The Catholic Thing

By Casey Chalk.

"There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church," famously opined Venerable Servant of God Fulton Sheen, "but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be." I'd go a step further: if there's one thing that people, regardless of their religious affiliation, feel competent and confident to speak on, it seems to be the Catholic Church. Everybody seems to know what it teaches and why, and, by extension, why it's dead wrong. Rarely does one hear people speak so dismissively about other religious traditions or institutions, say Buddhism, Hinduism, or even Islam, all of which our culture has decided to various degrees are deserving of a certain deferential respect.

Given the prominence of Catholicism even in 21st-century America - as well as the tens of millions of "former Catholics" (the second largest religious group after Catholics themselves) - one could say that familiarity breeds contempt.

Yet familiarity does not necessarily breed accurate knowledge, as Catholic writer and podcaster (and former Episcopalian priest) Andrew Petiprin argues in his new book, The Faith Unboxed: Freeing the Catholic Church from the Containers People Put It In. Over eight chapters discussing eight of these inaccurate "boxes," Petiprin sets the record straight in ways that even long-time, practicing Catholics may find surprising.

Petiprin begins by noting that the Church is not an ideology such as liberalism with its specifically progressivist and individualist bent; nor is it conservative in the sense that it is strictly traditionalist or perfectly aligned with the Republican Party.

Christ Himself repudiated those who placed their faith in the traditions of men. (Mark 7:1-13) As much as the Church upholds Holy Tradition as a source of divine revelation, she also possesses a certain revolutionary impulse in her repudiation of even long-standing cultural norms if they are opposed to the Gospel, whether we are talking about ancient Rome or indigenous peoples in the Americas.

Moreover, as Petiprin observes, the word "Catholicism" never appears in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nor is it in any official Catholic document: "The Church is not a way to navigate reality, but rather the experience of reality. The Church is not a collection of ideas to lay atop human society, but the organization of humanity."

The Church is also not a "denomination." While Protestant denominations "come and go, come together, and break apart," the Catholic Church asserts herself as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and history has borne out that identity.

The Catholic Church does not even recognize "denominations" as such, but rather ecclesial communions that, via their sacraments ,enjoy various degrees of communion with her. Petiprin cites St. Paul as perhaps the earliest critic of this idea that the Church could be divided into denominations: "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul." (1 Corinthians 1:13)

Is the Church an institution? Petiprin thinks not: "Human beings create institutions, whereas God created the Church." I might quarrel with denying the Church is some sense an institution (she is, after all, composed of humans), but he has a point that the Church is not solely a this-worldly institution, one whose role is strictly defined by her various social programs rather than the salvation she offers.

Such a conception neglects the fact that the Church is the body of Christ, with the Eucharist at its center: "The Catholic Church is the experience of the common destiny of man - eucharistic man - transformed into Christ by Christ, living in a present that intersects with eternity."

People may join clubs, but "joining" doesn't apply in the same sense to the Church. Though similar to a club, the Church demands a certain doctrinal and liturgical uniformity; she is also, to cite a phrase of James Joyce's, "here comes ev...

By Randall Smith.

One of the hardest goals to achieve in Catholic education is an embodiment in practice of the vision Pope John Paul II laid out in Ex corde ecclesiae and in his encyclical Fides et Ratio: an education animated both by the truths of faith and the truths of reason. As John Paul II expressed beautifully at the beginning of Fides et Ratio: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth - in a word, to know Himself - so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."

In the modern world, we seem to be fans of divorce: separating things meant to be kept together in a fruitful communion. In education, we depend on disciplinary divisions and teach our students to compartmentalize their minds as well as their lives. Contemporary education teaches them about work and little or nothing about marriage and family. It teaches them technical knowledge without imparting wisdom about its use in a full, flourishing human life lived in communion with others.

As T. S. Eliot warns in The Waste Land:

Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images.

Catholic education is not immune from this fragmentation. And to the common fragmentation between the academic disciplines, it often adds its own divorce between the life of the mind and the life of the soul, between the truths of faith and the truths of reason.

For some, a Catholic education is about "getting young people to Heaven," and so the focus is on piety rather than on educational excellence. Others view a "Catholic" education as essentially no different from a non-Catholic or secular education, directed primarily at "success" as the secular world understands that term, involving some combination of wealth, power, status, in the realization of one's creative self-expressive individualism.

