The Catholic Thing

By Anthony Esolen

My family and I spend a few months out of the year in Nova Scotia, in a part of the province that was once overwhelmingly Catholic. The congregations are aging, partly because a lot of young people leave the island for work far away, and partly, I think, because all the motions and accouterments at Mass say, "There is nothing for the mind to search out here."

At Mass at one church, everybody stands after the Sanctus, but for just the first sentence of the ever-used second Eucharistic prayer. We are supposed to kneel once the priest calls down the Holy Spirit upon the gifts. What this means, in practice, is that the clomp-clomp of kneelers and the shifting of bodies breaks up the prayer and interrupts the priest.

Ideas about liturgical gestures, such as this one from the Canadian bishops, may sound good in the abstract, but gestures are not abstract. They derive most of their power from the realities of human bodies. Only someone insensible to human bodies in motion can have failed to predict what would happen, and only someone obtuse in the art of human gesture could fail to see that the physical interruption would confuse the prayer, separating one sentence from the next, when no such separation in meaning or action is called for.

Such obtuseness characterizes their approach to liturgical gesture generally. At the end of the consecration, everyone is supposed to stand, and again you have the rumbling and tumbling, just when the priest is saying, "The mystery of faith." Again the disruption, the discontinuity, and again the likelihood that in the awkwardness you will not be paying close attention to your reply to the priest. If the Eucharist is a great mystery, we want then of all times to direct our attention wholly toward it. Nothing else should obtrude.

Communion is received standing up, as almost everywhere else in the world since the Great Liquidation. I suspect the posture is imposed not for what it is, but for what it is not: kneeling. Again, you cannot impose a meaning on a bodily gesture which it does not in itself possess, or which it does not lend itself to.

You wait in line, vaguely aware of the person behind you, and you cannot pause after you receive, as you cannot pause after you get your burgers at the fast-food counter, or after you load your luggage on the conveyor belt at the airport, or after any of the many things we stand in line for, usually with faint impatience or irritation. You get out of the way, and you return to your seat. Banal already, but in Canada, again by directive, you remain standing until everyone else has received, thus prolonging the impatience.

At this particular parish, it causes confusion, not conducive to prayer. A few people do kneel. Some people sit. Most people stand, as the Canadian bishops insist is best. It is supposed to be a sign of solidarity.

That's nonsense. You might pray, but mostly you are waiting for the last person to sit down, so that you can sit too. You are not self-collected; you can't be. People waiting for a cue can do little else but watch. Try to lose yourself in prayer while you wait for everyone to receive Communion - a dozen now in each line, now four or five, now two, then one - at last!

It is difficult also to pray while you are shuffling in line, because you must think about when to move your feet and where to put them, so as not to step on anybody's shoes. I do not say it is impossible. With God, all things are possible. It is unlikely.

We are bodily beings, and what we do with our bodies instructs our minds. When I was a boy, we knelt at the Communion rail in our church, a work in Italian marble, inlaid with mosaic symbols of the Eucharist. After that Great Liquidation, I did not ever kneel for Communion, until one day, around 1988, my wife and I went to Mass at a large cathedral with a Communion rail in use.

We knelt beside one another to receive the Sacrament. And the bodily gesture struck me like a powerful electric shock. I h...

By Daniel B. Gallagher

Pope Leo XIV recently reaffirmed a conviction Christians have held for centuries: "institutions need people who know how to live a healthy secularism, that is, a style of thinking and acting that affirms the value of religion while preserving the distinction - not separation or confusion - from the political sphere."

Leo gets at the heart of Saint Augustine's understanding of saeculum, which can be roughly translated as "time," "age," or "era." According to Augustine, we are living in an era when all human institutions are embraced by an ultimate sacred history that will be fulfilled in Christ's second coming.

Christians, therefore, enlightened by the Gospel, are obliged to act within those institutions and exert influence upon them in a way that attests to, upholds, and promotes not only the dignity of the human person as created in God's image and redeemed by Christ, but - as Russell Hittinger has argued - also the dignity of society.

