The Catholic Thing

By Fr. Brian A. Graebe.

How much can we glean about the young pontificate of Pope Leo XIV? Early signs may not be definitive, but they can be suggestive. And no doubt many and various surprises lie ahead. One theme that has emerged, however, may well become a leitmotif. In his first remarks from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on the day of his election, Pope Leo spoke of walking together "as a united Church." This Pentecost Sunday, as we remember the tongues of fire that descended upon the Apostles, is also a good time to recall how often we have said we need to listen to the Holy Spirit to rediscover that unity.

The voice of the Spirit speaks to us through many sources in the Church, but especially through the pope. The emphasis on unity found fuller expression in Pope Leo's inaugural Mass

"Brothers and sisters," Leo exhorted, "I would like that our first great desire be for a united Church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world."

Pope Leo has drawn attention to the first of the four "marks of the Church" that Christians profess in the Nicene Creed: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The Church's oneness, or unity, derives from her common foundation (Jesus Christ), a shared set of beliefs, and a singular means of grace in the Holy Spirit.

Thus can St. Paul speak of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." The internal coherence of doctrinal unity has always found its visible, external expression in the person of the pope who, like St. Peter whom he succeeds, is tasked by Jesus to "strengthen the brethren" in that same faith. Catholics rightly look to the pope as a voice of creedal clarity and a bulwark against confusion and distortion.

Pope Leo's emphasis on unity, and his awareness of his personal role in both representing and assuring that unity, is welcome and needed. The preceding pontificate was marked by unprecedented doctrinal confusion. Certainly, there has been confusion and error since the earliest days of the Church; what was different was that the confusion came from the pope himself.

Pope Francis seemed to revel in studied ambiguity: not explicitly changing Church teaching (which he had no authority to do anyway) but winking at those who would like him to.

Can a priest bless a same-sex couple, or simply bless individuals who happen to form a same-sex couple? Can something that touches so closely on the Church's understanding of marriage and human sexuality be permitted in Germany but forbidden in Nigeria?

Pope Francis had little regard for such questions, and his biggest fans were always those most eager to see the Church capitulate to the secular zeitgeist. Combined with a certain harshness, especially against those drawn to the Church's most ancient forms of worship, Pope Francis left behind a deeply divided and wounded Church.

His successor has, from the start, displayed a more subtle savviness, and his calls for unity are not lost on those who have felt left out in the cold. His serene and confident demeanor, unafraid to embrace the external signs of an office larger than himself, suggests to many Catholics that he is aware of their suffering and wishes to heal the family rift.

Even at this early stage, he has prescribed a noteworthy remedy. A week after his election, speaking to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Leo said that, "from the Christian perspective, truth is not the affirmation of abstract and disembodied principles, but an encounter with the person of Christ himself, alive in the midst of the community of believers. Truth, then, does not create division, but rather enables us to confront all the more resolutely the challenges of our time."

The pope makes clear that truth, the "one faith," is not some arbitrary collection of dogmas. It is the person of Jesus Christ, "the way, the truth, and the life." That theme of unity rooted in Christ has continued to imbue the Holy Father's words throughout the first month of his pontificate. In a ...

By Eduardo J. Echeverria.

But first a note from Robert Royal: Professor Echeverria lays out today some of the corrections that Pope Leo needs to make on urgent matters that he inherited from Pope Francis. And the American pope just might make them. Just the other day, he asserted that marriage is not an ideal, but a concrete reality - and one that people can live. A good beginning. But we intend to follow up and encourage him to continue along similar lines. We can only do so with your help. We're making some progress, but we've still got a long way to go to assure that we'll be here for the rest of 2025, and beyond. Please, do your part in this essential work. Support The Catholic Thing, today.

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In light of Pope Leo XIV's statement that the family is founded on the "stable union between a man and a woman," the responses of the critics and boosters of the late Pope Francis's view of conjugal marriage are striking. The former imply that Leo's view of conjugal marriage as the two-in-one flesh union of a man and a woman reaffirms what Francis had denied, and the latter defend the continuity between Francis and Leo on marriage.

On the one hand, the critics are wrong. Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis consistently taught - even if his teaching was not in the limelight compared to his teaching on environmental issues - the conjugal view of marriage: marriage as the two-in-one-flesh union between a man and a woman. And sexual differentiation being the fundamental prerequisite for the two to become one flesh. Furthermore, St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis all affirmed the moral and sacramental significance of the two-in-one-flesh bodily unity as foundational to the marital form of love.

