The Catholic Thing

By Daniel B. Gallagher.

Surrounded by a culture of mounting political violence, we all must feel at least a modicum of anger. We wouldn't be human if we didn't.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox is to be commended for admitting it on Friday: "Over the last 48 hours, I have been as angry as I have ever been. . .and as anger pushed me to the brink, it was actually Charlie (Kirk)'s words that pulled me back. . . .Charlie said, 'When people stop talking, that's when you get violence.'"

Without knowing it, the late Mr. Kirk recapitulated the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which, to put it prosaically, is, "it's not whether you feel anger, it's what you do with it."

Anger was by far the most complex "passion of the soul" or "emotion" (passio animae) for Aquinas. Thomas teaches that anger entails both sadness and hope, that its object is a mixture of good and evil, and that it involves both the irascible and the concupiscible appetites.

We can't get into those technicalities now, but suffice it to say that, for Aquinas, anger has a particularly important relation to reason. Anger is reasonable in that it expects or "hopes" for a just punishment for a wrong (spes puniendi).

The problem is that anger hopes for this punishment imperfectly since, left to itself, it goes off the rails in determining the kind of punishment that should be meted out. Anger listens to reason telling it that an injury has been done, but anger does not "hear reason perfectly" (non perfecte audit) (Summa Theologiae, question 158, article 1) and therefore entails an impediment to the correct use of reason.

The use of reason in the case of anger (ira), albeit imperfect, allows Thomas to distinguish it from hateful rage (odium). Governor Cox relied on a similar distinction in addressing young people after the murder of Mr. Kirk: "You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage is the only option. But through those (i.e., Mr. Kirk's) words, we have a reminder that we can choose a different path."

For Aquinas, choosing that different path means recognizing anger as reasonable, but also acknowledging that anger involves the imperfect use of reason. When we are angry, we rightly expect just punishment, but we inordinately determine the kind of punishment we deem just.

Another unique thing about anger is that it is the one passion without a direct contrary (cf. ST first part of the second part, question 23, article 3), both in the sense that it has no more or less of a specific counter passion, and in the sense that it has no contrariety between good and evil. "Anger," Aquinas says, "is caused by a difficult evil already latent within it." Plainly put, anger is, prima facie, justified in a way the other passions are not.

Even though anger does not have a contrary per se, Aquinas thinks that the contrary emotions of hope (spes) and sadness (tristitia) are essentially involved in anger.

Hope is involved insofar as an angry person hopes to be vindicated, and sadness is involved insofar as that person grieves an injustice suffered. We can better deal with our anger when we realize that it is a mixture of these two passions.

Aquinas thinks that anger consists precisely in the confluence of the sadness of having been wronged and the hope of vengeance. If we have no hope of vengeance, we experience only sadness. And if we remove the sadness from anger, all that's left is joy: i.e., joy in the certainty that vengeance has been or will be achieved.

So, in the face of an evil such as the political assassination of Mr. Kirk, we can either resign ourselves, in which case the passion we undergo is simply sadness (tristitia), or we can try to overcome or vindicate the evil. But if we act upon raw anger, then, as Aquinas teaches, the punishment we hope for will be unjust.

I know the reasoning is heavy here, but again, the takeaway is that we are justified when we feel anger precisely because some injustice has been suffered and that injustice calls for v...

By Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas.

Today, the Church gives us an opportunity to reflect on the mystery of the Cross, and she guides our thoughts and sentiments as we call this feast the "Exaltation" or "Triumph" of the Cross. Today, we glory in the Cross; we even rejoice in the Cross. We wear the red vestments of royalty and victory. We sing, "Lift high the Cross, the love of Christ proclaim; let all the world adore His sacred Name."

This is, at least, a bit "out of sync" with modernity's approach to suffering and death. Indeed, Father Pablo Straub coined a word to describe the reaction of our contemporaries to the Cross; "cruciphobia" - fear of the Cross! I'm happy to say I learned early to avoid that malady.