In short, for Christians, "secular" is not a bad word. Far from it. It is indeed the proper way of describing reality as having already been redeemed but awaiting the full revelation of what that redemption has wrought. Because the current saeculum is not man's ultimate horizon, secular institutions enjoy a legitimate autonomy, but only in the sense of a "distinction," not a "separation."

Pope Leo's recent comments are better understood if we turn back to Benedict XVI's pithy recapitulation of the same idea in 2006. Speaking to a group of Italian jurists, the late Pontiff said that it is the task of believers:

to formulate a concept of secularity which, on the one hand, acknowledges the place that is due to God and his moral law, to Christ and to his Church in human life, both individual and social; and on the other, affirms and respects the "rightful autonomy of earthly affairs," if by this phrase, as the Second Vatican Council reaffirms, is meant man's "gradual discovery, exploitation and ordering of the laws and values of matter and society." (Gaudium et Spes, 36)

Benedict uses the medieval conception of saeculum as a foil against which to contrast the post-modern conception. In the Middle Ages, "secular" simply designated a distinction between civil and ecclesiastical powers. Man's ultimate destiny lies outside of time, so his ultimate destiny should be the concern of the Church. But man lives in time nonetheless, so secular institutions are necessary to oversee matters concerning man's temporal needs.

The focus of politics must be the goods of this temporal order, primarily the earthly peace that Augustine calls tranquillitas ordinis, the "tranquility of order." The focus of the Church must be on safeguarding the contents of divine revelation and the dispensation of the sacraments that lead souls to Heaven.

There is a need for both princes and bishops, though there were many times in the Middle Ages when one would usurp the other. Attempts to resolve such conflicts, however, always relied on a proper understanding of the secular as defined by Augustine and explained by Benedict. In this sense, as Larry Siedentop writes, "secularism is Christianity's gift to the world."

Robert Reilly explains: "Christianity itself supported and defended the secularization necessary for the development of constitutionalism. The distinction between God and Caesar, so essential to the separate sovereignties of Church and State, has only one font (i.e., Christianity)."

Clearly, Pope Leo XIV, in one form or another, wants to advance the crucial project Benedict XVI undertook of reminding the world of this gift.

Benedict was keen on reminding the world that the post-modern notion of the secular has completely overturned the medieval conception. "It has come to mean the exclusion of religion and its symbols from public life and confining them to the private sphere and to individual conscience," he said.

It is this attitude that turned "secular" into a bad word, at least for Christians.

I...

By David Warren

Let us begin by remembering Covadonga, the great Christian victory in Spain, A.D. 722, and the beginning of the Reconquista.

This was a decade before the Battle of Tours, when Charles Martel, "the Hammer," repelled the "unstoppable" Umayyad cavalry, preparing the ground for the Carolingian Empire that saved, or one might say, invented, Europe.

For all of Christendom had been laid waste, including the civilized centers in Egypt and Syria, except for the shrinking "Rome" (Byzantium), and the largely pagan wastelands in the far, far, far, far West. Miracles alone saved France, for instance, from falling prey to the aggression.

Yet the vanquishing of Iberia by the desert savages was, like their progress through the Middle East and North Africa, a catastrophe for the Christians, who had ruled, fairly peacefully.

Fourteen centuries of annihilation had begun, with other Arab stormings preceding Islam. Zoroastrian Persia was also pulverized, and massacres were also perpetrated deep into Hindustan and even to Tibet.

Islam has bloody borders, as Samuel P. Huntington wrote a decade before 9/11, and it always has. Wherever Islam meets non-Muslims, there is bloodshed. This is not the modern condition, only. It was true from the beginning. Islam spread by terrorism, by utter surprise, out of the blue. Nine-elevens were its constant strategy.

