The Catholic Thing

By Anthony Esolen.

"Tony," said a high school friend to me, and he meant it, "you've got the brains and the good looks, but you don't know how to dress." That was in our Catholic school, and the boys all wore jackets and ties, and kept themselves clean-shaved, too, or else our good and wise Dean, Mr. Buzad, would call them into his office where they could perform that operation with an old razor and cold water.

That came just at the end of a time when boys and girls took some care to dress in a somewhat formal way, at all appropriate occasions, lest they embarrass themselves. I see now that it was far more important than I knew.

These proprieties, in school, were small acts of submission to something greater than us, and acts of charity toward one another. Among the boys, because everyone wore a jacket and tie, no one stood out as obnoxious or aggressive in dress; and what we wore was a sign that we were at school, not on the ballfield, not at the pool hall, not at the beach.

Among the girls, because everyone wore the uniform, and because they were forbidden to turn it into a miniskirt, there was no costly and distracting competition; no one's uniform said, "I am richer than you are," much less, "I am more willing than you are."

Yet this sense of propriety, or of the goodness of ceremony, was being attacked incessantly in popular culture - or I should say by the engines of mass entertainment, crushing true human culture to rubble. Nor did the Church put up enough resistance. Many a religious order and many a priest went along with the times, mistaking informality for fellowship, and permissiveness for love.

That was not only incorrect. It hurt people, even when they were a part of the demolition crew and so were not aware of the loss. But that crew was led by the elites, not by the poor or the working class. For ordinary human beings are attracted to ceremony, as they are attracted to music and art: ceremony is the music of human gesture, extended to a congregation, an assembly, a platoon, a school, in the service of what is beyond them all, and that means, though it may be but implicit or as secret in their souls as a pearl in a box, in the service of the divine.

Ceremony has a power to unite that is unlike anything else in our experience. I recall here one morning at Saint John the Evangelist Church, in Stamford, Connecticut. I had given a lecture the evening before, and stayed overnight in the rectory. Before breakfast that day, some men of the parish came together, as was their custom once a week, for morning prayer. I joined them.

We knelt on the hard marble floor - it was a men's group, you see. We prayed, and then we sat down to hear a lesson on the day's reading, given by the shrewd Msgr. Di Giovanni, who had organized the group and knew what he was about. Then came breakfast. Among those in attendance were men of all ages and ethnicities and from all walks of life: the stockbroker, kneeling on that same floor next to the construction worker, equal before the word of God.

Now, if you asked people simply to show up for an informal talk, I doubt that the Hispanic man with his marked accent would have felt nearly as comfortable doing so. I doubt then that the strong friendships I saw quite clearly, across what otherwise divides us, would have developed.

It is precisely the ceremony that sweeps such differences aside, just as, when I was a boy, the men in military uniform, marching to our town's cemeteries early in the morning on Memorial Day to fire a 21-gun salute in honor of the deceased veterans, were visible not by what they did for a living nor by what each individual chose to wear, but by their common submission to the national honor.

When I am on the road and I attend Mass at a church I don't know, the more informal it is, the more the chatter, the less comfortable I feel, because behind that informality and chatter is the message, "This is how we celebrate Mass here, because we like it this way." And you eithe...

by Randall Smith.

"How do people even do it?" she asked. "How do people who don't believe in God get through this?" My friend was applying to graduate schools. "These decisions are in the hands of people I don't know and who don't know me. And they will affect the rest of my life - whom I meet, I marry, my children, my career. If you didn't believe a provident God was watching over all this," she exclaimed, "it would just be depressing."

I know what she means. So many things in life are outside our control. But there's also this even more depressing reality. I am burdened with sin. This should come as no surprise, certainly not to people who know me. I'm not making a public confession here (although that reminds me; I should probably go). I mean, it's not like I've killed millions of people or anything. But that's a low bar, and I would prefer to set it higher.