Pope Francis upheld the objectivity of God's "primordial divine plan" (see Genesis chapter 1, verse 27, chapter 2, verse 24) of the deepest reality of marriage, grounded in the order of creation. He, as well as Leo, insisted on marriage's ontological nature: "'Marriage' is a historical word. Forever, throughout humanity, and not only in the Church, it is between a man and a woman. You can't change it just like that. It's the nature of things." This teaching is reaffirmed in the Apostolic Exhortations, Evangelii gaudium and Amoris Laetitia, as well as in the encyclical Laudato Si'.

On the other hand, the boosters are wrong. Despite Francis's affirmation of conjugal marriage, there are five things that he contributed to undermining it, at least to the perception that he could not unequivocally support conjugal marriage.

First, Pope Francis was an advocate of legal support of same-sex civil unions. Doesn't the advocacy of such a union, which has sinful acts at its core constituting the union, corrupt the good of human nature and hence the culture of marriage?

Second, he affirmed that "homosexuals experience the gift of love," implying thereby that homosexual "love" is not an inherently disordered form of love, an offense against chastity. Did he think that the homosexual is able to live the vocation to chastity, and hence, of love in a same-sex relationship? How could the homosexual do so? The vocation of chastity involves sexual differentiation between a man and a woman, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which, according to Christian anthropology, means "the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being."

Third, he allowed the controverted practice of same-sex blessings, legitimized in the "Declaration" Fiducia Supplicans. This declaration died the death of a thousand qualifications: from the blessing of a union, to a couple, and, finally, to an individual (see Pope Francis on "60 Minutes"). Regardless, as John Finnis correctly notes, "there is no crucial moral or pastoral difference between. A, blessing people who happen to be sinners, and (b) blessing people as parties to a relationship expressed in sinful acts."

...

By Anthony Esolen.

But first a note from Robert Royal: We all know that we need to overcome the deep divisions that plague us all these days in the Church and society. But there are many things - and Professor Esolen points sharply to several of them here below - that cannot be resolved merely by goodwill. They need to be examined. Debated. Resolved. And properly. Here at The Catholic Thing, we've been in that business for closing in on twenty years now. And who knows where the Church and world would be if we and others had given up on these struggles? We didn't. And we won't. But we need you. Frankly, these first days of our mid-year fundraiser are a little softer than I'd like them to be. I need you to step up, bigger, and again if you already have. The work is long and the day is late. Please, play your part in facing the big challenges that we face. Click the button. Support the work of The Catholic Thing.

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Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte has made news with his order, if I may be permitted a metaphor, that the Vetus Ordo be celebrated only in a certain broom closet in Swannanoa. It seems also that he was about to ban some of the features of the TLM that tradition-minded people who attend the Novus Ordo favor, such as kneeling to receive the Sacrament, or facing the Risen Christ as we pray ad orientem. After the uproar about the latter - not the former, Martin has backed away, assuring people that there will be no big changes - until at least October.

Meanwhile, at the website of those music men the Saint Louis Jesuits, I've read a short piece in which once-priest Bob Dufford describes how much he loved Hollywood musicals when he was a boy, naming Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe, as his most significant influences.

I thought as much. The "folk" music common at Mass has little or nothing to do, in melody or lyrics, with any folk tradition anywhere in the world. Such songs as Dufford's "Like a Shepherd" or Dan Schutte's "Here I Am" are show tunes. They are not like medieval plainsong, or the Scottish Psalter, or the Lutheran hymns that Bach arranged, or American revival hymns, or English carols.

Folk melodies are often hauntingly beautiful: Picardy ("Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence"), Slane ("Be Thou My Vision"), St. Elisabeth ("Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee"). They can be sung by people of all ages and both sexes, together. They are not for soloists. They do not sport bizarre tempos and oddball intervals. Their lyrics come in stanzas with recognizable structure. They are thus easy to remember.

Show tunes! It's as if we're all supposed to sing, for Mass, some adaptation of "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story, or of the overblown and narcissistic "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music.

Yet one of the common criticisms of the Novus Ordo as celebrated is just this inclination toward narcissism, with a little effeminacy for spice, and a blithe carelessness about whether the congregation, as a whole, men and women both, boys and girls, can sing the show tunes or will bother to try.