I was born with several severe health problems and had to undergo painful treatments.

On one such occasion, the technician on duty was a Sister who said: "Peter, your mother tells me you want to be a priest. A priest is a man of sacrifice - like Jesus the Priest. I know that this is going to hurt a great deal, and I'm very sorry about that. But I want you to do a couple of things. I want you to look very intently on the crucifix on my habit. See how Jesus suffered for you out of His great love. Tell Him you love Him in return, that you want to unite your sufferings to His, and that you wish to offer up your sufferings for your priestly vocation."

It didn't eliminate the pain, but it did make it more bearable because it was placed in a bigger context - one that involved divine love, the salvation of the world, and my future life as a priest. Thanks to that nun, whose name I never knew, I have never experienced "cruciphobia" for a single day since.

In August of 1998, I went to Lithuania to assist in the rebuilding of the Church after decades of Communist oppression. Time for sightseeing was extremely limited, and my host asked if I had any "must-sees." I responded, "The Hill of Crosses."

For me, that place was - and is - the perfect symbol of the Church in every age. Each cross planted there is a reminder of suffering endured by Christ's followers; all those crosses together stand forth as testaments to the indomitable human spirit, emboldened and strengthened by the Cross of the Savior. Which is why Pope John Paul II also included "The Hill of Crosses" in his 1993 pastoral visit to Lithuania.

One more story. A world-renowned rabbi and I collaborated for years on many projects, including a book, investigating various theological concerns from our respective traditions.

One of those topics was suffering. (The rabbi had lost a daughter years earlier in a tragic car accident, in which he was the driver. He had never gotten over that tragedy.)

One day we considered the mystery of suffering, particularly of the innocent, we spoke about the less-than-happy solution in the Book of Job. That day happened to be the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. I mentioned that in the Cross of Christ, Christians find meaning for all human suffering and death and that such pain can actually be redemptive. The rabbi, with tears welling up in his eyes, sobbed, "How I wish I could believe that!"

All this might lead us to ask: "Just what is this mysterious fascination of Christians with the Cross and with carrying crosses personally?" Most people shrink from suffering, yet the Jesus we meet in the Passion marches boldly and resolutely toward the Cross with all its suffering.

The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered. The word "obedience" comes from the Latin word for "listening intently." Jesus listened intently to His Father's will and plan, and acted accordingly. Indeed, the greatest theology lesson is learned by gazing intently on the crucifix.

A symbol of ignominy throughout the ages is transformed by Jesus Christ. As Julian of Norwich put it, we look on his wounds as honorable scars - tokens of victory and of love.

The Book of Genesis tells us that the cause of Adam's disobedience was a tree; J...

Msgr. Charles Fink.

So much of the modern world behaves as if "everything is politics." And if politics is the art to the possible, it follows that just about anything goes. Why? Because human beings have an almost infinite capacity for thinking up good reasons to do bad things. If we don't start out with the acknowledgement of some moral absolutes, i.e. boundaries beyond which we must never go, we will always be able and often inclined to come up with reasons to legitimize doing terrible things in order to produce possible - and what are deemed good - results.

In truth, politics is one small, albeit important, slice of human interaction. It is morality that comes closer to being everything, morality bounded by absolute prohibitions, within which there is wide latitude for disagreements in the arena of prudential judgements, involving all manner of trade-offs. Within this arena, pragmatism rules; consequentialism holds sway, but is limited by things we must never do, or at least never directly intend.

Deny this, eliminate those absolutes, and there is no limit to the evil ordinary human beings can talk themselves into doing with perfectly clear consciences. But all of this raises the question: How are we to arrive at the knowledge of the moral absolutes that will guide our way and spare us the ignominy of slipping into moral error, even to the point of atrocity?

Some, like myself, will appeal to the Natural Law, built into our human nature and discernible by right reason. The problem is that the texts outlining the use of right reason in such discernment are often long and difficult.