Let's just say that if the Biblical measure is being forgiven seven times seventy-seven times, I maxed that out a long time ago. And if you challenged me about some horrible sin with the question: "Are you saying that it never entered your mind?" I probably wouldn't be able to say no - not without committing another sin.

There's something wonderful about Confession, but there's also something depressing about confessing the same sins repeatedly, week after week. I won't say that God's grace hasn't brought about some improvement. But fighting sin is a little like playing Whack-a-Mole. You knock one sin down and another one pops up somewhere else. Where did you come from?

When people say, "You're a terrible human being," or "You're an ignorant fool," I can only reply: "Oh my, you have no idea!" And to be honest, I have no idea. As C.S. Lewis points out, sin blinds you to your own sinfulness. When the saints say, "I am a sinner," they're not just being modest. Only saints have the purity of soul and clarity of vision to see the extent of their own sinfulness. For most of the rest of us, following the admonition to "know thyself" is like looking into a dark abyss. There might be some scattered candle lights, but you know there are some nasty orcs living down there, and you'd prefer not to face them, let alone fight them.

Given this grim reality, it's hard for me to hear that "the measure with which I measure is the measure with which I shall be measured." Or that I am supposed to "forgive as I have been forgiven." Not only do I sin and want forgiveness, I don't "forgive as I have been forgiven" (which, as I admitted, is way past the seven times seventy-seven number). So that's yet another sin. It's like looking at one of those digital counters that is ticking up the federal debt. The numbers just keep piling up. So I don't quite understand people who rejoice in condemning others and then calling it "charity."

So, like my friend, I worry about the people who don't believe in a loving God who not only forgives us, but also sends us the grace to do better, "What do they even do? How do they deal with the fact that there's so much evil in the world and in our own hearts? What relieves the burden of sin? What gives them hope in the face of death?

We live in a culture that, for some reason, seems convinced that belief in the Christian God is a "burden" to be avoided. That's odd. One would have thought that belief in a meaningless universe with no moral point or boundaries and no true forgiveness would be the greater burden. At least the Christian God provides a moral standard to guide us and a means of forgiveness when we fail.

If I thought going into a Catholic Church was a public proclamation of sinlessness, I would never enter. But since I take it that going into a Catholic Church is a public proclamation that "I am a sinner, in need of God's forgiveness and grace," I'm happy to go in.

In the same spirit, I wait in line for Confession, and while I'm embarrassed to be back there, I look at the others in line and remember: "I'm not alone. These people must be sinners too, ot...

By Sebastian Morello.

It seems a decision has been made among many outlets of the Catholic commentariat to remain, for the time being, uncritical of the new pope, Leo XIV. Undoubtedly, this approach is the right one, as everyone should proceed in good will, hoping that with Prevost's election will come a new chapter after the unhappy decade or so of Francis's pontifical reign. But, troublingly, for the third time since his pontificate began only a short while ago, Pope Leo XIV has declared that the soul of Pope Francis is in Heaven. Most recently, Pope Leo asserted this to be the case via an official Pontifex 'tweet' on the social media platform X, which stated that Francis had "returned to the Father's house. He accompanies us and prays for the Church from Heaven."

But this eccentric habit of declaring, outside any official canonisation process, that, as it were, no such process is needed, is deeply problematic. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the faithful of the Catholic Church are being prepared for this highly controversial figure (who, as one journalist friend put it to me, "lingered over the Church for twelve years as if he were an enormous dark cloud") to be canonised soon, as if it were inevitable and unavoidable.

There are several very serious problems with Leo repeatedly stating that Francis is in Heaven. For one, such statements cause the faithful to doubt the gravity of Francis's public sins. These sins are not inconsiderable, given that they include idol-worship (Pachamama), the suppression of an ancient apostolic rite of the Church, syncretism and religious relativism, the protection and promotion of predators and deviants, the abuse of the Church's law, the teaching of heresy, etc.