Let the battle be engaged, then, on the specifics. I attend the Novus Ordo; my reasons are private. But I'm eager to hear those who detest the old rite try to justify each change and each new liturgical habit, one by one.

Suppose someone says, "I attend the old rite because I want to hear the Last Gospel at the end of every high Mass"

What response? Why was that suppressed?

Or, "The old calendar makes more sense to me, and helps me order my days. That includes the time of Epiphany, which the new rite eliminated, and Septuagesima. It also includes the Octave of Pentecost. Why does that birthday of the Church not merit its octave along with Christmas and Easter?"

What possible response? Justify the sudden leap from Ordinary Time to Lent, without preparation. Justify that downgrading of Pentecost.

Or, "Man is united by what transcends him. At the old rite, I don't feel chatty. I save that for after ...

By Brad Miner.

But first a note from Robert Royal: Where else are you going to enjoy the art, the film criticism, and the general goodguyness of the Compleat Gentleman, Bradford Miner? An eminence even among other eminences. You know what they all bring you day after day. Never fail. You don't want to fail them, do you? Dig deep into your soul's generosity. You're part of this Catholic Thing, too. Please show it with your tax-deductible contribution. This very day.

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Although it was never my intention, I seem to have become The Catholic Thing's resident expert in exorcism, although only in the sense that I've reviewed five movies about the subject: The Rite (2011), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Exorcist: Believer (2023), The Pope's Exorcist (2023), and now The Ritual (2025), which will be in theaters tomorrow.

Al Pacino stars in this story of the actual 1948 exorcism of Emma Schmidt; thus, the film is "based on true events." The promotion of the film refers to the Schmidt case as the "true story that inspired The Exorcist," a reference to William Friedkin's 1973 blockbuster, which is untrue. I suspect the movie poster below that asserts this was created by an art department unfamiliar with the facts.

The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty's novel and Friedkin's film - is based, loosely, on the 1949 case of the pseudonymous Roland Doe. The Ritual purports to be the story of Anna Ecklund (a pseudonym used until recently), who underwent exorcism in 1912 and then again in 1928. This was the real Emma Schmidt case.

And whereas the characters in The Exorcist are wholly fictional, several of those named in The Ritual were among those who undertook the exorcism of Miss Schmidt (played by Abigail Cowen), including Fr. Theophilus Riesinger (Pacino) and Fr. Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens).

During the exorcism, the real Fr. Steiger took notes, which are the foundation on which director David Midell has constructed his film. That foundation is likely strong; the structure is transparently weak, and this is because Mr. Midell (and his co-screenwriter Enrico Natale) can't help but evoke Friedkin's The Exorcist, which they do poorly.

As in that earlier film, the younger priest, who may or may not be questioning his vocation, is tasked with taking on the exorcism of a young woman. He is skeptical and unfamiliar with the rite. His bishop reassures him: another "poor soul" will be the one in charge: Fr. Theophilus Riesinger, OFM. Cap.

The Capuchin Fr. Riesinger was a German immigrant, and his 1928 confrontation with Anna Schmidt's demons was not his first: he had tried in 1912 to help the girl in a failed exorcism when she was 30 (Miss Cowen is 27), but the events in the film portray the second exorcism, at which point Miss Schmidt was 46.

And Anna Schmidt comes into The Ritual without her fascinating, true backstory.

Viewers of The Exorcist will remember various scenes in which young Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) and her mother, Chris (Ellen Burstyn), interact happily until Regan's behavior begins to change. There is a vector for demons: a Ouija Board. We see Regan acting out. There are hospital visits. We watch Chris's frustration lead to anger and despair. Only then, well into the film, do we meet Fathers Marin (Max von Sydow) and Karras (Jason Miller). And there's that score by Jack Nitzsche (with Mike Oldfield's tubular bells.) The Exorcist is plenty scary, but it's also big, bright, and generous.

The real Amma Schmidt was a Catholic woman, a Swiss immigrant, who manifested disturbing symptoms early in her life, including participation in "unspeakable sexual acts." Again, a vector for demons. But none of this is in The Ritual, which is small, dark, and stingy.

The film's era is set by a single shot of a vintage automobile in front of the church. There are several other brief scenes shot outdoors. But basically, the rest of the film is darkly lit within small rooms. A few scenes are inside a church, including a couple in wh...

By David G Bonagura, Jr.