What both approaches to education miss is that a Catholic education could be of the highest quality and lead people to God, and vice versa, that an education leading people to God could produce the highest quality education.

If we need to be reminded of this, we can turn to the great Fathers and Doctors of the Church, such as Sts. Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzen in the East, and St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Bonaventure in the West, men who combined great intellect with great faith and devotion to God.

A profound example of the marriage of intellect and faith, academic learning and creative imagination, can be found in St. Bonaventure's Journey of the Mind into God. The Latin title is Itinerarium mentis in deum, and that little word mens, mentis can be translated either as "mind" or "soul." Itinerarium is obviously the precursor to our word "itinerary." It is a guide for the journey.

Bonaventure's itinerary of the ascent of the mind into God was inspired, he tells us, by St. Francis's vision of a six-winged seraphic angel with two wings covering its feet, two in the middle of its body, and two over its head. In its center, Francis saw a vision of the crucified Christ that imparted to him the stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his own flesh.

Bonaventure associates the two wings of the angel pointing downward with the vision of God we get from our contemplation of creation. The two in the middle of the angel's body, he associates with the vision of God we get from looking within ourselves. And the top two wings pointing above, he associates with the glimpses we get of God from reflecting on God as the Source of all Being, on the one hand, and the Source of all Goodness, on the other.

But what is above all that? Remember that at the center of the six-winged creature is the crucified Christ. What completely transcends the mind? What goodness and love is so great that we cannot even begin to grasp it by our intellect alone?

The fact that God has become flesh and ...

By Mary Eberstadt.

But first a note from the Editor: The following remarks were delivered in slightly different form at a conference on "Catholics and Antisemitism: Facing the Past, Shaping the Future," co-sponsored by the Catholic Information Center and the Philos Project, March 10, 2025, in Washington, D.C. A link to the video of the conference can be found by clicking here.

Now for today's column...

Simone Rizkallah, PhilosCatholic: Mary, just two weeks after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, you delivered the keynote address at a conference at Franciscan University of Steubenville titled "Nostra Aetate and the Future of Catholic-Jewish Relations at a Time of Rising Antisemitism." That same week, you published an article in the National Catholic Register titled "Catholics Against Antisemitism: Now More Than Ever."

You pointed to Nostra Aetate, promulgated in 1965: the Church's official rejection of collective Jewish guilt; and to the personal efforts of Pope John Paul II and others to strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations.

How has your understanding of antisemitism evolved since then?

Mary Eberstadt: My understanding of antisemitism has not evolved. As noted in my keynote at that historic conference, "anti-Semitism is a unique evil. It has nothing to do with individual Jewish people. No, it can insinuate itself, and does, into souls with peculiar, invisible cracks of some kind. These souls needn't ever have encountered actual Jews." What has evolved is an understanding of just how crucial it is to speak to Catholics right now, especially young Catholics, about what their Catholicism means when it comes to our "elder brothers in faith," as St. John Paul II put it: the Jews.

I want to share three points with my fellow Catholics today. We've all read the Catechism. Evil walks among us. Evil is real. And for Catholics to turn a blind eye to that reality in the specific case of antisemitism is just morally unacceptable.

This point demands emphasis - because we Catholics, and many of our friends who are not Catholics, so frequently miss it. One often hears, for example, "What is the Catholic hierarchy doing about this or that problem, including antisemitism?" One often hears, "What has the Pope said?" - as if a billion Catholics can check their powers of prudential reason at the door, just because we have a pope.

Let's leave it to the theologians among us to explain the doctrine of infallibility. Let us non-theologians just stick with the non-theological facts. A long line of teaching instructs the laity that we have a unique role on earth, and in salvation history. And if that teaching applies anywhere, it's here, pertaining to Catholics, and the need to step up against antisemitism.

Catholics can't duck our individual responsibility toward Jews - or anything else. When you believe, as the Catechism and other Catholic texts teach, that you are made in the image of nothing less than God; when you believe, as some of the greatest Catholic teachers in history have instructed across the centuries, that you have been gifted with faculties of reason that allow you to approach the truths of God; you cannot avoid the injunction to "perfect the temporal order," as it says in the 1965 Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, among other places. That includes combatting hatred and violence against Jews.

Simone Rizkallah: How would you persuade Catholics who might initially dismiss these concerns about antisemitism to recognize the reality of the issue?"