Who knows if Francis was a heretic, but it's clear that he was heretical. The distinction being that the former would have required him to be publicly accused of heresy and for him in response to have held obstinately to his heresies. Given that he customarily refused to meet with those who raised objections to his teaching or manner of governing, we were not given the opportunity to witness any obstinate attachment to heresy. But in any case, the record is not good. If such sins can be committed and the perpetrator still immediately enjoys the beatific vision upon his death, then the message to the faithful is clear: either these sins were not even as grave as our ancient faith would have led us to believe, or they are not sins at all.

Perhaps people will not be led to such erroneous conclusions, but then the remaining alternative is that, despite the Church's age-old teaching to the contrary, Purgatory does not really exist. If such sins can be committed without any need for purgation from the guilt entailed by them, then Purgatory must not be in fact necessary. Thus, again, if the faith is to remain intact among the faithful, Leo's habit of declaring Francis's heavenly status is far from desirable.

Such declarations by Leo, moreover, discourage the faithful of the Church from exercising charity. Whatever our view of Francis, he was a baptised member of the Church and thus a brother in Christ who may now stand very much in need of our prayers. For if his sins are as grave as the ancient faith would lead us to believe, even if he made a perfect act of contrition prior to his death and made a good confession, his soul will remain in Purgatory for a very, very long time. Those who wish to participate in God's mercy upon Francis's soul, and therefore to say prayers and do acts of penance for his benefit, may be dissuaded from doing so by the reigning pope's repeated statements.

But there is another reason why Leo is, in fact, playing with fire. It has not gone unnoticed among many of the Church's faithful that, of late, canonisations have been co-opted as an instrument in what has for decades been the dominant ecclesiastical regime. Instrumentalising such holy things, besides being sacrilegious, is a very foolish thing t...

by Fr. Paul D. Scalia.

"It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…" This line from today's first reading (Acts 15:1-2, 22-29) sounds a little odd. As if the decision of the Holy Spirit wasn't enough, the Apostles have to add "and of us." It calls to mind the story of the priest who pompously began his sermon, "Our Lord once said - and I think He's right…" Or, still curiouser, it can sound as though the Holy Spirit and the Apostles had finally come to some agreement. Still, despite its odd sound, the phrase is extraordinarily important - and a harbinger of peace.

"It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…" The Holy Spirit didn't need the Apostles' affirmation, and the two parties had not come to some kind of compromise. Rather, that line confirms that the Holy Spirit is working through the Apostles, and the Apostles are the instruments of the Holy Spirit. What the Apostles hand down from Jerusalem is no human opinion but the authoritative teaching of the Spirit.

Now, the occasion for this declaration reveals the purpose of the Church's teaching authority: to confirm the faithful and thus give them peace.

In Antioch, there had been many Gentile converts, and the Church was prospering. But then some came from Judea and said, "Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved." (Acts 15:1) As one might expect, this requirement disturbed the peace of the Church in Antioch. Part of their trouble would certainly have been the requirement of circumcision. But the greater reason for their lack of peace was the uncertainty about God's will. How were they to live as Christians? What did it mean to believe in the Christ? Were they, as Saint Paul describes it, "running in vain"? (Galatians 2:2)

The Apostles were aware of what that lack of clarity had done. "We have heard that some of our number who went out without any mandate from us have upset you with their teachings and disturbed your peace of mind." So they are also confident that their clear teaching will restore peace of mind. Through that Apostolic letter, the Antiochenes will know the truth and have the confidence that they're not running in vain.

"In His will is our peace," Dante famously wrote. We try to find peace in doing our own will, in having our own way. That might keep anxiety at bay, for a time. But it's ultimately in vain. We find peace in knowing and doing His will. Which is not to say that we find comfort, prosperity, or popularity. Only that we possess the tranquility of knowing that we are on the right path. And when we know that we are walking in integrity and truth, then we can endure and even embrace a great deal of discomfort, poverty, and scorn.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." Jesus speaks these familiar words while He also speaks of keeping His word (John 14:23-29) - that is, of obedience. Again, peace is found through His word of truth. Indeed, throughout the Last Supper discourse He teaches the Apostles about commands and obedience, peace and joy. Only in knowing and obeying His commands can we know peace and joy.