Non-Muslims generally have a history of enmity with Muslim neighbors, and most have been slaughtered by Muslims in their turn. But Christians and Jews have been the principal victims, as both were psychotically identified in the Koran and the Hadiths.

To learn about the realities of Islam, one must study these foundational texts, as one must read the Bible to access Christianity. Finding accurate translations is necessarily a challenge, for Arabic to English must be nearly impossible; there are wild disparities between any two versions. At least a third of the Koran is senseless blather, even in the original. Good luck.

Questions such as who was Mohammad, and if he existed in fact, or if Mecca was even built by the seventh century, cannot be resolved by using evidence in the Western sense. There is nothing like the scholarship that buttresses both Old and New Testaments.

For good reason, investigation of Islamic texts and claims is prevented in all Muslim countries and endangered when attempted in the West. By contrast, Christianity and Judaism can be studied openly, even by sceptics, and have been available for destructive disassembly over a very long time.

Archaeology has shown all Bible traditions to be sound or plausible. Whereas, all the ancient archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia have been thoroughly bulldozed and scoured. Huge efforts have been made to keep the history of Islam away from scrutiny, or restrict it to official authorities. Indeed, virtually all attempts to study the Islamic past have been conducted in, and limited to, institutions in the West.

This may sound like exaggeration, and a scandal to the "multicultural" happy-face liberalism of today. But check, for it is fact. Moreover, if one consults the older academic literature, up to a few decades ago, one finds that all agree on the indigence of Islam. Our older historians did actually master the field. The more recent have been, almost always, "politically correct," and timid apologists, for fear of Muslim reprisals.

I was myself commissioned to write on this state of affairs, by Peter Collier at Encounter Books, just after the subject became current in the wake of the Islamic terror attacks of 9/11. I did not accept the advance, and declined until I could be sure the task was doable.

Alas, it wasn't, by a person who can't read Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and several other languages. Too, I think I was a coward. But braver and more learned have since emerged.

Perhaps we have got beyond President George W. Bush's uttering fatuous nonsense about "the religion of peace," and regretting the use of the word "crusade."...

By Stephen P. White

But first a note: TCT's Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal will join host Raymond Arroyo on 'The World Over' tonight (October 2, 2025) at 8:00 PM to discuss the ongoing controversy over the decision of Chicago's Cardinal Blase Cupich to honor pro-choice Sen. Dick Durbin. It's all you need to know about the scandal. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

"Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here. Ever this day be at my side, to light, to guard, to rule, and guide. Amen."

I don't know how many times in my life I have prayed these words. Many thousands, no doubt. It was among the first prayers I ever learned, being part of the nightly routine of my childhood, and I have taught it to my own children as we say bedtime prayers. It is not only a bedtime prayer, to be sure, and bears frequent repetition at any time of night or day. If any further inducement were needed, devout recitation of this venerable prayer carries a partial indulgence.

The prayer itself is surprisingly ancient, originating at least as early as the eleventh or twelfth century. Reverence for angels, of course, is much older, as even a passing familiarity with both the Old and New Testaments will show. Particular devotion to the guardian angels, whose feast day is today (October 2), dates to the earliest centuries of the Church. St. Basil the Great taught in the fourth century that, "each and every member of the faithful has a Guardian Angel to protect, guard and guide them through life."

Pope St. John XXIII (whose devotion to angels may have had something to do with his baptismal name, Angelo) exhorted the faithful to pray to their guardian angels and often. "Everyone of us is entrusted to the care of an angel," he said, "That is why we must have a lively and profound devotion to our own guardian angel, and why we should often and trustfully repeat the dear prayer we were taught in the days of our childhood."

For many of us, the Guardian Angel Prayer is so closely associated with childhood that it can sometimes be easy to associate the devotion to angels with childishness, a mistake made all the more common by the gauzy depictions of guardian angels which are regularly found in Catholic kitsch. But guardian angels are not the spiritual equivalent of Lassie.