Mary Eberstadt: That's a second point. Since October 7, 2023, two malignant ideas have quietly if unstably hovered over the Western landscape. One is that the Jews somehow brought that infamy upon themselves - classic, blame-the-victim antisemitism. It is not true, any more than it is true that the United States brought 9-11 on itself. But this smear continues to make the rounds in memes, and elsewhere online, and wherever stupid ideas are sold.

A second, pseudo-sophisticated, and even ...

by Luis E. Lugo

On the Saturday before the second Sunday of Lent in 445, Pope Leo, whose pontificate spanned more than twenty years, preached a powerful sermon on the Transfiguration. It is one of the nearly one hundred sermons that have been preserved from the first bishop of Rome to have been called Leo (twelve others would follow). The sermons hold the distinction of being the first papal homilies that have come down to us that were preached to the people during liturgical celebrations.

This was the same Leo who would earn the title "the Great" because of his many notable accomplishments. One such was his decisive intervention at the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the Council of Chalcedon of 451, which cemented the Christological doctrine of the three previous councils. This came by way of a letter (known as the Tome of Leo) that was read to the hundreds of assembled bishops, who, upon the completion of its reading, acclaimed in unison: "Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo."

Another memorable episode took place the very next year when Leo was instrumental in preventing the sacking of Rome by Attila the Hun. When the latter entered Italy in 452, he began to sack and burn cities while winding his way to Rome. The frightened Roman population begged Leo to go out and try to persuade the fierce Hun to spare the Eternal City. Leo courageously accepted the challenge, met with Attila, and convinced him to withdraw his forces.

Leo also successfully fought heresies and carried out diplomatic missions, but he was foremost a pastor to his flock. And it's in that capacity that he preached his sermon on the Transfiguration, which he based on Matthew 17:1-13.

Leo sets the context by referring back to the previous chapter in Matthew, specifically to Peter's famous confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah. This Christ, Leo explains, was indeed the only begotten Son of God, but also the Son of Man: "For the one without the other was of no avail to salvation."

Here Leo echoes the words of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who died shortly before Leo was born. "The Theologian" had referred to Jesus' "thick corporeality" while famously proclaiming that "that [part of man's nature] which is not assumed, is not healed."

Leo argues that "it was equally dangerous to have believed the Lord Jesus Christ to be either only God without manhood, or only man without Godhead." Thus, with one fell swoop, he lays waste the main heresies that had troubled the Church during the prolonged period of Christological controversies.

Although Peter's confession had rightly exalted Christ's higher nature, Leo observes, the apostle needed to be instructed on "the mystery of Christ's lower substance." Peter's imperfect understanding of this mystery is evidenced by his rebuke of Jesus when the latter speaks of his approaching Passion. This reproof makes clear, Leo declares, that although Peter and the other apostles "had recognized the mystery of God in Him, yet the power of His body, wherein His Deity was contained, they did not know."

Leo maintains that the "kingly brilliance" Jesus manifested in the Transfiguration was something as "specially belonging to the nature of His assumed Manhood." It is in his humanity, he contends, that the Lord "displays his glory. . .and invests that bodily shape which He shared with others with such splendor."

The Transfiguration was intended "to remove the offense of the cross from the disciple's heart, and to prevent their faith being disturbed by the humiliation of His voluntary Passion by revealing to them the excellence of His hidden dignity." It is by means of Christ's punishment on the Cross, Leo states, that God "opens the way to heaven" and prepares for us "the steps of ascent to the Kingdom."

Jesus' transfigured body reveals the nature of that Kingdom and the culmination of salvation history. In fact, Leo is of the view that Jesus' promise that certain of his disciples standing by Him would not taste death until they saw th...

By David G. Bonagura, Jr.

"Drain the swamp!" is one of today's more passionate political cries. The swamp, of course, is Washington, D.C., which oozes all sorts of contaminations: slimy politicians, rancid deals, foggy lies, sink-holes of money, hazy procedures. The people demand a champion, a DOGE, to clean it up: to drain its political and social sins so the government can function smoothly, and America can be great again.

"Swamp theory" assumes that the governmental system is broken and that a properly functioning reform will bring in a kind of political salvation. There is some truth in this contention, but Catholics must avoid seeing "the system," and not sinful individuals, as the real problem. As Pope St. John Paul II taught, "such cases of social sin are the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins." (Reconciliatio et paenitentia, 16)

When constant media coverage hypes fixing "the system," this system can easily become the speck in the other's eye that shifts attention from the beam in our own. For as St. John Paul continued, if any structural and institutional reforms do occur, they will be "of short duration and ultimately vain and ineffective, not to say counterproductive, if the people directly or indirectly responsible for that situation are not converted."