They remind me of St. Ignatius of Loyola's rules for discernment of spirits, fairly brief and clear as presented in his Spiritual Exercises, but not so easy to apply in concrete circumstances. And when explicated by Ignatius's Jesuit descendants and others, they're so wearingly complex that one despairs of having the time or energy to make a decision as to what God wants of one: leaving me to conclude that in order to discern the Spirit's will for me, I should pray, think things through, seek the guidance of trusted counsellors, then make my best guess and entrust the matter to God.

It may not be the deepest interpretation of Ignatius, but it has the merit of being doable and not prone to leading one into the whirlpool of overthinking, scrupulosity, or the presumption that one can be assured that what one does is God's will.

But back to the Natural Law and the need for a set of moral standards, especially boundaries, to guide us on our way. Again, how are we to discern them? Is there any hope that we will ever all agree as to what they are?

In Andrew Klavan's riveting mystery, A Woman Under Ground, his protagonist, Cameron Winter, formerly an operative in a top-secret government agency and a self-described agnostic, finds himself confronted by a friend, who confesses to an affair with a young coed less than half his age.

Roger, the friend in question, a married man, a family man, goes through a litany of excuses for his infidelity and for why he must abandon his wife and son so as to be truly alive. Finally, Winter can endure it no longer. He tells Roger that what he has done is wrong. Then asked, "What's that supposed to mean?", he answers:

It means wrong. Immoral. Against the laws of God and man. . . .You cheated on your wife, Roger. That's immoral. That's what wife means. Someone it's immoral to cheat on. Because you promised you wouldn't. That's what the word promise means, something that's immoral to break. If we're going to change the meaning of every word that doesn't suit us, we might as well just grunt at each other and act like demons.

But he goes on:

And the worst, the most immoral thing you're doing? Is breaking up the marriage of your son's parents. That's a disaster for him. Your marriage is the planet he lives on, and you're going to blow that planet up. . . .Stop lying to yourself. . . .That's no way to live, if you're a man. T...

By Jayd Henricks.

But first a note from Robert Royal: I am in Utah, "on vacation," and passed by Orem, the site where Charlie Kirk was murdered, the day prior to the event. All decent people, of course, deplore this horror, and we must do all we can in our personal lives and in our interactions with others - as Charlie did himself - to work tirelessly against every form of political violence. In today's column, our friend Jayd Henricks reminds us of some crucial realities that should be in our minds and hearts now and in the coming weeks and months. Pray for the repose of Charlie's soul - and pray also for God's mercy and graces on our deeply troubled nation.

Now for today's column...

The assassination of Charlie Kirk was not just the killing of a brilliant young mind, a husband, and a father; it was an attempt to kill the truth. It was an attempt to kill a movement of young adults engaging in public discourse about the essential truths of humanity. And it was an attempt to kill civility.

This is not to say that everything Charlie said was true; I don't think that is the case for any of us. But Charlie Kirk engaged the arena of ideas more courageously, more robustly, more civilly, and with more faith than just about anyone in the public square today, which is why he had such a following among the youth. He was different.

He did not, as far as I could tell, use the inflammatory language so common in today's public discourse. He was obviously a staunch conservative and a man of genuine faith, with firm convictions and a preternatural gift for debate, all of which got him killed. But his conservativism was not ideological or partisan. It came from conviction, well-reasoned conviction.

The loss of Charlie Kirk at the hands of yet another practitioner of the culture of death is a tragedy for the country since he, more than anyone else, attempted good faith efforts to model civil discourse and debate in the public square. His hallmark characteristic was to use speech, with patience and kindness, not violence, to address divisive issues. You might disagree with him, but he would give anyone a genuine hearing and then respond.

The assassin and those who are pleased with the fact that Charlie Kirk is no longer in the public arena fail to understand that what was attacked was not so much a man as the idea that the truth is more powerful than a bullet.