Of course, to the worldly minded these things - commands and obedience, peace, and joy - are contradictory. Obedience to God's command deprives us of peace and joy. In His will is not our peace but our slavery and elimination. Because we are in competition with Him. The world resents any clear teaching because it comes with responsibility. Thus, worldlings are forever trying to create the tall grass and blur distinctions, lest the arduous but true path be revealed.

So, our Lord makes the necessary distinction: "Not as the world gives do I give it to you." The world gives "peace" by ignoring or denying problems. Christ bestows real peace by entering into our greatest sorrows, even into death itself. The world proposes the false peace of contentment and comfort. Christ gives the true peace that calls us to higher things. The world settles for a false peace by numbing our pain with drin...

By Joseph R. Wood.

Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries, died on May 21.

MacIntyre was born in Scotland and, after education in Britain, moved to the United States. He taught at several universities, including Duke, Yale, Princeton, Vanderbilt, and finally Notre Dame. There, with Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon and John Finnis, he was also a Permanent Senior Distinguished Research Fellow at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. He was a friend and admirer of Notre Dame's Ralph McInerny, a Thomistic scholar and founding contributor to The Catholic Thing.

MacIntyre's academic career centered on moral philosophy: how we know and choose the good and right, or how we avoid evil and do good. His contributions in this field were immense.

MacIntyre began his philosophical career as a Marxist and critic of Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy, until he discovered one day that he had become an Aristotelian-Thomist. He retained elements of his critique of capitalism and its associated modern political form of liberal democracy throughout his career.

But his antidote to the problems of capitalism and modern democracy was rather different than that of Marx.

MacIntyre's most famous work is After Virtue, published in 1981. He begins that work by noting that many of our political debates that carry the greatest moral freight - those we might associate with what others have called "culture wars" - seem to be interminable and irresolvable.

We have lost the ability to reason together about these questions, because we have forgotten a common vocabulary that once enabled us in the West to think and argue seriously about moral truth. He traces how this loss came about, with the result that our discourse is now dominated by "emotivism." The emotivist argues, or at least acts on the premise, that "all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, attitude. . .or feeling."

In other words, there is no logos or reason involved in our moral claims, just our feelings. We can't know anything objective or absolute about right and wrong, so there is no shared understanding of right and wrong. Our debates thus roll on without end, and the arts of persuasion serve not truth but the mere ephemeral and illusory pursuit of power in corporations, government, media, education, and other domains.

From this tour of the history of philosophy and where the recent centuries of that history have landed us, MacIntyre attempts to restore and strengthen the Aristotelian-Thomist virtue tradition by introducing concepts such as "practice," by which he means "any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence. . .appropriate to that form of activity."

Through practices, we become virtuous, and we extend human powers of excellence and achieve good.

When we learn to play chess well, we develop the "internal goods" of knowing what it is to play chess with excellence. "External goods" - praise or monetary rewards that go with recognition of our excellence - might follow, but they only reflect the internal goods we achieve as excellence of practice.

MacIntyre was a football fan, and being an excellent football player and member of the team is another example of practice. What MacIntyre would have thought about transfer portals and "name, image, and likeness" agreements that place money over college loyalty, I don't know. But he did have a reputation for being sharply acerbic.

We learn these virtues of practices in small communities that seek a common good, and the practices themselves - handed down to us and to be handed on - shape our understanding of our lives as stories or narratives. These human narratives began before us and will continue beyond.

Peter Berkowitz, a superb political theorist and commentator, once remarked to me that After Virtue was a rare t...

By Daniel B. Gallagher.

No one is subject to more intense scrutiny than a new pope. Politicians have the campaign trail to air out their past records and proposals for the future. Cardinals - let's hope - never go on the campaign trail. So, the details of Pope Leo's life went from being of interest to family and friends to that of the entire world. Just ask his brothers.