Lent recalls us from the hype, from the structures, and back to God so that we can pull out that beam each of us has lodged in his eyes. Lent challenges us to drain the swamp that concupiscence generates within us lest our lives become submerged in sin, selfishness, and ego.

That inner swamp conditioned by concupiscence, the irregular desire for sin that weighs down all children of Adam, is real, and it is the cause of so much evil in ourselves, in Washington, and beyond. Unchecked, the swamp's slow, sometimes imperceptible crawl can overtake us and weaken our wills to resist even greater sins. This happened to King David, who forsook his duty to lead his army into battle so he could stay home, on the couch. (2 Sam 11:1-2) His sloth became an occasion of lust, which then led to his adultery, which then led to his conspiracy to murder.

Lent provides three tools - fasting, prayer, and almsgiving - that help us drain the swamp of concupiscence within us. Each one counters one of the three chief manifestations of concupiscence: sensuality, pride, and vanity. Repentance, sorrow for sins, is the executive order issued on the federal level (the Church) and the local level (the individual) that sets the work in motion.

"The discipline of fasting," writes Adalbert de Vogüé, O.S.B., in his soul-jabbing book To Love Fasting, "is man's first step in pursuit of perfection." Fasting has an "afflictive aspect" that serves "as punishment for faults." It is also a "liberating practice" that "should be felt as the suppression of useless and burdensome excesses."

Abstinence from food, and from other burdensome excesses of which we are not short, frees us from these worldly concerns. Each hunger pang or twitch toward the goods we have forsaken has to be redirected toward God with a conscious prayer: "Lord, I'm sorry for my sins, for which I deserve these pains. Grant me the grace to desire you more than these perishing things."

Dom de Vogüé adds that mastering our appetites by fasting "permits a greater mastery of the other manifestations of the libido and aggressiveness. It is as if the man who fasts were more himself, in possession of his true identity, and less dependent on exterior objects and the impulses they arouse in him." Unrestrained libido and aggressiveness have created swampy conditions in many a soul - and times beyond number, in Washington.

Fasting also facilitates Lent's second tool, prayer. In the Bible, fasts "obtain the maximum intensity and efficacy for prayer," Dom de Vogüé teaches. Authentic prayer curbs pride as we creatures submit ourselves to our Creator, beg His forgiveness, and implore Him to increase within us and to decreas...

By Daniel B. Gallagher.

But first a note from Robert Royal: So it's Lent. Would you like to energize your spiritual life under the guidance of one of the great Catholic spiritual masters? Of course you do. And that's why you should enroll in TCT's course on St. Bonaventure's The Soul's Journey into God, which starts next week. Your professor is TCT's own Randall Smith. So Lent, Bonaventure, Smith. What are you waiting for? Click the button below and make the rest of your Lent an even richer spiritual experience.

Now for today's column...

William Sitwell, praising the decision of the British Department of Education to cease funding the Latin Excellence Programme (LEP), recently wrote in London's The Telegraph that "the loss of Latin from schools is a triumph, not a tragedy," explaining that "the ancient language has little relevance in today's society."

No one in America would have been more eager to join Sitwell than John Dewey (1859-1952), arguably a greater influence on American public education than anyone else. In Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey wrote that literary culture was "aloof from the practical needs of the mass of men" and nothing more than an "alleged humanism" that "bases its educational schemes upon the specialized interests of a leisure class." Members of this culture "reduce themselves to exclusively literary and linguistic studies, which tend to shrink to 'the classics,' to languages no longer spoken."

Although Dewey acknowledged a place for Latin and Greek based on "the important contributions" those civilizations have made to our own, he also wrote that to regard the classics "as par excellence the human studies involves a deliberate neglect of the possibilities of the subject matter which is accessible in education to the masses, and tends to cultivate a narrow snobbery." In short, the classics - and the languages in which they were written - were not only impractical but because they were inaccessible to the masses, therefore, in no way preeminently "humanistic."

I don't know how strong the influence of Dewey's pragmatism has been on the other side of the Atlantic, but Sitwell certainly represents it. "What those Latin classes did do," Sitwell writes, "was fill my childhood with countless hours of pointless education when I should instead have been forced to study the likes of economics, business [and] entrepreneurialism."