This sort of violence is a tacit admission that untruths are not powerful enough to combat the truth. It is cowardice, but also the fruit of the failure of lies. Yes, there is profound loss with the death of Charlie, but the truth that he relentlessly pursued cannot be killed. In the end, truth will prevail.

Just by telling the truth, we can defeat evil. This, I hope, is part of Charlie's legacy. The best way to respond to this tragedy is with truth, since the light of truth is what destroys lies, even violent lies.

We are living through a perilous moment in history. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East threaten lives and peace everywhere. The cold civil war that exists in our country is heating up and threatens widespread violence. To acknowledge obvious truths is becoming increasingly dangerous.

And yet each of us has an obligation to speak the truth. We may not be able to do it as cleverly as Charlie did, but we must be willing to risk everything for the truth. We must give ourselves to the truth with the belief that even in death, the truth will prevail. Simply by telling the truth, evil and untruths will be defeated.

We are in a serious struggle for our freedoms and our culture, and the murder of Charlie Kirk seems to be an inflection point. Where do we go from here? There is a danger that his death will lead to more violence. Anger over his death is certainly justified, but violence will not win the day. The virtues that Charlie exhibited are what's needed: Patience and kindness with a firm commitment to the truth.

Sadly, the open and at times violent hostility towards people of t...

Catholics who travel between the United States and Europe say that there is a noticeable difference in the Catholic cultures of the two. The reports are anecdotal, of course. But this is what I see and hear: that on the American side, practicing Catholics seem more youthful and more hopeful; their culture is more vigorous; it is more outspoken; it has a bolder public presence. It is looking towards the next generations. It is building for the future. In short, it is more apostolic and evangelical.

If this is true - some European friends have asked me - how would I, as an American, explain it?

I said that there are deep-running fibers in the American character that make Americans especially well-suited to living the faith in the contemporary world, in the true spirit of Vatican II. (Yes, my friends and I remain very enthusiastic about what Vatican II truly taught.)

Consider the idea that the "first freedom" is not speech but rather freedom of religion, based on a fundamental duty to serve God. "This duty," James Madison famously wrote, is "precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe." ("Memorial and Remonstrance")

This is why we insist on "under God" in the pledge and "in God we trust" on our coins, and why, despite an apparent consensus secularity, many still struggle, rightly so, with whether we should deem ourselves, after all, a "Christian nation."

As if a constant witness, today the vibrant First Liberty Institute voices this American outlook publicly.

St. John Paul II, in an address to the United Nations, similarly said, "religious freedom is at the basis of all other freedoms and is inseparably tied to them all." Such a conviction ran throughout all of his teachings against the culture and death, and "socialism," construed as the denial of the transcendence and subjectivity of human society.

Or consider the idea that civil society itself, understood as an aggregate of families engaged in worship, schooling, and business with one another, for common flourishing, is prior to the state.

This Society, "the people" as Lincoln styled it, enjoys a "right to revolution." They are free to change their whole form of government if that government is failing them: they have the authority to do so. So we believe and feel in our bones as Americans.

True, the ideology of the social contract, as articulated by philosophers, has been individualistic, silent about the natural institutions of the family and the marketplace. But in American culture, never purely dictated by "liberalism" - in films, stories, and songs - more prominent than the loner is the father who is defending his wife, children, and homestead against a threat.

And yet a similar insight underlies the spirit of social reform let loose by Rerum Novarum, and evident later in Vatican II's Gaudium et spes:

A family, no less than a State, is. . .a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty.

This view of the family entails several consequences: "If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire."

It's obvious that this outlook, articulated by Pope Leo in the words just quoted from Rerum Novarum, has been embraced far more intuitively by Americans than Europeans.

Then there is the spirit of innovation, invention, daring, and entrepreneurship so evident in the Ame...

By Francis X. Maier.

Colorado has dozens of ski resorts. The official count is 41. Vail and Aspen, Telluride, and Steamboat Springs get the lion's share of attention. But little ski gems like Wolf Creek and Crested Butte abound. Our family favorite, in the 18 years we lived in Denver, was Arapahoe Basin. Tucked into the Continental Divide just 65 miles from our home, "A-Basin" was an easy drive and a laid-back local magnet. It offered a few beginner runs, but the resort was, and is, short on frills and has little patience with posers.