But first a note from Robert Royal: Friends, The Catholic Thing, like all things, lives and moves and has its being in the One True God. But its earthly survival depends on you. All of you. Generously giving together to keep things going. We only come to you twice a year with hat in hand - but now's the time again. Please take a minute to ensure that we will all be here for the rest of this year and for many years to come

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In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which restricted child labor. Congress believed that children possessed an intrinsic value above monetary quantification. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which forbade discrimination on the grounds of race, color, or national origin. Congress believed that all human beings were created equal and therefore due equal treatment under the law.

In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which forbade discrimination against those with disabilities. Congress believed that physical abilities, or lack of them, do not constitute the essence of a person. His essence, by extension, comes from some other source, and the government is not it.

Religion, we often hear, should have no bearing on politics: the wall between church and state shall not be breached. Yet these three laws, to which we could add others, flow directly from a central Christian belief: that the human person is created by God. By fashioning all men and women in His image and likeness, God has endowed human beings with an innate dignity that no other person or entity may violate.

We take it for granted today that the government's functions include protecting citizens' rights, many of which, including those protected in these three laws, are pre-political, that is, they are part of persons' nature, not grants of government privilege. We fail to realize that many of these rights are political expressions of the prior Christian belief that all persons are equal because they are all children of the one Father in Heaven. As a result, one person or group cannot be greater than any other, nor exploit any other.

"Political problems," wrote Russell Kirk, "at bottom, are religious and moral problems." In other words, our beliefs and morals shape our politics, not the other way around. Beneath every hotly contested political topic of today or yesteryear - immigration, tariffs, welfare, health care, DEI, the Cold War, supply-side economic theory, segregation, slavery, westward expansion, independence from Britain - lie beliefs that shape the approach and policy. There is no such thing as a "neutral" politics devoid of prior beliefs and principles.

Sometimes these beliefs are tenets of Christianity, such as the inherent dignity of the person, which has given rise to the push for legal equality. I doubt that vociferous secularists who decry any odor of religion in public life would reject equality because it is "tainted" by religion.

Other beliefs are philosophical, such as certain economic and geopolitical theories. And sometimes beliefs come from a distinctly modern kind of religion that eschews traditional forms such as churches or hierarchies. These beliefs stem from ideologies, systems of ideas abstracted from various theories and harmonized into programs to direct a nation (or the world itself) toward preconceived ends. Like revealed religion, ideologies have dogmas and exist to save human beings from the sins of the world.

Just as Christian beliefs lie hidden in Washington, modern ideologies lie hidden there, too. Expressive individualism, the belief that the individual and his sexual freedom are the most important considerations of society, drives abortion and family law. Gender ideology, the belief that gender is a construct of the mind divorced from nature, drives school curricula, medical laws, and cultural practices from library collections to the bizarre "drag queen story hour." Diversity, equity, and inclusion, th...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.

But first a note from Robert Royal: We're off to a strong start for our mid-year fundraiser, which began yesterday. But if you didn't see our initial request, today is a good day as well to make your contribution. The need is obvious, the means clear. If you value strong reporting and analysis of what's going on in the Church and the world - and faithful encouragement of what should be going on - TCT is your "thing." We're lean, tough (not mean), and always appropriately serene. Help keep this vital work of ours going. Click the button. Do a good deed today. Support TCT.

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Conclave 2025 was not, by historical standards, exceptionally short. But it was short. It was the third straight Conclave to conclude on its first full day. Is that a cause for concern?

No one really knows except those who were in the Sistine Chapel. They are sworn to secrecy. Only Pope Leo XIV is completely free to ask them about their experience, and only the Holy Father can make any necessary modifications in future Conclave practice. It's too early to be thinking about the next Conclave, but it would be advisable for Leo to take informal soundings now, while memories are still fresh, even if there is no urgency to act.

There are not many Cardinals who have broad experience of Conclaves. Only five have taken part in three Conclaves (2005, 2013 and 2025), and twenty more were part of two (2013, 2025). They are the ones who could offer some comparison of their experiences.

The strict seclusion and secrecy of the Conclave is intended to preserve the freedom of the Cardinals to act without exterior influence, to protect them from external pressure. They are not able to follow what is going on outside, and no one will ever know how an individual elector voted. That permits, for example, Cardinal Stephen Chow of Hong Kong - should he be minded to do so - to vote for a candidate that would defy the Chinese Communist Party. Or to vote for one who would capitulate. He is free to vote his conscience.