I have nothing against economics, business, and entrepreneurialism. In fact, I'm all for them. But I don't think they ultimately make us human. What makes us human is the capacity to probe what lies beyond such practical endeavors and the willingness to ask "big questions." What makes us human is not the ability to come up with the best business model, but to understand why we even engage in business in the first place. What makes us human is ultimately not what we make, but who we are and who we become.

Such was the thinking of Erasmus of Rotterdam, among many other eminent humanists, whom Sitwell dismisses as "a gloomy Dutchman with a propensity to contract lumbago. . .before succumbing to dysentery." Perhaps. But Erasmus also dedicated his life to education, and more specifically to the bonae litterae ("good letters"), which he believed not only dealt with the "big questions" but empowered us to acquire virtues that would make us excel both in public life and in the life of contemplation.

As for "economics, business, and entrepreneurialism," Erasmus issued a perennial warning: "Anyone who actually admires money as the most precious thing in life" and believes that "as long as he possesses it, he will be happy, has fashioned too many false gods for himself." (The Handbook of the Militant Christian, 1514).

For all his "lumbago" and "dysentery," Erasmus was a far less gloomy figure than Sitwell's teachers, who seem ultimately to blame for his deep distaste for Latin. Mr. Scott, Sitwell's instructor at Maidwell Hall, wrote that if the ten-year-old Sitwell could only "understan...

By Michael Pakaluk.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, March 13th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss Pope Francis' ongoing health crisis and its implications, the status of the case against disgraced former Jesuit Marko Rupnik, Washington D.C. protests against Cardinal Robert McElory - as well as other issues in the global Church. 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...

The earliest day that Ash Wednesday can fall is February 4th. The Christmas season most liberally construed lasts until Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation, on February 2nd. Therefore, it would be possible for the Christmas season to go directly into Lent with just one day in between, Mardi Gras. This is not common. The last time it happened was 1818, and the next will be 2285. In any case, we see that it is possible for Christmas and Lent to be conjoined but impossible for them to overlap.

This fact is important, I think, and I believe it is by design. Because the arrangement gives due place to the two great mysteries of our faith, while keeping them distinct: the mystery of the Incarnation and the mystery of the Passion - that of the birth of the Lord, with all its consequences, and that of his death, which is our redemption.

If we ponder the liturgical year as potentially compressed in this way, then the Church gives us about two months to ponder the Incarnation, followed by another two to ponder the Passion - and then the rest of the year, after celebrating Easter, to live in the newness of life in Christ. The seasons of Christmas and Easter are made for each other, even when some weeks of "ordinary time" usually separate them.

The liturgical year interpreted in this way presents us with what we might call the "sacramental gospel." The sacramental gospel thinks of the Good News as something that God did to human nature and the entire human race. Divinity interacted with humanity and did not leave it the same. He took our nature. Having taken our nature, by dying he paid a price on our behalf.

This sacramental gospel is as it were the antithesis of "Jesus the great moral teacher." It can be preached without preaching any "great moral teachings," as in the Creed: for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven. . .was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried. The Creed in one sentence asserts the Incarnation and in the next the Passion, conjoined mysteries yet distinct. It is human flesh that is assumed in the womb, human flesh that is buried.

What about the biography of Christ? Does it show a similar structure, divided between the two mysteries? At first, one would say no. He spent thirty years in a hidden life, and one week giving himself over to suffering and death. Simply in terms of length of time, in the life of Christ, the Incarnation seems the dominant mystery.

And yet metaphysically the Incarnation was for the sake of the Passion: "And she shall bring forth a son: and thou shalt call his name Jesus. For he shall save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21) Indeed, one Gospel writer, Mark, starts with the John the Baptist, omitting anything about the Nativity, after which his narrative rushes with increasing speed to Our Lord's capture and death.

But Matthew sees the division and the complementarity. Peter's profession, "You are the Christ," if one counts Greek words or verses, is found at almost exactly the half-way point. It is as if the first half of Matthew's Gospel is an argument that "Christ" means God incarnate - with its various accounts of angels, magi, healings, and authoritative law-giving - while the second half explains what ...

By Francis X. Maier.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tomorrow night - Thursday, March 13th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss Pope Francis' ongoing health crisis and its implications, the status of the case against disgraced former Jesuit Marko Rupnik, Washington D.C. protests against Cardinal Robert McElory - as well as other issues in the global Church. 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...

