By Fr. Robert P. Imbelli.

Two of the most moving words in the entire New Testament occur at the beginning of St. Luke's narrative of the Last Supper. "And when the hour came, he reclined at table with the apostles and said to them: 'How deeply have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer'." (Luke 22:14-15) My translation here - "how deeply have I desired" - seeks to express Jesus' consuming longing, which Luke's Greek conveys by repeating the word "desire" as both noun and verb: "epithumia epethumēsa." With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you!

Two words that provide a privileged window into both the aim of Jesus and into the early Church's experience of the unique relationship of Christians to their Savior. They resonate with and are complemented by other words of the Lord revealing a like intention and goal.

Jesus declares: "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (John 10:10) And he prays: "may they all be one, as you Father are in me and I in you; may they also be [one] in us." (John 17:21) This life-giving "at-onement" is the very heart of Jesus' mission and desire. And - wondrous mystery - his passion for communion is sublimely signified and fully realized in the Eucharist.

Three years ago, Pope Francis wrote an "Apostolic Letter" whose title is a Latin translation of the two words of Luke's Gospel highlighted above: "Desiderio desideravi," a mystagogic meditation upon the Eucharist, experienced as the recapitulation of Jesus' entire life and mission. Francis speaks of Jesus' "infinite desire to reestablish. . .communion with us," a desire that "will not be satisfied until every man and woman, from 'every tribe, tongue, people, and nation' (Revelation 5:9), shall have eaten his body and drunk his blood." (no. 4)

Francis ponders this priority of Jesus' desire. "We may not even be aware of it, but every time we go to Mass, the first reason is that we are drawn there by his desire for us. . . .Indeed, every reception of communion of the Body and Blood of Christ was already desired by him in the Last Supper." (no. 6)

But this intensely personal encounter of the consuming desire of Jesus with our own, often feeble, desire transpires in a setting that spans history and indeed opens upon cosmic dimensions. Francis poetically expands our constricted vision and imagination. He writes: "Peter and John were sent to make preparations to eat that Passover, but in actual fact, all of Creation, all of history - which at last was on the verge of revealing itself as the history of salvation - was a great preparation for that Supper." (no. 3)

In every Eucharist, whether celebrated in a modest chapel or a magnificent cathedral, cosmos and history are implicated in the miracle of transubstantiation. The fruits of the earth and work of human hands are transformed, not annihilated. And we, the recipients of Christ's bounty, discover our true dignity and calling as beloved of the Father, members of Christ's new body.

The pope's letter hints at a further immersion into Mystery. A contemplative gaze fixed on the Eucharist provides a glimpse into the very heart of God, "the depth of the love of the persons of the Most Holy Trinity for us." (no. 1) Though Francis does not himself use the term, one might extend his intuition to consider the "Eucharistic life of God." The Triune God's very life is the vibrant exchange of generous giving, grateful receiving and personal sharing adumbrated in the Pauline benediction: "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit." (2 Corinthians 13:13)

And because prayer is often enhanced when accompanied by mystagogic images, Rublev's great icon of the Trinity can aid our entrance into the inexhaustible Mystery as it invites us, through Christ, into Trinitarian-Eucharistic life.

Rublev's visionary representation integrates Old and New Testament. In the economy of salvation, the appearance of the Three Angels to Abraham ...

By Fr. Benedict Kiely.

But first a note: Click here to register for Robert Royal's online presentation at the Catholic Information Center, 6 PM ET this evening, of his new book, The Martyrs of the Third Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century, which was published yesterday.

Now for today's column...

The journey we began nearly six weeks ago is almost over, or, to paraphrase Churchill, it is just the beginning of the end. We are about to enter the Sacred Triduum, the unbroken liturgical celebration of the Paschal Mystery, the life, saving death, and Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord of history and of Creation, the King of the Universe, God made man.

As we pass through these days, we need to be ready to reaffirm our baptismal promises on Easter Day, something of truly profound significance. When we hear the solemn proclamation of the Passion read, three characters are intimately involved in the Passion who, each in their own way, reflect aspects of our own Christian lives, and from whom we might draw certain lessons for the future.

