grotesque versions of Shrek. Even the dwarves from Tolkien's tales, as portrayed in films of recent decades, are boorish creatures who grunt and scrape the mud from their boots against the edges of one of the beautiful chests belonging to the Baggins family. We should not be surprised that educating children and adolescents today is more difficult than cracking open a coconut. But who is to form the younger generation when most adults themselves are ignorant of the art of conversation and manners?

Do not think that I have installed myself onto the bench of a self-appointed judge of a decadent world. Not at all. Everything I have said above comes from the bitter experience of my own failures. I will not mention them here. In most cases, they would be downright embarrassing. Suffice it to say that, at fifty-five years old, I possess enough memories that make me blush to seriously question my own manners and, at the same time, ask how I might become better. For one can never guide either children or grandchildren unless one knows oneself the path they ought to walk through the world – i.e., with grace and dignity.

Aware, therefore, of my own shortcomings, I have spent many years reading not only treatises on theology and philosophy, or comforting works of literature and poetry, but also old, tattered volumes in which authors from centuries past tell the story of a better world, one in which people knew what it meant to be well-mannered. One such book, written by an anonymous British duke, provided me not only with some of the finest lessons in practical Christianity but also with a great surprise. The central principle stated from the very beginning by this aristocrat, whose name we may never know, sounds strikingly evangelical:

"Treat others as you would wish others to treat you."

A faithful echo of the crucial teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ: "All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them" (Matthew 7:12). The duke's maxim translated the essence of eternal morality into an ethical principle. In doing so, he laid the foundation for every rule, from how we dress and speak, to how we eat and welcome guests.

Of all the chapters in the book, however, none impressed me more than the one devoted to concealing one's own ill humor. Who among us does not know what it means to feel irritable, depressed, sour – in a word, upset? But how many of us know that we should not allow any of these emotions to cast a shadow over others?

Contrary to the current mania of wildly telling whoever will listen in person or online every detail about ourselves, the gentleman, our unknown author tells us, just like the lady of the house, should never allow personal gloom or sorrow to darken the lives of others. For example, in the case of a difficult situation involving a family member, such as illness or injury, it is better to avoid a social engagement than to burden one's interlocutor with a long chain of sighs and complaints.

"How can that be?" I immediately asked myself. Are not such expressions of a troubled heart the best way to seek help and solidarity from one's neighbor? "Yes," the duke would reply, "but on one condition: that help is genuinely possible." Otherwise, the person exposed to our suffering, embarrassed and helpless, would not know what to do.

Therefore, the best course is to ask explicitly for help whenever such help can realistically be given. Otherwise, one's distress should be carefully concealed, and when that is impossible, social encounters should be avoided until the difficult moment has passed. This kind of concealment, through which we disguise the storm within, may be called, surprisingly and oxymoronically, holy hypocrisy.

No one would likely doubt that hypocrisy is among the gravest of...

By Sister Renée Mirkes, OSF

Cardinal Robert Sarah's address this summer to the European Parliament identifies a foundational problem in contemporary bioethical discourse: the widening gap between language and reality. Words that once conveyed stable meanings – "healthcare," "rights," "dignity" – are increasingly deployed with ideological elasticity.

Sarah warns this linguistic instability constitutes a "crisis of the logos or of reason," a breakdown in the relationship between words and the realities they signify. Language ceases to correspond to reality; reason loses its footing, and moral judgment becomes vulnerable to sentiment, ideology or political coercion.

Sarah's thesis rests on three philosophical principles deeply rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition.

First, language must correspond to reality. For Sarah, language is not a neutral tool but an instrument of truth. Words are meant to reveal reality, not obscure it. Once medical discourse employs euphemisms or ambiguous terminology, it becomes difficult to identify the moral nature of medical actions. When terms such as "healthcare," "choice," or "medical aid in dying" conceal the underlying reality of direct killing or murder, the loss of linguistic clarity spawns a loss of moral clarity.

Second, reason is the basis of ethical judgment. Sarah's critique presupposes a classical and Christian understanding of reason as the faculty capable of discerning truth. In turn, ethical judgment is directly dependent on reason's ability to apprehend the nature of the human person and the goods proper to human flourishing. Rather than rational inquiry into human goods, many bioethical debates today become mere contests of sentiment or political power.