A-Basin attracts the serious skier. The Lenawee Express lift drops skiers off at 12,456 feet. From there, the experienced or the foolhardy can trudge to the East Wall summit, with its double black-diamond runs, at more than 13,000 feet. Whether from prudence or cowardice, I never did the summit. The unskilled or unwary can fall 600 feet. But skiing down from the top of the safe and more sensible Lenawee lift is a sacramental experience in itself. The speed, the thin fierce air, and the whisper of snow racing beneath one's skis: These things suspend time.

The real glory of A-Basin, though, is the rising sun on the East Wall's face at dawn: a panorama of sheer granite rock, towering and massive, shining with austere majesty. It's non-human. More than human. And for anyone with eyes and a soul, it compels humility. As God said to Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth… when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (Job 38: 4-7)

There, at the East Wall, the words still hang in the air.

All of the above is stored away in my family's memory. But what triggered my recent remembering is an exchange I had with a good friend. We share a love of films. He mentioned in passing his annoyance with overpraised directors; the excessive laurels heaped on the work of men like Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, and Terrence Malick. And it's true that Hollywood slathers its film "geniuses" with praise as thick as Pompeii's lava crust. But on the matter of Terrence Malick, my friend and I disagree. As a director, Malick's films have often had a Christian undercurrent. And two of his films in particular speak powerfully to our present moment. Here's the first.

A Hidden Life (2019) is based on the story of Franz Jägerstätter. An Austrian peasant farmer born out of wedlock in 1907, he was raised Catholic. But he underwent a deeper conversion in the mid-1930s with the rise of National Socialism in neighboring Germany and marriage to his wife Franziska, a committed Catholic.

Jägerstätter was the only man in his village to vote against Anschluss (union) with the Third Reich in 1938. As Nazi wartime atrocities and pressure on the Church increased, he grew more vocal against the regime. He was called up for military service in February 1943. He refused to take an oath of personal loyalty to Adolph Hitler, claimed conscientious objection, and offered to serve in a non-combat role.

This was rejected. Jägerstätter was arrested and charged with undermining military morale. He refused to relent and resisted all attempts at persuasion and intimidation. He was executed in August 1943. In June 2007, Pope Benedict XVI declared Jägerstätter a martyr. He was beatified later that year.

Malick captures Jägerstätter's character, and the tenderness of his married and family life, with exceptional skill. But the film's decisive scene takes place in prison. Preparing for trial, Jägerstätter's defense lawyer notes that if he just signs a simple statement retracting his views, he'll be released and likely be allowed to serve as a hospital orderly. Jägerstätter asks, "Will I be required to swear loyalty to Hitler?"

The attorney shrugs, "Oh, words. No one takes that sort of thing seriously." Jägerstätter responds, "I can't." His attorney argues, "Just sign this [paper] and you will go free." Jägerstätter replies, "But I am free." He refuses to sign because words matter. Words reveal ...

By Casey Chalk.

But first a note: Only one day until Elizabeth Mitchell's course on St. Edith Stein and St. John of the Cross! Do yourself a great spiritual favor this Fall and enroll right away. And spend some high-quality time in the presence of two great saints with much to say to us about the riches of the Catholic mystical tradition.

Now for today's column...

Consider this: "In those early times of our American grandfathers and great-grandfathers, two prevailing visions dwelled above their lives. One was the spiritual design of national union which in the Civil War took so much bravery and sacrifice to secure. The other was the continental destiny of the United States which in the conquest and settlement of the West took so much work and love to fulfill."

Bravery, sacrifice, work, love: these are not words one hears very often when it comes to contemporary accounts of American history, and certainly not of westward expansion. One is far more likely to hear about theft, exploitation, racism, and violence.