The Catechism reminds us, quoting St. Augustine, that, "'Angel' is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is 'spirit'; if you seek the name of their office, it is 'angel': from what they are, 'spirit', from what they do, 'angel.'" In Greek, an angel is a messenger.

The center of the angelic world, this world of messenger servant-spirits, is none other than Christ Himself, because, as the Catechism continues, "They are his angels. . . They belong to him because they were created through and for him."

Immortal beings, pure intellect and will, who eternally behold the face of the Father (Mt. 18:10) and who perfectly serve Christ the Lord are not to be taken lightly. Which is to say, real guardian angels are not at all like the bumbling, though lovable, Clarence from "It's a Wonderful Life." They are creatures, but they are not bumbling and they are not human.

Not human and also higher than humans. Translations of Psalm 8 differ, but the author of Hebrews cites the psalm thus, "What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels." (emphasis added.)

St. Thomas Aquinas asked whether angels are more to the image of God than man is, to which he responded, "we must grant that, absolutely speaking, the angels are more to the image of God than man is, but that in some respects man is more like to God."

The mystery of the Incarnation sheds the fullest light on the implication of the Imago Dei for human creatures, but the mag...

by Luis Lugo

Chesterton once said that there are two ways of getting home. One of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place. Since the Church is our true home, we could say that the first is a good description of a cradle Catholic, the second of a revert like me.

But there is a third way of getting home: to discover it for the first time. That describes converts to Catholicism who were reared in other religious traditions. That is the road the eminent Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft travelled into the Church, as he delightfully recounts in his recently released autobiography, From Calvinist to Catholic.

As it happens, Kreeft's turning from Reformed Protestantism to the Catholic Church describes the last leg of my own return journey into the Catholic Church as well. I have added reason, then, for taking such keen interest in this recounting of his spiritual journey. Kreeft and I share another important connection - to Calvin College (now University), where I taught for almost a decade and where he attended as an undergraduate many years before. The roles were reversed with respect to Villanova University, where I was a master's student in philosophy and Kreeft began his illustrious teaching career.

Commendably, Kreeft demonstrates profound respect and gratitude for his Reformed upbringing. A deep personal affection for his family and friends is an important contributing factor. But he also displays a genuine appreciation for that tradition's many strong points. Foremost among these is the Evangelical emphasis on the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In that connection, Kreeft offers that he appreciates this aspect of Protestantism more now than when he was a Protestant.

He makes a similarly interesting point with respect to the Protestant emphasis on the authority of Holy Scripture. In discussing the teaching of sola scriptura, Kreeft argues persuasively that one cannot get to an infallible Bible without an infallible Church to authenticate it. He thus writes, somewhat paradoxically, that to be a Bible-believing Protestant, he first had to be a Church-believing Catholic.

Despite his generally irenic approach, Kreeft does not hold back in his critique of major Protestant teachings, from Luther's Three "Solas" (faith alone, scripture alone, grace alone) to the Five Points of Calvinism. It's clear throughout, however, that what propelled him toward Rome was not the deficiencies of Protestantism so much as the pull of the fullness of the faith that he was gradually discovering in Catholicism. As he describes it, it was like moving from the appetizer to the main course.

The main course included the beauty of the liturgy and the power of the sacraments, the Eucharist most especially. It also involved a growing sense of the sheer grandeur of the Catholic Church. In a particularly moving passage, he writes that the moment of decision for him came while he was a student at Calvin, sitting alone in his room. It was then that he "sensed the greatness of the Church as a gigantic Noah's Ark with my two favorite saints, Augustine and Aquinas, on the deck waving to me to come aboard."

Kreeft declares that his heart was open to conversion before his mind and will were. But the mind eventually had to follow, especially for someone so philosophically inclined (the above reference to the two great doctors of the Church attests to that). Along the way, he had to confront several anti-Catholic objections, which he takes up and deftly answers in a separate chapter. One of the last and hardest obstacles Protestant converts face is Marian devotion. Kreeft sensitively explains the stages he and others typically go through before they discover that Mary, like the Church, makes one more Christocentric, not less.