Of extreme interest, then, was Cardinal Prevost's post on X that read: "JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others." There is a problem here, though. These were not the Cardinal's words. They are by Kat Armas, whose commentary Prevost reposted.

Prior to Francis's passing, I pointed out on this site the truth in Armas' interpretation of ordo amoris, but cautioned about its deficiencies. Similarly with James Orr's interpretation.

The history of ordo amoris is complex and the reasoning quite subtle. But given that we have an Augustinian pope with an ostensible interest in Armas' commentary, I would like to improve on my initial attempt to understand the concept.

Augustine's City of God is an ambitious attempt to explain the relationship between the secular and the eternal according to the Christian faith. He describes three general ways of understanding how human beings go wrong.

The first is that we simply don't know enough. We are ignorant, and the only way to overcome the ignorance that causes us to do evil is to know more. If we only knew all the circumstances surrounding a moral choice and had perfected our use of logic to deduce the right action, we would never go wrong. Provided we are free to perform that action, we couldn't help but perform it since the power to perform it lies completely within us.

This roughly describes the Pelagian view that Augustine vigorously attacked, insisting that our salvation ultimately depends on God's grace and not on our self-perfection. "O God," Augustine wrote, "grant what you command, and command what you desire." In other words, "I am utterly unable to attain what you command by my own power, so give me the grace to know that you command it precisely because you, the All Good, desire it."

The second way of going wrong depends largely on outside factors because we are engaged in a cosmic struggle between two ultimate principles, light and darkness. Much of what we experience happens, in this view, because of the stars (astrology) or sheer luck. Although we're free, our moral actions are largely formed by what lies outside us, regardless of our intentions, will, and powers.

This roughly describes the Manichaean position that Augustine fiercely denounced, calling it a "childish superstition." He countered it by writing, "I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more." In other words, "I have sensed something delightful, and it has aroused my desire for more of it."

Augustine's exposition of a third way left a permanent imprint not only on Christian doctrine but on our way of interpreting history and distinguishing between the eternal and the secular. It's foundational for a renewed conception of the ordo amoris.

It's not simply that we don't know enough (Pelagianism) or are caught in a cosmic struggle (Manichaeanism). Rather, we are pulled interiorly by an inexorable love for the good but fail miserably in attaining it. We are aware of an inner dynamism that compels us to love, but we are free to either love what is evil or love what is good. And more often than not, we find ourselves trapped by the former but yearning for the latter. This, quite simply, is "original sin," and there is only one way out of it: "Our hearts are restless until they find rest in You."

This leads Augustine to define "virtue" as simply ordo amoris, the "order of love." (City of God, XV, 22) In other words, when we are truly virtuous, we are able to arrange the various particular goods in our lives according to their inherent connection to the One Good, God. Thus, to live according to the ordo amoris is not simpl...

By Michael Pakaluk.

We say that "prayer is conversation with God," but that's not strictly correct. Prayer to God is conversation with God. Prayer to a saint is conversation with a saint. So, rather, prayer is conversation. It gets its name from just one thing we can do in a conversation, which is to ask (Latin,

precare).

Being an interlocutor in a conversation is hardly an incommunicable trait of divinity. Therefore, Protestants make a gross blunder when they accuse Catholics who pray to Mary of idolatry, simply because they converse with her. There is no reason why the only person in Heaven one can have "a personal relationship" with should be Jesus.

In fact, if as Christians we are meant to imitate Jesus, then we must converse with Mary, and not to do so is to fail dramatically to imitate Him.

I assume that Christians, and laypersons in particular, are meant to imitate Jesus in his "hidden life" at home, before he went out to his public ministry. These thirty years were 90 percent of His lifespan. We know almost nothing about them directly. Therefore, we must use what we do know about human nature to draw inferences about it, since he was a "perfect man." We know that he worked, for instance. Therefore, by pondering the best workers, we can infer how he worked.