Yet this is how two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Catholic author Paul Horgan begins his epic 1960 best-selling western A Distant Trumpet, a novel that traces the stories of U.S. army soldiers and their wives, as well as the Apache warriors they encountered in the final days of the American frontier. It's a captivating saga, one that in its honest brutality rivals the greatest westerns of the American imagination, while in its optimistic portrayal of its protagonists offers a welcome (and implicitly Catholic) counter to a genre too often defined by nihilistic cynicism.

In his postscript, Horgan - who was made a papal knight by Pope Pius XII - cites a massive amount of primary and secondary source material for his story, including memoirs, U.S. Government publications of Congressional hearings and reports on Indian affairs and frontier troubles, indemnity claims, military policy and experience, and Surgeon General's records. "This is a historical novel, which means that a period and a scene have been enriched - indeed, largely created - by general reference to known circumstances."

What were those circumstances? U.S. Army officers of varying competence and motives, leading similar enlisted men, many first-generation immigrants from across western Europe, whose first language was not English. A young, idealistic officer is told he must "learn that the army is like any other human institution - it contains all kinds and descriptions of men, capable of every error, just like men on the outside."

Enlisted men served on a dangerous and inhospitable frontier, often far from settled communities, and aware that fierce indigenous warriors freely roamed the wilderness.

Yet Horgan is also impressively knowledgeable about and sympathetic to Apache culture. He lauds their reverence for their ancestral lands and how their warriors possessed an ancient nobility and unquenchable courage. That ferocity sometimes manifested itself in horrific acts, such as torturing soldiers and settlers alike and mutilating the bodies of those they killed.

So terrible were Americans' fear of the Apache that the few women on remote military installations - usually wives of officers and laundresses - had to learn to shoot; if they were in danger of being captured, they were told to use the bullets on themselves.

Nevertheless, reflecting an underlying Catholic ethic, many of the Anglo-American characters make an effort to treat Indians as human persons rather than subhuman savages. This sometimes occurs in circumstances when everything inside such Westerners inclines them to perceive American Indians as so primitive that they lack dignity or rights. (Horgan knew quite a bit about Anglo-Indian relations, winning a Pulitzer for his biography of Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy, a 19th-century missionary to New Mexico.)

Horgan does not ignore the fact that the U.S. government and the Army often treated indigenous peoples miserably. Rather, as he explains, there w...

By Robert Royal.

But first a note: Only two days until Elizabeth Mitchell's course on St. Edith Stein and St. John of the Cross! Do yourself a great spiritual favor this Fall and enroll right away. And spend some high-quality time in the presence of two great saints with much to say to us about the riches of the Catholic mystical tradition.

Now for today's column...

Virgil's Aeneid - the epic poem about the founding of Rome that virtually every literate person in the West has read since the time of Christ - has a line that has puzzled many a reader. Aeneas descends to the underworld. He sees evil souls being punished, the good enjoying the Elysian Fields (roughly, heaven), and a parade of the future heroes who will bring about the glory of Rome. One figure in particular is striking (and frustrating when you're a student trying to parse the Latin): tu Maximus ille es, unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem ("You are, Fabius Maximus, who alone by delay renewed our State.") Fabius Maximus was a legendary general who by shrewd "delaying" tactics defeated the fearful leader of Carthage's army, Rome's greatest opponent, Hannibal.

We don't often think of delay as a way to win wars - or win anything for that matter. And it's unusual to see Romans, who just around the time of Jesus brutally conquered wherever they wanted, praising a practitioner of military finesse. When the Cunctator ("Delayer") took over, a huge number of Rome's troops had just been crushed at the battle of Cannae, and many thought Rome should simply surrender to Carthage. But Fabius Maximus roused the city and began a long campaign of attrition, avoiding great battles against impossible odds, but chipping away at the enemy in many small skirmishes. The Carthaginian armies eventually collapsed.