In the end, the main course simply proved too appetizing for Kreeft. Having taken a seat at the rich banquet table, he now clearly saw tha...

by Randall Smith.

So, Cardinal Cupich has decided to honor pro-abortion Senator Dick Durbin. The chancery office says that they are honoring him for things other than his support for abortion, but that's like honoring Bill Cosby for the wonderful things he did other than his mistreatment of women. No one would accept that. The obvious conclusion would be that you just don't care about the mistreatment of women - or at least not as much as you should.

But there should be no real mystery about what the Cardinal has done. He is like the unfaithful steward in Luke 16 who, realizing that he is soon to be out of a job, does some favors for his master's debtors to gain their favor after his dismissal. You still want to be invited to the good parties and hang with the people with money and influence. And it's another good example of "synodality." You don't really need to talk to anyone else; you don't consult or even listen to anyone else, even your fellow bishops; you just command what you, the imperious cleric, desire.

But this is all too obvious. What makes it possible is a broader cultural problem.

I heard recently that the pro-choice governor of New Mexico went to a Catholic campus where she proudly announced herself as a "pro-choice Catholic." This isn't something unknown or entirely unusual. There are dozens of politicians who proudly call themselves "pro-choice Catholics."

So, although I wasn't startled by this announcement, it did make me wonder. What if she had shown up on a Catholic campus and proudly announced, "I am a pro-segregation Catholic" or "I am an anti-racial integration Catholic"? What would the organizers have done?

Would they have ignored the comment? Would they have smilingly had their pictures taken next to her and posted on the Internet? Or would there have been some objections? Do you suppose someone might have said something like: "Yeah, you know, that thing you say you are. That doesn't exist."

It is, of course, likely that our self-proclaimed "pro-segregation Catholic" would be offended by this and say: "How dare you judge me and my Catholic faith." But we wouldn't be judging this person's soul or her faith. We would merely be pointing out that you can no more be a "pro-choice Catholic" than you can be a "non-Trinitarian Catholic" or a "pro-Arian Catholic."

If we were to allow the term "Catholic" to be used this way, the term would mean nothing. All categories "define" a group that includes certain things and excludes others - or the category is meaningless.

If we were still living in 1960, and if it was a university in the South, calling oneself a "pro-segregation Catholic" might have passed muster. But it is unlikely it would be allowed to go unchallenged now. But if we had a record of it going unchallenged at a Catholic university in 1960, it would be an occasion for embarrassment now, not a matter for pride that we let people "speak their minds" and "follow their own consciences."

I'm not claiming that such a person should not be allowed to speak at a Catholic university. I am simply asking whether, if someone announced, "I am a pro-segregation Catholic," we wouldn't feel a serious obligation to correct the record, to make it clear that this position isn't in accord with basic Catholic teaching.

Catholics can have a vast array of opinions on different moral and political questions. One Catholic could say, "I'm in favor of raising taxes" and another "I'm opposed." But what if someone says, "I'm a pro-slavery Catholic"?

There were plenty of Catholics who made that claim in the early nineteenth century, but we look back upon that with embarrassment, wishing that the Church authorities and laity had done more to counteract the notion that one could be a "Catholic" in good standing and " pro-slavery" at the same time. Or that one could be a "Catholic" in good standing and at the same time think black people have lesser dignity than whites.

We are proud that Archbishop Rummel excommunicated several Cat...

By Robert Royal.

But first a note: The following is excerpted and adapted from an address given in Chicago on September 25, 2025, at the annual benefit dinner of the Aid for Women Pregnancy Centers and Maternity Homes.

Now for today's column...

People often ask me what they can do - or what should we all be doing - to deal with the many challenges we face, not only the obvious ones like wars, injustices, poverty, and so forth, but fundamental questions about what human life is and what our lives mean. There's no simple answer because the world is complicated, as is every human life. And that's not a bad thing. It's how God has chosen to arrange things for us.