Third, human dignity is objective and intrinsic. Sarah insists human dignity does not depend on "autonomy," utility, or political consensus. It flows from the nature of the human person as an imago Dei, a being created in God's image.

The consequences of ignoring these principles are particularly acute in bioethics, where, as Sarah argues, the stakes involve human life, embodiment, and dignity.

For this reason, Sarah's lectio evaluates coherently four major bioethical issues: abortion, in vitro fertilization, transgender ideology, and physician-assisted suicide. In each case, he demonstrates how linguistic distortion functions as a precondition for moral confusion and policy error.

Referring to abortion as "health," for example, is a linguistic manipulation that conceals the elimination of life. Sarah cites American, European, and international policy documents where "sexual and reproductive health" is routinely used to include abortion. He argues this egregious "reversal of the logos" reframes the deliberate termination of a human life as a form of healthcare, conditions human dignity on maternal choice, and treats the unborn baby as an object whose existence depends on external approval.

Sarah insists the linguistic distortion of "health," "choice," and "rights" normalizes abortion by embedding it within the language of medicine and the Constitution.

But if abortion is described as "healthcare," the unborn child becomes a pathology, the moral reality of direct killing is obscured, and reason is subordinate to political expediency. Within this conceptual framework, warns Sarah, it becomes difficult – if not impossible – to recognize the gravity of the act of abortion.

Sarah also contends that the language of "reproductive rights" justifies in vitro fertilization, embryo cryopreservation, selective reduction, and embryo disposal. While the term "rights" is employed to frame the baby and its laboratory production as entitlements, it clandestinely obscures the moral implications of creating and destroying human beings at their embryonic stage.

And when IVF is framed as a "right," the child becomes a product of technique rather than the fruit of a unitive act of marital love. The genesis of a new human being is relocated from...

By Stephen P. White

Today the Church marks the feast of St. Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the Church. He was born around 540, just a few years before the death of another great European saint (and co-patron of Europe) Benedict of Nursia. The lives of these two men are similar in interesting ways. But the ways in which their lives ultimately diverge also reveal something about how the Lord provides for his Church.

Gregory was born into one of the great families of Rome. Among its members were many senators, consuls, and more than one emperor. Gregory's father was a senator and his great-great-grandfather was Pope St. Felix III.

Rome, in Gregory's day, was a shell of its former self. The sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 (which spurred Augustine to write The City of God) had been followed by an even more devastating invasion at the hands of the Vandals in 455. The Western Empire collapsed in 476.

Rome itself, which at its imperial peak boasted a population of more than 1 million, had shriveled to just 30-40,000 inhabitants by the middle of the sixth century. War, plague, and the other miseries of imperial collapse had transformed Rome terribly.

At the time Gregory was born, much of the Italian peninsula had been under barbarian control for nearly a century and the forces of the Emperor Justinian (who still ruled in Constantinople) were in the midst of a two-decade long campaign to wrest the remains of the Western Empire back from the Goths. It was an effort that would never fully succeed.

That was Gregory's Rome: plague-ridden, hollowed out, poorly defended.

Gregory served in his youth in the administration of the city, rising to the rank of Prefect of the City, but he longed to retreat into the monastic life of prayer and care for the poor. After the death of his father, he did just that, establishing (and entering) a monastery on the site of his family villa on the Caelian Hill. He spent his inheritance serving the poor and lived with such strict asceticism that he suffered from poor health for most of the rest of his life.

If Gregory's story had ended there, we might still be telling the story of a saint: at a time when civilization was crumbling around him, a rich young man left a promising career and retreated to a monastery to focus on prayer and service to the poor.

That, in rough strokes, is the story of Benedict of Nursia who wrote his Rule and founded his first monasteries in the decades preceding Gregory's birth and who died when Gregory was a young child.

Much of what we know of the life of St. Benedict comes from the pen of Gregory himself, who dedicated a lengthy section of his Dialogues to recounting stories of Benedict's own holiness, miracles, and way of life.