Boys talk to their moms all the time. But let's go back. The life of a newborn boy begins with him gazing lovingly into the eyes of his mother, nestling and cooing, as he nurses on her breast. His love for her appearance as he gets older is simply a development of this original, "I look at her, and she looks at me." Therefore, if we are to imitate Christ - it follows with iron logic - that we must find ways to gaze upon Mary's face in this way. Perhaps we do so side-by-side with Him - which explains, surely, why Christians have so greatly loved paintings of the Madonna with child.

You may have noticed that, for a toddler or young boy, to think, to be alive, is to say aloud what he is thinking to his mom - spontaneously and naturally. This phenomenon, so endearing to us, would of course only be magnified in a "perfect man" in relation to a "mother most amiable." Therefore - again it follows with iron logic - if we are to imitate Christ well, as spiritual children indeed, we must speak spontaneously to Mary throughout the day, sharing whatever is on our mind.

It would be fair to wonder whether we wouldn't imitate Him well enough by doing so towards our own mom, or perhaps one's spouse. And yet "behold, your mother" (John 19:27), and the fact that she is "the mother of God" (Luke 1:43), and therefore of the supernatural life in Christ that we enjoy. These seem to settle the question.

Also, it seems that the imitation of Christ in some fundamental matter must, by the nature of the case, be always available to us, and not only when some relative of ours is alive and within earshot.

Let us continue, then. As a boy becomes a man, he turns to his mom when he is proud of what he has done, to exult, in a good way. If he were a woodworker, for instance, he would "show off" to his mom the fine things which he built in his shop. Jesus in the movie, The Passion, is believably depicted as doing so with some chairs and a table. Over time, in this way, a young man develops a genuine friendship with his mother.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus stayed at home until He was thirty? There was no period of "adolescence" back then. He would have been regarded as a mature man from age thirteen. Mary had an extended family: therefore, even if Joseph had already passed, Jesus might have left her in their care. Despite his burning desire to redeem - "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!" (Luke 12:29) - he stayed with Mary fifteen years longer than was in any sense necessary. Could it be that he loved his friendship with her, so that he lingered as long as he could, rather than leave as soon as he could?

I have not yet mentioned Jesus in the womb, takin...

By Francis X. Maier.

Earlier this month, I returned from two weeks in Rome covering the run-up and conclusion to the recent conclave. It was an extraordinary experience. On the day before Cardinal Prevost was elected, a friend and colleague - the excellent Jayd Henricks - asked me what I thought a new pope should take as his pontifical name. I said Augustine. More than Benedict or Dominic or any other saint, Augustine is the obvious patron for our age. Of course, we didn't get a "Pope Augustine." But we did get an Augustinian. I think - and I hope - that's significant. And I'll try to explain why.

Looking back on the Francis pontificate, I wonder if one of its main, if unintended, functions was to provide a clean break between the immediate post-conciliar period and its conflicts, and something living, organic, and new in the Leo papacy. We live in a turbulent time. It's similar to the Reformation - not in its historical details, but in its underlying impulses and dynamic. It's a deep re-formation of how we think about the world, the organization of society, and what it means to be human - all driven by technologies that make Gutenberg's printing press look like a toy.

In effect, we're at the end of one age, and the start of another. And that's exactly where Augustine found himself as bishop of Hippo, as the ancient Roman world fell apart. Augustine was always a realist, but also a man of hope. He pastored, encouraged, and faithfully served his people in a bitterly difficult time, while producing some of the most brilliant and fruitful thought in human history. If Leo XIV can deliver a fraction of that richness through his Augustinian formation, the Church will heal and thrive.

We need that new life. We need it because many of us - too many of us in my generation - live our faith mainly as a practical code of everyday behavior and good social ethics. But that's not Christianity, and we don't really need Jesus Christ or his Cross for any of it. Catholics in this country have historically been outsiders and unwelcome. So we've worked very hard over the past century to be accepted into American culture. In a sense, that's become our real religion. And we've succeeded exceptionally well at it - so well that many of us are much more faithfully "American" than we are "Catholic." The result is predictable.