There's a famous passage in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, where Frodo laments that the Ring ever came to him and that the fellowship has been called upon to destroy it:

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

There's no simple answer, but there's an easy one, easy to understand anyway, if sometimes hard to put into practice. Then again, no one ever said living a Christian life would be easy.

I believe the first answer for all of us is to recognize that there will be - and need to be - innumerable initiatives of various kinds to respond to our situation. And given how things are these days, we shouldn't expect the government, the Vatican, the hierarchy, or other large entities to start them. Aid for Women was founded right after Roe v. Wade. A lay initiative like this is not only a very Catholic thing, it's a very American thing. We see something that needs to be done, and roll up our sleeves.

There are at least two large categories of such initiatives, one a ministry of action, and the other is like it, a ministry of truth. We need to work at both as much as the gifts God has given us allow.

Here's St. Paul to the Ephesians:

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. . . .Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

That wasn't just intended for back then. It's the life-giving truth now, if also a daunting task.

One way of viewing all that, however, is that God has a high opinion of us, higher than we have of ourselves. HE believes we can do things that WE don't believe we can. (And in truth, a life without significant challenges would be a boring life.) So even as we feel the immense gap between what we can do and what we think needs to be done, we can also recognize that we're in training for something we can't really imagine. The kind of perfect peace, illumination, love that God originally intended for us.

C.S. Lewis called this the "weight of glory," a great phrase that reminds us that we are going to be weighed down by challenges so that we can rise up - a typical paradox of Christianity.Lewis describes this as "a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken."

What we're faced with today is the re-conversion of our whole society, something like how the early Christians converted the Roman Empire. We know that Christians practiced conspicuous charity, caring for the elderly, the sick, the poor, the marginalized, those in prison, babies no one wanted. Many came to Christianity because of those corporal works of mercy and love. You are continuing that tradition.

But there were other factors. One I think especially important for us to recall is that as a result of these Christian ministries more Christians simply were born and survived - they weren't aborted or exposed or allowed to perish.

The original Hippocratic Oath, taken by a...

By Fr. Paul D. Scalia.

The haunting story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) is perhaps best understood in reverse, through the lens of where we find them at the end of the story. The status of each in the afterlife - the rich man's suffering and Lazarus's peace - reveals the reality of who they are. Without the trappings and clothing and disguising of this world, we see the rich man's poverty and Lazarus's wealth. We see most keenly the peril of riches.

It's a parable about the danger of wealth. Not about the evil of created goods or possessions. Worldly goods obviously have their place. God created the material world to show forth and communicate His glory. We are to use the goods of Creation to glorify Him and to benefit others. Our Lord is not a Marxist, and property is not theft. So, the problem is not the rich man's wealth per se.

But we would be foolish to think that there is no danger in wealth. In a fallen world, created goods take on an outsized importance. We come to trust in them rather than in their Creator. Indeed, they demand a kind of allegiance, as the rich fool discovered. (see Lk 12:16-20) This is why our Lord never praises wealth but only warns us against its dangers.

The first danger is intemperance. Our fallen nature inclines us to use our goods not for the glory of God and the benefit of neighbor but for our own comfort and luxury. So the rich man pampered himself. He "dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day." So in the first reading, Amos rebukes the indulgent - "Lying upon beds of ivory, stretched comfortably on their couches" - who "drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the best oils." (Amos 6:1, 4-7)

Their possessions have become an end in themselves, not the means by which they glorify God and do good to others. Intemperance leads us to use God's gifts not for their purpose but for our own indulgence. The glutton eats only for pleasure and not for the good of his body. The lustful man seeks sex only for gratification and not for procreation or union.

Intemperance leads inevitably to complacency. Again, the prophet Amos: "Woe to the complacent in Zion!" This complacency is a kind of numbness and blindness, a deadness of the soul to nobler and higher things. It's hard to raise one's heart and mind when the belly is weighed down by rich food and drink.