These two men, Gregory and Benedict, thus provide an interesting pair for comparison and study. Benedict, we know, transformed Europe through his revival and reform of Western monasticism. The monasteries he founded grew and spread into some of the greatest and most enduring institutions of the medieval world.

Gregory, for his part, understood the essential value and importance of the monastic project. But God had a different path for Gregory.

Gregory was plucked from the monastic life he loved so dearly and sent as a papal representative to the imperial court in Constantinople. The pope needed a reliable advocate to plead for the military protection of the empire, but he needed someone who could handle ecclesial disputes as well. The confusion in the empire was exacerbated and complicated by confusion and division within the Church. The Second Council of Constantinople had led to a great controversy and even led to schism.

Gregory, the pope decided, was his man.

Whereas Benedict was allowed his monasticism, Gregory was deprived of it and shipped East to deal with politics and administration. He returned to Rome only to be once again deprived of his monastery.

Gregory was elected Bishop of Rome in 590. His administration of alms and the good...

By Joanna Bogle

In London, on the corner near the Marble Arch, there's a noteworthy medallion on a traffic island commemorating Tyburn Tree. When English Catholics think of Tyburn, they think of the martyrs who died there – dragged through the streets after torture in the Tower of London, hanged, racked, and disemboweled, denied mercy unless they were prepared to deny loyalty to the Catholic Church and Peter's successor in Rome.

Their names have come down to us with honor: Edmund Campion, Ralph Sherwin, John Stoughton, and more. Today there are churches and schools named after them, and pilgrims flow steadily to Tyburn where nuns at a thriving convent nearby hold a 24-hour vigil before the Blessed Sacrament.

The shrine, and the site of the gallows itself, have undergone a notable change in my lifetime. From being a slightly obscure shrine, known to devout Catholics, but not to the general public, they are now widely publicized, not least with an official Transport for London sign at the Tube station (Marble Arch).

The English Martyrs, as they are collectively known, were canonized by Paul VI in 1970. It was done with wisdom and with tact – the pope referred briefly and in a generous spirit to those Protestants who also lost their lives in the grim years of the English Reformation. And Catholic devotion to the 40 Martyrs (there were many more, of course, and it seems likely that there will be future canonizations as historical research is completed and miracles reported) has grown steadily. Today their stories are spread by new websites, videos, and TV features, taking over from the booklets and leaflets of my youth.

But Tyburn is also the name of a river – one of the half-forgotten rivers of London that still flow beneath us as we hurry about on everyday business or relax in a park or café.

There were two branches of the Ty – the old word "burn" for a river, still used in Scotland, is linked to bourn, meaning a spring (as in place names such as Eastbourne or Bournemouth). One branch flowed through what is today called Marylebone (Mary-le-bourne), the other through what is, today, Hyde Park, along Park Lane and the Bayswater Road.

I say "flowed" but of course a river never really ceases to exist. You can still hear the Tyburn if you stand above the Thames Water Authority's manhole cover in the park – and just occasionally the water rises to flood, and the river makes a brief reappearance as a large and spreading puddle.

London is full of lost or, rather, forgotten rivers. Their names are still with us – the Falcon that runs down from Clapham Junction to Battersea, giving its name to the street that now covers it, and to the local pub – the Beverly Brook that flows through the suburbs of New Malden and Raynes Park, partly through local public gardens, partly between the backs of houses and blocks of flats.

The Westbourne flows through Kensington and Paddington. The Fleet, which famously gave its name to the street of newspapers, flowed into the Thames at Blackfriars and fed a great Dominican monastery still honored in the name of the pub and the tube station.

The hidden or half-forgotten stream is not a bad analogy for the extraordinary revival of the Catholic Faith in England in the modern era. St. John Henry Newman spoke of the "Second Spring" in 1852 when he addressed the gathering of newly appointed bishops following the restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850. He was speaking, of course, of the season rather than of bubbling water, but both make an interesting analogy for the unfolding events.

"Oh yes," you will say, with the sad shrug of the modern Western Catholic, "There was a revival in the 19th century, and it lingered into the 20th – but what about now?" And it is true that the fastest-growing religion in Britain is Islam, and the Catholic Church is running desperately short of priests, has merged many parishes, and runs schools that are notable for producing students who are non-practicing long before they leave.