Yet the digital age may create another kind of pressure. I asked several Cardinals after the 2013 Conclave whether there was pressure to come to a quick conclusion, to produce a result for an impatient instant-communication world. Their answer was yes, that there was a sense that a "deadlocked" Conclave - even just proceeding to a third day - might signal division and disunity.

The pressure in times gone by was real; indeed, Catholic sovereigns would send a Cardinal from their territories to carry their "veto" into the conclave. The last time that was done was in 1903, when the Cardinal from Kraków exercised the veto of the Habsburg emperor. St. Pius X eliminated that almost immediately.

Potential pressure today comes not from one regime against a particular papabile. It's not really from anyone but from everyone, from a digital world unimagined when St. John Paul the Great wrote the current rules for the conclave in 1996. The pressure for a quick resolution may well impinge on the freedom of the electors.

I did not report on this Conclave, but many of those who did wrote in advance that, given the large number of Cardinals, many of whom were rather unknown to each other, the voting might take longer. To the contrary, it seems that the result was clear before pranzo on the first full day. It is possible that a new kind of external pressure is felt; to paraphrase Jesus at the Last Supper: what is to be done should be done quickly.

Again, one does not know. It may well be that today's speed of travel means that Conclaves actually "begin" much earlier, in the formal daily meetings ("general congregations") and the many informal gatherings which precede the conclave itself. It's plausible that what had previously been sorted out in the first series of ballots is now already done before the Cardinals actually begin voting. The recent 24-hour Conclaves may not actually have been conducted in undue haste.

Still, the elec...

By Robert Royal.

The word I hear most from Catholics as we approach the end of the first month under our American-born pope is "relief." Serious tensions had accumulated within the Church under Pope Francis, who sometimes seemed to be deliberately - or haphazardly - exacerbating divisions. Openness, dialogue, and listening towards liberals well beyond the borders of the Faith, but exclusion, peremptory fiats, and ignoring of traditional Catholics. And yet, the progressives, too, felt dissatisfied: Francis died without allowing deaconesses (let alone women priests), pulled away the football after repeatedly teeing it up in front of the LGBT+ crowd, dithered over the runaway German "synodal" way.

And in the end, he even kicked the can down the road for his own synodal path by removing the "hot-button" issues from consideration by assigning them to ten "study groups" (reports due this month) and scheduling an "ecclesial assembly" (whatever that is) three years from now, when he almost certainly knew he would not be around.

So, it's no surprise that many Catholics are, at least for the moment, enjoying a breath of fresh air in the Church. With the possible exception of Robert Prevost, Pope Leo XIV himself, whose job it now is to be pontifex maximus, the supreme bridge-builder, in the midst of it all. He's receiving granular scrutiny already for what he may or may not be signaling about the direction of his papacy. And that, too, is a concerning factor: Like everyone else in our social-media age, whatever he does or says (and sometimes things invented about him) is instantly transmitted and judged, not so much by the standards of the Gospel as by the most superficial and overheated modes of our times.

Jesus famously left us the saying: "every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." (Matthew 12:25) (It's telling that if you Google "a house divided," it returns a TV series of that name, and only further down the Gospel reference.) And given our media environment, Pope Leo XIV was right to tell the assembled journalists after his election that, whether they are aware of it or not, they have a high calling, and an especially difficult one today:

"Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9). This is a Beatitude that challenges all of us, but it is particularly relevant to you, calling each one of you to strive for a different kind of communication, one that does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it. Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others. In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say "no" to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.

That's easier said - though well said - than done, especially since journalists themselves have for years been drawn into a different "paradigm" of their profession. With a few noble exceptions, they often now think of themselves as social justice warriors instead of reporters. They serve up, or fail to cover, stories already intended to produce partisan outcomes (and online clicks) rather than information and context by which people can make responsible judgments.

Leo rightly added: "let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred; let us free it from aggression. We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice. Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world. Disarmed and disarming communication allows us to share a different view of the world and to act in a manner consistent with our human dignity." [emphasis added]

Here at The Catholic Thing we have not shied away from controversy or recalling hard truths. But controversy is something different than combat...