The late great Henry Ford famously argued that "history is bunk." The past, so the reasoning goes, is a millstone around humanity's neck, a depressing, Old World obstacle to progress. And that's clearly one of the conceits buried deep in the American psyche. We Americans are different. We're a "city upon a hill," the kind mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount. We're an entirely "new order of the ages" - words, in their original Latin, that are stamped right on our nation's Great Seal.

We haven't had a war on our home soil in 160 years. We're the wealthiest, most successful republic turned de facto empire in, well, history. We're also the greatest toolmakers. The result is predictable: Optimism is baked into our national assumptions. It drives our faith in technology, a faith with astonishing achievements, a faith with now global adherents.

Later this year the Australian biotech company Cortical Labs will introduce the CL1 - the world's first "body in a box" biological computer - for a mere $35,000 per unit:

The CL1 consists of a silicon chip with lab-grown human neurons cultivated on its surface. These neurons are capable of responding to electrical signals, forming networks that process information similarly to a biological brain. . . .A notable aspect of the CL1 is its ability to learn and adapt to tasks. Previous research has demonstrated that neuron-based systems can be trained to perform basic functions, such as playing simple video games. Cortical Labs' work suggests that integrating biological elements into computing could improve efficiency in tasks that traditional AI struggles with, such as pattern recognition and decision-making in unpredictable environments.

CL1 is the tip of a new-wave technological iceberg. Brain-computer interface (BCI) research is now a robust and expanding field. And isn't that good news? What could possibly be wrong with tools that might one day cure paralysis or mental illness? Maybe just this: Optimism confirmed by optimal results has a habit of eliding into hubris with very different and unpleasant consequences. We use our tools, but our tools also use us by rewiring not just our abilities, but also our appetites and imaginations.

Here's the point: Technology can deliver us from dozens of forms of inconvenience and suffering. But it can never deliver us from the nature of our creatureliness: our awareness of being somehow incomplete; our instinctive longing for something more than this world; the yearning that makes us human; our mortality and the questions it raises.

Real deliverance, the real redemption of our restless hearts, can never come from human hands. It's the work of a loving God and his ongoing love through history - a fact that pervades and provides the framework for Gerald McDermott's excellent 2024 book, A New History of Redemption.

McDermott writes as an Anglican theologian, but Catholics will find little to disagree with and much to draw value from in a text that's both engaging and comprehensive in its review of God's work from Creation to our own time and beyond. McDermott's focus throughout is "on the meaning of Israel and Christ (Messiah) for the nations," with a special emphasis on "the Jewish roots of Christianity." The result is a marvelous read.

McDermott ties the inspiration for his ...

by Father Jerry J. Pokorsky.

God said to Moses, "I am who I am." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you.'" (Exodus 3:14)

I am nine years old. I live with my mother and father. My father deposited his semen in a medical repository in an In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) clinic and, eventually, fertilized five of my mother's ova. Medical technicians implanted me alone in my mother's womb. My brothers and sisters remain frozen for possible implantation at a future date, either in my mother's womb or, with her consent, the womb of another woman. I am an IVF baby.

I am fourteen years old. I live with my mother. I know little of my father. All I know is his genetic makeup. He deposited his semen in a medical repository cup in an IVF clinic. He received $50 for his deposit. His seed fertilized the ova of my mother. I do not know whether my brothers and sisters are still alive, frozen in suspended animation, or discarded because of DNA attributes that fall short of medical perfection. But I know that I survived because my genetic traits were up to predetermined standards established by the medical technicians in consultation with my mother. My mother is an active member of the LGBTQ+ community. I am an IVF baby.

I am eighteen years old. My mother is the daughter of my grandfather. He came home one evening in a drunken stupor and raped his daughter, my mother. I learned of the incident when I started dating an attractive boy and discovered he was my first cousin. My mother tearfully confessed the incident to prevent further complications. I am an incest baby.

I am twenty-eight years old. My mother was a victim of rape. Relatives and doctors encouraged her to abort me to avoid the shame. She refused, brought me to term, and put me up for adoption. My adoptive parents claimed me as their own. I discovered my roots when I conducted DNA research and followed up with questions. I am a rape baby.

I am thirty-five years old. My mother was a prostitute and died of a drug overdose when I was young. I do not know my father. I grew up in foster homes, and now I am homeless, living on the streets, making a living doing tricks in the seedy inner city. I am a prostitute baby.