An...

By Randall Smith

The Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes says that the Church has the duty of responding to "the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other," in "language intelligible to each generation." So too, one often hears that the Church should be "in dialogue" with the modern world. This is not the same as "accompanying" people, which presupposes no disagreement. In dialogue, the parties can disagree in hopes of coming to a better understanding of one another.

So, let's accept for the moment the notion that it is good that the Church sets itself the goal of entering into a dialogue with this generation. But a dialogue with whom? And what language would be intelligible to them? "Modernity" is not a monolithic entity. The Church does not have merely one dialogue partner, but a host of them, each with its own presuppositions and its own "language." So the Church must learn to speak in multiple languages to different audiences. To be effective, the approach they must take will differ depending on the group they are addressing.

Some of the Church's dialogue partners, for example, still accept the old Enlightenment dichotomy between reasonable "science" and unreasonable "faith." The Church addresses this group by trying to show the reasonableness of the faith. These texts tend to be more densely "philosophical."

When the Church tries to show that the tenets of the faith are as reasonable as any philosophy, there will be "Bible Christians" who accuse the Church of subjecting the Scriptures to human reason and creating an "unbiblical theology." When the Church works to show how her positions are well supported Biblically, the Enlightenment group accuses her of believing in the authority of an outdated, archaic text. So the situation is even more complicated than having to learn to speak multiple languages. Speaking "intelligibly" to one group can alienate the others.

There are some who find the language of Enlightenment science and reason too restrictive. They prefer the language of passion and beauty. For them, the philosophical language the Church uses in her conversation with scientists is too "logical," too "deductive," too bound up with philosophical categories. The Church, they say, needs to be more "pastoral," by which they mean more "open," more attentive to people's emotions and their "lived experience." That's fine, but it's not an approach that works well with everyone, especially hard scientists and serious philosophers for whom such "emotional appeals" seem like manipulation of the ignorant.

Some, like the Marxists, criticize the Church for being overly concerned with the things of Heaven and not sufficiently concerned with the injustices found on earth. They call the faith "the opiate of the masses" because the hope for Heaven, they believe, anesthetizes the faithful to the abuses they are suffering now, especially from political and social injustices. This is obviously an unfair criticism, since the Church has never been shy about fighting human injustice, and no group has done more to help the poor and the working classes than the Church. So the Church makes statements about political, social, and economic injustice.

When it does, however, other groups will criticize it for being "too political," insisting that the Church should be laser-focused on "getting people into Heaven." And when the Church defends the poor and the weakest in society, followers of Friedrich Nietzsche accuse the Church of supporting a "slave morality," undermining the strength, drive, and "manliness" of the culture.

The Church needs to dialogue with all these different groups. But the "language" and the approach with which the Church addresses one group will not necessarily work with the others. For some, Church documents are based too much on the Scriptures. For others, there's not enough Scripture. For some, there's not...

By Robert Royal

In 1945, Louis Budenz – a Communist activist and managing editor of the party's newspaper The Daily Worker – was received back into the Catholic Church by Fulton Sheen. The two men had met earlier because Sheen had been publishing devastating critiques of Communism. The Communist Party USA sent Budenz to Sheen to try to turn him – presumably because Sheen had also expressed some criticisms of capitalism, and concerns for workers and the poor. When Budenz asked how Sheen could say that the USSR was not a democracy, Sheen pointed to articles 118 to 124 in the Soviet Constitution. But Sheen pressed on: "I told him I was not interested in discussing Communism; I wanted to talk about his soul."

Budenz and his whole family converted.

Priests, bishops, lay Catholics – amid all the talk about dialogue, listening, walking together, and other offshoots of synodality – take note: In the end, you have to turn, simply, to what it's all about.

As Sheen once said: "We are sinking because like Peter we have concentrated our whole attention upon the winds of public opinion, upon the currents of indifference, upon the military, economic, and political opposition from this quarter or from that. We are sinking for the same reason that Peter sank: We have taken our eyes off the Master."