Elizabeth's Faith as Shown in the Visitation

By Michael Pakaluk

Mary travelled "with haste" to visit Elizabeth. The trip of 90 miles can be done in under four days by a fit person walking quickly. Conception takes place in the fallopian tube, and after that, for about six days, the embryo travels down the tube to implant in the uterus. Therefore, the Lord was an embryo in the blastula stage in one of Mary's fallopian tubes, not even implanted, when Mary greeted Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, five months earlier, when she had discovered she was pregnant, had placed herself in seclusion. She would not go to the market and share her joy with her neighbors. Apparently, she was overwhelmed by God's mercy and wished to devote the time of her pregnancy, silently, to prayer and contemplation. This was truly the first "novena," the first nine-unit time of prayer (it was not, as people sometimes say, the gathering of the Apostles between the Ascension and Pentecost). Elizabeth, therefore, teaches all Christian moms that the nine months of pregnancy are a time ordained by nature's God for more intense prayer.

It was because she was in seclusion that even her kinswoman, Mary, had not heard of her pregnancy and needed to be told about it by the angel Gabriel.

What did Elizabeth contemplate in her seclusion? No doubt, Scriptures about the Messiah, and about the woman who would be the mother of the Messiah and the New Eve. But she also, doubtless, dwelt on the angel's words to Zechariah, which her husband had written down for her on wax tablets, just as he later wrote down, "His name is John."

Elizabeth knew that if her son was to be the forerunner of the Messiah, then the mother of the Messiah was to be a contemporary or a near contemporary. She could infer that just as she, an old woman and barren, had conceived the Messiah's forerunner, so it would be a Virgin who would conceive the Messiah himself, as Scripture foretold, in its authoritative interpretation at the time:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel." (Isaiah chapter 7:14)

Would it be Elizabeth's role to be the forerunner of the Mother of the Messiah, just as her son was to be the forerunner of the Messiah? Certainly, in her mind, contemplating this woman, so like her, she would have already regarded her as the most blessed of all women. In spirit, she would have given this title to this woman well before Mary's visit.

Luke tells us that Mary entered the home of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth specifically. Zechariah is not mentioned in his own home, for the reason that he was not with Elizabeth, as Elizabeth was maintaining seclusion. In any case, he was mute. Mary is apparently the first person Elizabeth has associated with in five months.

Elizabeth recognizes that just as the sound of Mary's greeting reaches her ears, the baby in her womb jumped. She says in fact that it jumped for joy: and since she is the mom, her interpretation must be taken as decisive. Likewise, she interprets this joy as joy at encountering the Messiah. Remember, she has been in seclusion. News could not have travelled that fast, in any case. Mary has not had time to speak. It is solely inference: from the fact that her baby jumps, she infers that the Messiah is present. He cannot be Mary. Therefore, Mary is carrying Him.

Filled with the Holy Spirit, she expresses in a loud voice - recognition. "It is you - you are the woman I have been contemplating who is blessed among women." And then she affirms the presence of the Lord, "blessed is the fruit of your womb." Elizabeth thereby witnesses to the Lordship, and the divine and human nature, of the blastula floating within Mary.

Did Mary have any subjective experience when she conceived Jesus, so that she recognized the moment when "the power of the Most High" overshadowed her? Normally, conception is not perceived. If she had no subjective ex...

by Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas.

In these last days of May, we pray the novena to the Holy Spirit (May 30-June 7), in preparation for Pentecost. And it's useful to reflect on what the Holy Spirit did for the Blessed Virgin Mary, making her both Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church. By this approach, we cap our honoring of Mary during her month of May. We honor the Holy Spirit, and we honor also all Christians who have taken seriously the work of the Holy Spirit after the example of Mary.

All of Mary's greatness as a Christian is owing to the fact that the Holy Spirit came upon her, and that she lived in the presence of God, continuously aware of His presence in her life. Our Lady cooperated with the Spirit's promptings in loving obedience to God's Word; she daily renewed her fiat at the Annunciation. Mary the Virgin heeded the Lord's plan for her and thus became fruitful.

Mary's life was an ongoing Magnificat; she was a woman of peace and joy because she gave the Spirit of God free rein in her life. When she experienced the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, she did not keep Him to herself; she immediately went forth to share that experience and its meaning, for she realized that a life in the Spirit necessarily involves service to others. So, not considering her own precarious situation, she went through the rough hill country to tend to her elderly and unexpectedly pregnant cousin, Elizabeth.

What does all this have to do with you and me? A great deal, for what happened in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary can and must happen in our own lives. Each of us has received the Holy Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation. Have we done anything with the Spirit? Are we more peaceful, more loving, more joyous for having received those sacraments? If not, we have not activated the power of the Spirit in our lives.