A lot of American life today is a blend of vanilla spirituality that doesn't make many demands on our time and attention, and a pervasive, practical consumer atheism that does. The decline in our Catholic numbers nationwide is simply the truth forcing its way to the surface through layers of self-deception that we've accumulated as a Church over half a century or more. The truth can be painful, but it's never bad. The truth makes us free: free to change; free to remember who we are as Catholics and why we're here; and free to do better.

My point is this: What we choose or don't choose, what we do or don't do, does matter. Augustine said that being faithful in little things is a big thing, and the little things we do can have very big consequences. Our job isn't to succeed, but to witness. Recovering a humility about our own silent apostasies, the need for our own deeper conversion, and clarity about the challenges for Catholic life in our country that lie ahead - these things begin the renewal of our Church and our nation. And we can thank our current media and political leaders, in both parties, for pushing that process along with the unintended gift of their mendacity.

History is a great teacher, and one of its lessons is this: Under pressure, the tepid leave. But the faithful grow stronger, more committed to the truth, and thus more profoundly free. That's always been the story of the Church. And God always wins. Always. Despite all the malice directed at the Church down through the centuries; despite her own worst periods of bumbling and corruption; despite our own sins and failures and most ingenious acts of self-sabotage ...

By Amy Fahey.

Today marks the birth, in 1882, of Norwegian novelist and Catholic convert Sigrid Undset, whose sweeping medieval sagas, Kristin Lavransdatter and The Master of Hestviken, deserve to be read by every serious Catholic. Tomorrow I will walk a portion of the Olavsleden, the medieval pilgrimage route to the tomb of St. Olav in Trondheim.

These two events - her 1882 birth and my 2025 pilgrimage - are not unrelated. My discovery of Kristin Lavransdatter nearly two decades ago set me on a journey deeper into the life, works, and landscape of this remarkable and neglected literary artist, and into the heart of her own devotion to Norway's patron saint. Great works have the capacity to do that: to captivate you, challenge you, awaken something in your soul and spirit. "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies/ When a new planet swims into his ken." (Keats on reading Chapman's Homer)

When I first looked into Kristin Lavransdatter, the translation I read was the one authorized in Undset's lifetime, by Charles Archer. In recent years, it's been eclipsed by Tiina Nunnally's version, which many readers consider more approachable and authentic. But I am glad that Cluny Media has brought Archer back into print, and not simply for nostalgic reasons.

Since the novel is set in medieval Norway, Archer chose a kind of pseudo-medieval diction for the characters' speech, rendering that world simultaneously familiar and distant. The "thees" and "thous" and "'twas's" may at first seem a tad ridiculous. Rod Dreher calls the translation "fusty"; other commentators are even less generous. But it is helpful to recall that Undset herself was taken with Middle English prose from a young age, even translating Malory's Morte D'Arthur into Norwegian. The "artificiality" of the Archer translation, like that of Malory's prose, soon falls away, so much so that the reader may even find himself beginning to think in such cadences.

In contrast, Nunnally almost always chooses a pared-down and simplified diction, often to the point of prosaicness, sometimes even in contradiction to the original. Where Kristin assesses her failings at the end of her life and accuses herself of being lat (literally lazy), Archer chooses "slothful" while Nunnally chooses "indolent"; where trådte is lyrically translated as "trod" by Archer, Nunnally chooses the more pedestrian "walked" (I am grateful Hopkins in "God's Grandeur" doesn't make a similar choice by telling us that generations "have walked, have walked, have walked.")

Slothful, trod, heartily, deemed, belike, bade - there can be too much of a good thing where poetic diction is concerned, and Archer is sometimes guilty of the charge. But an attentive Catholic reader also detects a pattern of theological downgrading in the newer translation, or at least of ambiguity and imprecision. A "sick call" in the Archer translation becomes "visiting a sick parishioner" in Nunnally. The priest carrying the Eucharist in a silver pyx shaped like a dove is, in Undset's original, literally bearing "the silver dove with God's body." This is exactly how Archer translates it, while Nunnally renders it "the silver dove with the Holy Host."