How was Fulton Sheen able to demolish Communism and other modern idols and religious substitutes, yet at the same time possess the spiritual perceptiveness to know when to turn from the arguments to a direct appeal to the heart of another human being?

It helped to be a genius, to be sure. The story of his rise from humble beginnings in El Paso, Illinois to world-class academic excellence to global celebrity as a preacher and maker of converts will be told in many places as we approach his beatification in St. Louis next month. But it's worth touching on a few details of his meteoric rise for what they might tell us about our own moment. (The best introduction to the range of his thinking is his early collections of essays Old Errors and New Labels, which is Chestertonian in cleverness and unfailing in its philosophical incisiveness.)

But the foundation of everything according to Sheen was his vow to make a Holy Hour every day. It's not easy to sit quietly in the presence of God for anything more than a few minutes. Our minds, let alone our souls, are too restless. Yet Sheen did it despite all his travels and responsibilities. As he confesses in his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, it was always enriching but also at times dry and distracted. Still, putting yourself in the presence of the Creator daily can't help but make a difference to the creature, even one half-composed of fallible "clay."

Sheen did not, as many seem to want to do in the "synodal Church" today, rely merely on "conversation in the Spirit." He trusted God. But he worked. Hard. At the University of Louvain in Belgium, then the most prestigious theological center in the world, his doctoral dissertation won the highest honors and the Cardinal Mercier Prize. (It's been republished in a handsome edition by Cluny Media as God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy). Columbia University and Oxford offered him positions teaching scholastic philosophy.

But Sheen's bishop ordered him to return to Illinois – to see if this academic superstar would still submit to religious obedience. Sheen did and served as a humble parish priest for a year – after which his bishop sent him, as originally planned, to teach at the Catholic University of America.

Sheen did not rest on his laurels there. He became a popular professor and began to be invited to lecture and preach around the country – which, of course, made waves with other faculty. But he took his duties at CUA seriously, claiming that he prepared six hours for every hour of lectures. He also said that he spent about thirty hours of prep time for each episode of his blockbuster television program "Life Is Worth Living" – even though each epis...

By Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky

At times it's enjoyable to kick your feet up with the Ignatius Bible on your lap and spend a couple of hours reading the Gospels or some of those stirring Old Testament stories. The experience may be so absorbing that we might find it easy to question whether we need priests, bishops, and popes – or even the Church. (Protestants have, for 500 years.) Why not dismiss them all as complicating factors and enjoy the bliss of sola Scriptura? Well, a few nagging details are noticeable.

The Gospels recount Jesus' words and glorious deeds. After the miraculous multiplication of loaves, the Apostles sail across the sea and encounter Jesus walking on water. Jesus elicits Peter's momentary faith but saves him from sinking into the waters in a moment of doubt. Ashore, the crowds seek Jesus as their "Bread King," but he reveals an astounding truth: Jesus is the Bread of Life, and unless we eat His body and drink His blood, we have no life within us.

Except for the Apostles, the disciples scatter in disbelief. The Apostles don't thumb through their Bibles (which they didn't have back then anyway). Peter asks, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life."

The Gospel narrative reaches its decisive moment (Matthew 16:13-20). Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" They respond, Elijah, John the Baptist, or one of the prophets. But Peter, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, witnesses to the messianic divinity of Jesus: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God!"

Jesus responds with words that Bible-alone Christians may find difficult to read: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail over it." It's a tall order. Peter? Church? Protected from the Devil's assaults?

From a Bible-alone perspective (what Luther codified as sola Scriptura), it's an inconvenient truth. Why was a Church necessary in the first place? And if it was necessary, couldn't He have done better with a qualified, highly educated man, sophisticated in the ways of the world, and relating well to the Jewish elites? Why did Jesus need to identify a mere mortal – and a fisherman at that – as his vicar? Yet after the Resurrection, at Pentecost, the Church emerges publicly under Peter's apostolic leadership.