Here's a test to see whether you are a Spirit-filled person. It's very simple: What have you done with the gifts the Spirit of God has given to you? Jesus said, "By their fruits you will know them" (Matthew 7:16). We know the fruit Our Lady brought forth, for every day we say: "Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." Are you possessed by God's Spirit? Have you brought forth Christ to the world in which you live?

We have also celebrated Mother's Day this month. Christian mothers find their inspiration and example in the Blessed Mother. In an era when motherhood is denigrated, it's well to affirm the irreplaceability of the vocation of motherhood and thus the debt owed to each and every mother, not just our own. "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world!"

One of the great recent confessors of the faith, Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty, confronting the depersonalization and utilitarianism of Communism, felt compelled to write a paean to mothers, worth recalling in our own day, which has replicated that self-same depersonalization and utilitarianism:

The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral - a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby's body. The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God's creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creatures. God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation. What on God's good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother?

The great Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, composed a grand work, "The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe." Interestingly, in Hebrew, ruach has a number of meanings: breath, wind, spirit - all of which come into play in Pentecost. Hopkins brings all this together in this sampling of his verses:

WILD air, world-mothering air,

Nestling me everywhere,

That each eyelash or hair

Girdles; goes home betwixt

The fleeciest, frailest-flixed

Snowflake; that's fairly mixed

...

by Stephen P. White.

but first a note : Be sure to tune in to EWTN tonight - Thursday, May 29th at 8 PM Eastern - Host Raymond Arroyo interviews TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal about his new book Martyrs of the New Millennium: Global Persecution of Christians in the 21st Century. 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...

It is easy to think of Heaven as a merely spiritual reality in which we are free from the physical toil and sorrow of this earthly life. But we never ought to forget that Heaven is for bodies, too. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Today's feast of the Ascension is a particular reminder that we ought to see our own bodies - and use our bodies - with such an eye toward higher things.

We humans don't make any sense without our bodies. Sure, we can imagine ourselves (and unfortunately many people today do so imagine themselves) as a mind or spirit or "consciousness" trapped in a meat-machine.

Our bodies, we tell ourselves, have no more intrinsic meaning than any of the rest of vibrating matter that makes up our world. All this stuff only has so much meaning as we give to it. Accordingly, we imagine ourselves at liberty to manipulate and use all this mere stuff within such ever-expanding limits our technology, or the market, will allow.

The misery caused by this way of seeing ourselves and our world is incalculable. This sort of disembodied ethos even crops up in certain corners of Catholic moral theology wherein the concrete nature of acts is diminished or denied and all that we are left with for distinguishing good from evil is intention.

It is a tempting path, one which grows more tempting by the day as our power to manipulate the material world increases. It is also tempting in that it requires no up-front disavowal of God or spiritual realities, only a denial that matter comes with its own built-in meaning. Deny the Creator or deny the nature of his Creation; it's all more or less the same to the Devil, who really doesn't care so much if you're actually an atheist so long as you act like one.

"The truth," as we read in Gaudium et Spes, "is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light." This mystery of the incarnate Word includes more than the moment the Word became flesh in the womb of Mary. It encompasses more, even, than the birth, life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Ascension, too, is part of the mystery of the incarnate Word.

In the words of St. Augustine, "The Resurrection of our Lord is our hope; the Ascension of our Lord is our glorification."

If the mystery of man takes on light only in the mystery of the Incarnate word, then the Ascension tells us something fundamental about our own humanity and our own bodies. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, retains the fullness of his human nature. Yes, Christ's body is resurrected and glorified. But the body that rose from the grave, the body that still bears the marks of the Crucifixion, this same body ascends into Heaven. Christ takes his place at the right hand of the Father, not by shedding his body, but with that same body.

In the words of Pope St. John Paul II, "For all eternity Christ takes his place as the firstborn among many brethren: our nature is with God in Christ. And as man, the Lord Jesus lives forever to intercede for us with the Father. At the same time, from His throne of glory, Jesus sends out to the whole Church a message of hope and a call to holiness." Because Christ, who shares our nature, sits on the throne of glory, the horizon against which we understand our own lives and our own bodies, has been irrevocably altered.

That is the Church's "message of hope"- a share in Christ's own glory - but how is it, as John Paul II said, "a call to holiness?" Does he simply mean that holiness is the condition and pat...