So the rebuke from Amos is not only for luxury but for its effect, because it has rendered them numb to what is important. They "are not made ill by the collapse of Joseph." That is, they don't care about the suffering of their own people. So also in the Gospel, the rich man doesn't even notice Lazarus. There's no mention of any interaction between them. His wealth has blinded him to the very existence and suffering of a fellow man at his doorstep.

This complacency is revealed most of all when the rich man begs to return to his brothers and warn them, lest they suffer the same fate (as they seemingly had similar wealth). Abraham answers, "If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead." Something kept them from listening to - from hearing - Moses and the prophets. Indeed, their wealth and luxury numbed and blinded them to the witness of Scripture, and it would make their minds resistant even to one risen from the dead.

Wealth numbs us not only to other people but also to the truth. Attachment to created things keeps the mind pinned down. Clarity of thought requires detachment from worldly goods. Again, the parable of the rich fool shows us how the mind of the wealthy is focused on maintaining and increasing material goods rather than on permanent things and eternal truths.

It's said that Aquinas once visited Bonaventure in his study and asked which book gave him such great theological insights. Bonaventure pointed not to a book but to the crucifix as the source of his insight. That's more than a pious story. It reminds us that ...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.

How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!

Is that true? Jesus said it (Mark 10:23) to His Apostles after the encounter with the rich young man, so it must be true. In affluent countries where everyone, even the poor, is rich in relative historical terms, Christians are inclined to think that Jesus did not really mean it. Or that it is not really true, and that Jesus was employing the hyperbole ("cut it off", "pluck it out") that marked Biblical preaching.

If it were true, and Jesus really meant it, it would follow that vast numbers of materially prosperous parishioners will not be counted in that number, when the saints go marching in.

Two of that number, their relics marching through St. Peter's Square a few weeks ago, were rich. It must have struck Pope Leo XIV that both St. Pier Giorgio Frassati and St. Carlo Acutis were from rich families, since he held up in his homily other rich young men from history, too. He started with perhaps the wealthiest man in the history of Israel, King Solomon:

It was precisely this great abundance of resources that raised a question in his heart: "What must I do so that nothing is lost?" Solomon understood that the only way to find an answer was to ask God for an even greater gift, that of his wisdom, so that he might know God's plans and follow them faithfully. . . .Yes, because the greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God's plan.

That sums up the encounter with the rich young man, who "went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions." (Mark 10:22) He seemed already to know that he was going to "waste" his life, refusing God's specific call.

"Many young people, over the centuries, have had to face this crossroad in their lives," Leo continued. "Think of Saint Francis of Assisi, like Solomon, he too was young and rich, thirsty for glory and fame. But Jesus appeared to him along the way. . . .From there, he changed his life and began to write a different story: the wonderful story of holiness that we all know, stripping himself of everything to follow the Lord (cf. Luke 14:33), living in poverty."

Leo included his own patron, St. Augustine, in those "many similar saints who gave themselves [to God] completely, keeping nothing for themselves."

Is it necessary to renounce worldly riches to be saintly? Solomon did not and became corrupt, though he later repented. Francis and Augustine turned away from worldly wealth, the former so radically that Pope Innocent III was initially sceptical as to whether it was possible to live the new rule proposed by il Poverello.

On the other hand, there is Abraham - with pride of place in the Roman Canon as our "father in faith" - who was very wealthy, as was his grandson, Jacob, father of the twelve tribes.

Pier Giorgio belonged to one of Turin's most prominent families. His father, Alfredo, irreligious like his mother, was a senator and ambassador, as well as founder and director of the prominent newspaper La Stampa. Frassati did not renounce his wealth, but shared it so abundantly, as Leo recalled in his homily, "that seeing him walking the streets of Turin with carts full of supplies for the poor, his friends renamed him Frassati Impresa Trasporti (Frassati Transport Company)!"