I am a baby in the womb. I feel and hear my mother's heart and warmth. I do not know her. I do not know my father. I hope my mother wants me. I hope my father wants me. But a sharp object pursues me in this terrible clinic. I am an unwanted baby.

I am a pro-choice politician. Every baby in the womb is subhuman and expendable. I am a Democrat. Occasionally, I am a Republican.

I am an anti-abortion politician. I know my constituents and my constituents know me. I consider In Vitro Fertilization "pro-life." I allow for rape and incest exceptions to anti-abortion laws. Logic dictates that I believe IVF babies, incest babies, and rape babies are subhuman and disposable. I am the President. I am the Vice President. I am the typical Republican U.S. Senator.

I am the Blessed Virgin Mary. There are no IVF babies. There are no incest babies. There are no rape babies. There are no unwanted babies. Every baby is created by God in His image and likeness. God loves them and desires their happiness now and in Heaven. I love them as my children. I love the mothers and fathers who abort their children. I love criminals who abuse their sexuality. I love politicians and clergymen who deny the right to life for my children. I intercede on their behalf to my Son for their conversion and happiness. I am their mother. I am the Immaculate Conception.

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I became man at My conception in the womb of My mother when she said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (Lk. 1:38) I am born of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. I suffered and died on the Cross for the sins of the world. I overcame sin, suffering, and death in the Resurrection. I love saints and sinners. I desire th...

by Robert Royal.

In just the past few days, hundreds of Christians have been murdered, raped, and tortured in Syria. When news outlets even notice what's happening - yesterday's New York Times only carried an "update" of a previous article and the Washington Post's latest story on the massacres appeared Friday - they usually only mention the attacks on "civilians" or Alawites, the Islamic sect followed by the al-Assad family, the former rulers of Syria. It's true that Syrian Christians are caught up in the larger political turmoil in their homeland. But like Christians around the world, it's also true that they are being killed and persecuted specifically because of their faith.

I'm more than a little sensitive to injustices like these because my book The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century will be published in a few weeks. Anyone who looks systematically at what's been happening to Christians in the first quarter of our century - and not only in the Middle East, Africa, China, and the Far East, but even in our once Christian "West" - cannot help but be shocked. By quite sober estimates, something like 300 million Christians worldwide are under threat.

This book is something of a sequel to my Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, which responded to Pope John Paul II's request that, as part of the celebrations of the 2000 Jubilee Year, the Church remember the martyrs of the previous century. He organized an inspiring event at the Colosseum on May 7, 2000, where representatives of the Catholic Church, the Orthodox, and Protestants told their martyrs' stories. I gave the pope a copy of my book that morning.

Aid to the Church in Need USA asked me to write the new book because of the essential work they do in many countries where Christians are not only dying but need outside support. ACN International will translate it into several languages and publish it in various countries as part of the 2025 Jubilee celebrations. And we're hoping, as in 2000, to present the pope with a copy in May.

The shift that has occurred in the years between these two volumes is telling. In 2000, to write of Christian martyrs was to look back at the totalitarianism that produced high body counts in the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact nations, Nazi Germany, China, the Mexican and Spanish civil wars, and so forth. The clashes and deaths occurred almost entirely as a result of modern atheism seeking to stamp out Christianity. Communism was the world champion.

That's still the case in North Korea (by common agreement the current champ), China (with little pushback from Rome), and Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba (ditto). But by far the largest body counts now are from militant Islam. The Indian/British novelist Salman Rushdie, who was the subject of a fatwa by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini and was severely injured and blinded in one eye by a militant Muslim in New York, has said: "after having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism."

The threat exists not only in the Middle East, though it waxes and wanes there owing to circumstances. Western forces were able to suppress ISIS in the Middle East and North Africa for a while, though ISIS affiliates and similar organizations linger on. But the ideology migrated to central Africa, where many of the most violent persecutions of Christians now take place.

In Nigeria alone, almost 5,000 Christians are murdered every year. (The Biden administration dropped Nigeria from the list of Countries of Particular Concern; the Trump administration could do Christians a great service by putting Nigeria back). Even worse, movements in several African nations as well as in the Far East are explicitly in the business of trying to create a worldwide Islamic Caliphate.

International institutions and Western governments do little to stop these developments, don't even say very much, for two reasons, in my esti...