We know much of the rest of the story. The Apostles went out to the world to preach the Gospel. Peter's ministry abruptly ended in Rome, where he was crucified. For a couple of hundred years, his successors suffered similar fates. Yet somehow, the gates of Hell didn't prevail over the infant Church. That Bible didn't float down from heaven. It was born into the Church, recognized within the Church, and authoritatively confirmed by her bishops and popes.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century. We won. We have leather-covered Bibles. Some Protestant Bibles are missing important books. Thomas Jefferson took scissors, literally, to the pages of the book and produced a Bible without miracles, limited by Jeffersonian rationalism. Many modern Catholic Bible translations are scarred with political correctness. Despite a few flaws – with a Bible on one's lap – people often get in the way, unless they're bringing lunch or dinner.

Church history is distressing. Critics of the popes have always found reasons to complain. Some popes have seemed too silent; others have talked too much. Some have overextended their authority. Others have failed to use it correctly. The popes of the Middle Ages were often so worldly they hardly had time to rule the Church. It's no wonder the Protestant revolt gained such traction in the sixteenth century. Today, Churchmen opposing the modern machinery of death in its various forms are accused of ivory tower naiveté. Who needs a Church?

Yet, year after year, century after century, Church teaching somehow remains consistent while developing organically in depth and understanding. The simple faithful often identify departures from Ap...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

This summer I got a new favorite song – Bob Dylan's Chimes of Freedom. It's not a new song; it dates from the early 1960s. It remained entirely unknown to me until a few months back at Madison Square Garden, where Bruce Springsteen used it as the final song on his Land of Hope and Dreams tour. He used it, too, on his European tour last year. I am not the only one who often prefers cover versions to Dylan himself.

Is Bob Dylan's music a Catholic thing?

Many a homilist has quoted his 1979 song Gotta Serve Somebody, especially against the argument that unbelievers are freer because they don't have to serve God. Dylan knew better: "It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord/ But you're gonna have to serve somebody."

In May, for Dylan's 85th birthday – and his own 40th anniversary of priestly ordination – Bishop Robert Barron recorded a video singing You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.

In June, Pope Leo XIV saw Barron and praised him, citing Dylan in the foreword to an anthology on peace and disarmament. He quoted from 1963 lyrics that Dylan never recorded himself, Go Away You Bomb. That's some serious Dylanology. "As the singer-songwriter and poet Bob Dylan wrote, addressing the atomic bomb figuratively in one of his poems: 'I hate you because man created you, and man possesses and controls you,'" wrote Pope Leo.

Then there was Dylan with St. John Paul the Great in Bologna, at the 1997 Italian Eucharistic Congress, which had a World Youth Day vibe. Invited to sing in the presence of the pope and some 300,000 young people, Dylan sang Knockin' on Heaven's Door and A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall. After greeting the 77-year-old John Paul, he concluded with Forever Young.

John Paul was not a Dylanologist, but someone in the papal speechwriting shop thought that Dylan might have sung Blowing in the Wind.

"The answer to the questions of your life 'is blowing in the wind'. It is true!" John Paul said. "But not in the wind which blows everything away in empty whirls, but the wind which is the breath and voice of the Spirit. . . .How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? I answer you: one! There is only one road for man and it is Christ."

Chimes of Freedom is about taking shelter from an evening thunderstorm, watching it unfold from a doorway, likely of a church. In the darkness of the sky, the blowing rain, the ripping hail, the noisy thunder, and the flashing lightning, Dylan writes "the sky cracked its poems in naked wonder/ That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze."

The storm represents all those beaten down by life, the lightning "flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight/ flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight/ an' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night."

The "bells of the lightning" are "tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake/ tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked/ tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake."

The storm rages for those the world forgets. Dylan echoes Luke 14:21, where the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind are welcomed to the master's feast.

The "bells of lightning and its thunder" are "striking for the gentle, striking for the kind/ striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind/. . .tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts/ tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute/ tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute/ for the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit."

Then the lightning flashes, the "chimes of freedom" – a light shining in the darkness. Dylan invites us to gaze, in the storm, "upon the chimes of freedom flashing."

Springsteen called it "one of the greatest songs about human freedom ever written." That's rather extravagant, but it is a great song, and expresses a deep human truth that we were created for freedom. Long before Dylan, Pope Leo XIII called "liberty the highest of natural ...