Roman history is unknown to most readers today. But all this has been in my mind as I've been thinking lately about Pope Leo and what is likely to be his long papacy. Speculations about this are already tiresome and range from dismay to optimism. One thing we can already start to see, however, is that he's not a man for head-on major battles - as much as many people (myself included) would like swift and strong action.

He's clearly a Fabius Maximus type. The cumulative effect of many small acts will determine the Church's course for the next two decades and will decide whether She will, slowly, make headway against the many forces, within and without, poised - let's be frank - to destroy Her.

I've long believed that the pope does not have to be a global ambulance chaser, so to speak, inserting himself into what look like - to the worldly - the Really Important Things. (The Vatican's recent call for a two-state solution in Israel, for example, not only proposed an impossibility, but was a misuse of the Church's moral authority where it has no more insight or influence than anyone else.)

By all means: denounce war; discourage gun crime (without thinking you have a solution about mass shooters in a heavily-armed place like America); encourage welcoming the stranger (also without thinking that that it's an immigration policy); advocate care of Creation; warn about the threats of AI. But the real action - Pope Leo has signaled this repeatedly - is to encounter Jesus Christ and to live His goodness and truth.

It's more than enough for any pope to feed and water God's people and to invite those outside to join the fold - by conversion and small daily steps of repentance, not by the politically inspired suicide of "diversity" and "inclusion."

Until these last days, I had hopes that Pope Leo got that.

After the LGBT Jubilee fiasco this past weekend, I also have doubts.

First, we saw the spectacle last week of Fr. James Martin putting a pre-emptive spin on the pope's views about LGBTs and the Church. He reported that he "heard" Leo tell him to continue his ministry along the lines that Pope Francis had already encouraged.

As an American, Pope Leo must be aware that this sort of thin...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

Popes give special attention to those they canonize in Jubilee years. The joint canonization of Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis today marks a highlight of Jubilee 2025, and perhaps a high point of Leo's pontificate.

For the Jubilee 1900, Pope Leo XIII canonized two saints, both with fairly wide popular devotion, Jean-Baptiste de La Salle and Rita of Cascia. Not all canonized saints enjoy a widespread cult; most are relatively unknown. For holy years, popes try to find popular saints.

Venerable Pius XII canonized Maria Goretti in 1950, to whom devotion was so widespread that it was the first canonization held outdoors in St. Peter's Square, in order to accommodate hundreds of thousands, including the 84-year-old mother of the new saint.

In 1975, St. Paul VI canonized Elizabeth Ann Seton and Oliver Plunkett, successor to St. Patrick. Martyred in 1681, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland was an even more prominent clergyman than St. John Fisher. Plunkett's canonization completed the raising to the altars of the martyrs of the English Reformation, to whom Paul VI gave particular attention.

In 2016, during the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa, the 20th century's exemplar of the works of mercy, as well as José Sánchez del Río, the teenage martyr of the Cristiada in Mexico. The Holy Father also canonized Elizabeth of the Trinity, the Carmelite contemporary of the Little Flower. Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote a book about Thérèse and Elizabeth, Two Sisters in the Spirit, in which he employed the marvelous image that saints are God's prime numbers.

Pope Pius XI and St. John Paul the Great most extensively decorated the jubilee calendar with prominent canonizations. It may be that 2025 will be considered similar by generations hence.

Pius XI concentrated several major ceremonies into the early summer of 1925: Thérèse of Lisieux, Peter Canisius, Jean-Marie Vianney, and John Eudes, the latter two on the same day. He also beatified the Jesuit Martyrs of North America in June and Korean martyrs in July. These were saints of great renown and thus had the happy ancillary effect of boosting pilgrim numbers in Rome for the jubilee.

John Paul prepared for the Great Jubilee over decades, already mentioning it in the initial paragraphs of his first encyclical in 1979. The program of canonizations was chosen with great care to mark the end of the totalitarian century; he canonized groups of martyrs from both Mexico and China, the latter vehemently protested by the Chinese Communist regime, even though the martyrs predated Mao's revolution. Those canonizations were meant to highlight the "new martyrs" of the murderous regimes of the concluding century.