A deep sacramental and prayer life accompanied Pier Giorgio's corporal works of mercy. He was a great friend, even a bon vivant in an entirely wholesome way.

Carlo Acutis depended upon his family wealth to become a practicing Catholic. If Carlo's family had not been rich, he may not have been a disciple at all, let alone a canonized saint. Before Carlo was born in 1991, his mother had only been to Mass three times - for her First Holy Communion, Confirmation and wedding. His parents manifestly failed - and likely never intended to keep - the promises made at Carlo's baptism, namely that they would strive to raise him in the faith.

The Acutis family was rich enough, however, to employ domestic servants in thei...

"Sanctuary" has returned to the American political vocabulary, especially in the context of cities and states declaring they will not allow local resources - police or social services - to cooperate with federal authorities in identifying or detaining illegal aliens.

Contemporary Polish political philosopher Zbigniew Stawrowski argues that part of our modern problem is philosophical bait-and-switch: terms have been coopted by the Left, emptied of their original meaning, and replaced with new notions unmoored from the original. We see this in words like "rights," "justice," and "marriage." We also see it with "sanctuary."

A "sanctuary" is the most sacred part of a church. It is, by definition, holy. "Sanctuary" refers to the sacred space around the altar, often (at least by tradition) physically set apart by a border: the altar rail. Gradually, the special reverence afforded the sanctuary came to extend to the entire church building - and, occasionally, to its surrounding area because of its connection to the Church.

A further idea of "sanctuary" emerged in the Middle Ages as part of a larger issue: the relation of the civil and ecclesiastical powers. It's not just a question of the "things of God and of Caesar" because medieval thought would never have imagined there were things belonging to Caesar that first and still didn't belong to God. It was a question of who had jurisdiction where.

By the principle of "rendering unto Caesar and unto God," sanctuary offered fugitives from the king's justice refuge within God's house. But this protection was not open-ended. As The Catholic Encyclopedia notes about "the right of refuge," in some places after 30-40 days, sanctuary required the fugitive to swear to quit the king's realm and not return without royal leave.

If he wanted immunity from some of the king's laws, he had to make himself not subject to any of them. That is: sanctuary could delay Caesar's justice by allowing time to sort things out, not nullify it. You could not normally indefinitely claim "sanctuary" from Caesar yet remain in Caesar's realm.

Compare that with the contemporary aping of the term "sanctuary."

First, it has almost no connection to a sacred place. True, some church leaders have asked the federal courts to bar ICE from making arrests in sacred places, but that's almost a vestigial holdover from the term's origins.

In truth, "sanctuary" has undergone a secularized apotheosis. It's not necessarily connected to anyplace sacred: what's holy about a Home Depot parking lot or even the whole State of California? Instead, these secular spaces have been sacralized not by anything inherent about them but by mere declaration.

The place is not qualitatively distinctive, only its designation. There's no inherent moral or spiritual significance to the areas so designated.

If sacredness derives merely from being labeled as such, if everything can be a "sanctuary," then nothing really is. Even churches now embody what one critic called "transitory sacrality," often consistent with their "multipurpose" design. The explicitly sacred is time-boxed: "holy" from 10 to noon for Mass; available at 3 for a concert; and open at 6 for a chicken juggling performance. Just move the mensa and the candles adjacent to (not on) it!

Nor would Caesar necessarily acknowledge "sanctuary" in its original form. During COVID, aggressive states shut down public "events" and bishops accompanied them with blanket dispensations from Mass. If a "rogue" bishop - claiming "sanctuary" - had opened his cathedral for public worship, do you think the Detroit Police, for example, would have tolerated the "sanctuary?"

Let's say a father fleeing a court order to "affirm" his child's gender transition holed himself up in St. Mary's in Sacramento. Do you think "gender sanctuary" California would deem him immune?

I don't think so, in either case. And I'm willing to bet the same voices demanding "sanctuary" for illegal aliens would have no problem denying "s...