When a Catholic priest goes on a sick call, though, he is not paying a friendly visit or even simply praying with a sick parishioner. He's administering a Sacrament. Perhaps Nunnally wished to spare readers confusion; no one knows what a sick call is anymore, and frankly, calling the Eucharist "God's body" (though Holy Host is also technically accurate) might puzzle even Catholic readers, since, apparently, two-thirds of them no longer believe in the Real Presence anyway. But again and again, Nunnally's choices tend to sacrifice something rich, lyrical, and true for the sake of something that might best be described as "relatable."

Fran Maier recently expressed concern about Emily Wilson's new translation of The Odyssey, which jettisons the familiar grand summoning of the muse to "sing" for so...

by Robert Royal.

Benedict XVI often prayed a phrase that he'd noticed in Augustine's Confessions: "da quod iubes, et iube quod vis," "O give what you command, Lord, and command what you will." (Bk. ten, xxix) Worth reciting daily, because it's both short and rich. And typical of how great thinkers can say much in a few words (multum in parvo, as the old Romans put it). Surprisingly, Benedict/Ratzinger was sometimes criticized for using those words, as Augustine himself has been. The context - Augustine was praying for continence, which the dictionary defines as "self-restraint, especially with regard to sex" - is clearly part of it. But there's doubtless, more - a lot more.

We've been laboring under a misconception for decades in the Church. Many people believe that God would never be so undemocratic as to "command" anything. Ironically, those very same people often believe that He does very much command ordaining women, accepting LGBT ideology, Communion for the divorced and remarried, etc. In this context, another pithy phrase of Augustine's is often cited - "Love and do what you will" (Serm. 110) - though his name is usually not attached to this quite modern-seeming sentiment.

But Augustine never said what people think he said in that sermon. Right before the famous phrase, he draws some clear distinctions:

we find people made fierce by love; and by wickedness made seductively gentle. A father beats a boy, while a kidnapper caresses him. Offered a choice between blows and caresses, who would not choose the caresses and avoid the blows? But when you consider the people who give them you realize that it is love that beats, wickedness that caresses. This is what I insist upon: human actions can only be understood by their root in love. All kinds of actions might appear good without proceeding from the root of love. Remember, thorns also have flowers: some actions seem truly savage, but are done for the sake of discipline motivated by love.

We all know this in theory - especially when observing other people - and ignore it in practice when it clashes with some cherished goal of our own.

For the mature Augustine - i.e., the Christian thinker after he freed himself from the confusions of Manicheanism and his personal lusts - everything is moved by love. Good loves or bad loves, but loves all the same because the Creator created the world out of a selfless love. And everything he made is worthy of our love, properly understood. But there's the difficulty. Since the Fall, our loves are disordered. So much so that Augustine explains evil itself as a lack of a proper love in the right place, at the right time, to the proper degree. Love rightly ordered lifts us up. Wrongly ordered love weighs us down.

As he puts it in another celebrated passage from Confessions:

All things pressed by their own weight go towards their proper places . Oil poured in the bottom of the water, is raised above it : water poured upon oil, sinks to the bottom of the oil . They are driven by their own weights , to seek their own places. Things a little out of their places become unquiet : put them in their order again , and they are quieted. My weight is my love [pondus meum amor meus]: by that am I carried , whithersoever I be carried. (Bk. XIII, ix)

I have scandalized certain friends who are overly attached to the Thomistic elements in Dante's Commedia (which are very much there and very important) by claiming that the Augustinian concept of the order of loves is what gives us a more fundamental and global image of sinners, penitents, and saints spread out across Dante's cosmos. This is undeniable and entirely understandable because Augustine was a deep influence on both St. Thomas and Dante. And should be on us as well.

Because Augustine also helps us to understand how it is that we are made in the image and likeness of Love Himself. In On the Trinity, he compares the Three Persons of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - with three powers in the ...