He traveled to Fátima - his only jubilee trip outside of Biblical lands - to beatify the child visionaries, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and to reveal the "third secret," part of the hidden history of the 20th century. At the centre of it all, he proposed the message of Divine Mercy, the "ultimate limit to evil in the world," with the canonization of Faustina Kowalska, this "daughter of Poland" who became the "first saint of the third millennium."

In addition, John Paul canonized Katharine Drexel, an American pioneer in education for racial minorities, and Josephine Bakhita, the former Sudanese slave who now enjoys remarkable prominence as a patroness against the scourge of human trafficking.

In addition to Frassati and Acutis this month, the customary October canonizations include Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan, Peter To Rot, Vincenza Maria Poloni, Maria del Monte Carmelo Rendiles Martínez, Maria Troncatti, José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, and Bartolo Longo. A few names stand out.

Peter To Rot, the son of early converts to Catholicism in Papua New Guinea, was a lay catechist. Catechists are key agents of evangelization and catechesis where priests are scarce. He was martyred by the occupying Japanese forces in July ...

By Andrew Shivone.

I recently attended a professional baseball game in Texas. The game was played in a brand-new, multi-billion-dollar stadium that possesses every amenity one could imagine. The game was played indoors at a very comfortable 70 degrees, and refreshments were available for delivery within five minutes of ordering them on a free app.

What struck me, however, was how hard it was to watch the game. Unless the ball was actively in play, the video boards and speakers were constantly either "entertaining" the crowd or selling a product.

There was - and I mean this quite literally - not a moment of silence throughout the whole evening. The slow drama of baseball, which can only be enjoyed when one pays close attention, was drowned in a tsunami of noise.

It is curious that all of this activity, which is supposed to create an atmosphere of excitement and engagement, had a sedative effect on the crowd. Hardly anyone seemed entertained.

After the game, I was reminded of a small but insightful essay by philosopher Josef Pieper, "Learning How to See Again," in his book Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation. There, he makes the point that the incessant onslaught of images and noise dulls our sensitivity to reality.

He suggests two remedies that I think are especially valuable for Catholic schools today.

First, he suggests that we undergo a personal regimen of abstinence and fasting from the barrage of noise. The goal here is to keep the "noise of daily inanities at a distance" in order to open up space for silent and careful observation and reception.

But merely being silent and passive is not enough. So Pieper adds a second suggestion: that the most effective remedy is "to be active oneself in artistic creation, producing shapes and forms for the eyes to see." He writes that the "mere attempt to create an artistic form compels the artist to take a fresh look at the visible reality; it requires authentic and personal observation."

What Pieper describes here is precisely what Catholic schools should attempt to do in their classrooms. We first attempt to create a sort of tranquility, a peaceful atmosphere in classrooms and other school spaces, that at first requires a little abstention and self-denial. But this is only a first condition for learning. The second is getting the students themselves to actively create, either by engaging in real conversations, singing music, sketching an object, or arguing a thesis.

Even if the students never become composers, never paint a masterwork, or even have to make public arguments, these activities are highly useful. This is because all of these activities are not only done for the sake of developing particular skills or learning a particular subject, but also to learn how to be attentive and caring to the reality around them.

By learning how to make, we learn how to perceive and attend. One could even go so far as to say we learn something of the suffering of love.

Let us go a little further, even than Pieper here. The effort to create and know not only helps us be attentive to the world and people around us but helps us learn how to attend to God in prayer.

The habit of study and careful creation bears its greatest fruit in our loving union and contemplation of God. Certainly, the ability to do this is a grace, but like all graces, it is a grace that works through and in our own efforts.

The great Jewish philosopher, Simone Weil, points this out in her beautiful essay on study and prayer:

If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without our knowing or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul. The result will one day be discovered in prayer. Moreover, it may very likely be felt in some department of the intelligence in no way...