It is quite traditional, of course, to try to identify with characters in the Biblical accounts, and we could pick almost anyone in the Passion narrative, as there are so many and so varied figures involved. Even what we might call the "bit parts," or the extras, have a place in the story.

For our meditation for the Triduum, I propose Judas, St. Peter, and St. John. Judas, we know, is the figure of betrayal, St. Peter, the figure of denial, and St. John, the figure of fidelity.

If we are honest with ourselves, times of humility, betrayal, denial, and fidelity come and go in our own lives as Christians. Perhaps we draw back at the suggestion of identification with Judas, but what is serious sin if not a betrayal of the Lord?

What is taking public positions against the solemn teaching of the Church, our "disagreement" with difficult dogmas, if not betrayal? We know, sadly, that when the Church is actively persecuted, it is often members of the Church Herself who betray their brethren, usually out of fear, but also many times because of avarice or desire for advancement.

Judas is the figure of betrayal, but also the figure of conformity, the man of the culture, who wants to make Christ after his own image. He is the churchman who is happy to be welcomed and supported by the money and influence of the State; let us not imagine that a "patriotic Church" exists only in China - there are many who represent a Church of the Zeitgeist, vapidly echoing the latest cultural fashion, seeking to "accompany" sin and deviation, and failing to preach, with any sense of what's at stake, repentance and renewal.

Judas sadly, seems to embody another feature of the Church in these times, in a particular way - he lacks supernatural faith. Christ, or the Christ of his desires and imagination, has, in a sense, betrayed him, because Christ is not a political actor.

The Lord speaks of another world and of eternity. Much leadership in the Church seems focussed on the secular, to the complete negation of the transcendent. For episcopal appointments, things like commitment to the Green Agenda should very far down on the list - and perhaps a little more of the saving message of the Gospel might be in order.

St. Peter is the figure that, perhaps, we identify with more easily. A simple man, and, often portrayed in the Gospels as foolish, impulsive - indeed, sometimes quite thoughtless. If repentance is part of our lives, which it obviously should be, it is quite right that we can see ourselves in him.

Let us not, however, rush too quickly from his denial of the Lord to his repentance. There is a coal fire we have all sat around, warming our limbs and denying our companionship with Christ: That silence when the Faith is attacked, when the Church is abused, or even, once again, when we fail to live the fullness of the Faith through sin and weak...

By Randall Smith.

Although I grew up Protestant, I can't say I've ever been much of a "Bible guy." I like Aquinas. And Augustine. And the Church Fathers.

If someone asks me what brought me into the Church, I'm afraid I can't honestly say, "the Bible." I usually say: "the Holy Spirit." But if we're talking about books, it was more Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero than Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. I am cheered somewhat by the fact that even the great St. Augustine did not find the Scriptures especially inspiring when he was younger. He preferred Virgil. When he got older, things changed. Let's just say, the Scriptures started to sing to him, and he began to hear their music.

I have had the pleasure this year of teaching our "Scripture and Salvation History Course." When you get the privilege of teaching a course like that, all those voices in the different Biblical books that sounded so odd and discordant earlier in life start to sound together like the various instruments in a magnificent symphony. You may have experienced this yourself if you've gone to the Easter Triduum Masses and paid attention to the readings. These are some of the best examples of St. Augustine's dictum that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is made manifest in the New.

On Good Friday, we get that poignant reading from one of the Suffering Servant Songs of Isaiah:

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,

our sufferings that he endured,

while we thought of him as stricken,

as one smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our offenses,

crushed for our sins;

upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,

by his stripes we were healed.

And then we hear in the High Priestly Prayer from the Letter to the Hebrews of the "high priest who has passed through the heavens," but who can "sympathize with our weaknesses," because he has been "tested in every way, yet without sin."

Then we come to the Easter Vigil Mass and hear the Genesis Creation account, so we will remember that the God who created us is the God who re-creates us. The one who died on the Cross is the Word through Whom all things came to be. And then we hear again from Isaiah, who tells us that "the One who has become your husband is your Maker" - your Creator.

This marriage imagery was likely inspired by the prophet Hosea, who had written poignantly about God's love for His people in relation to his own deep love for his adulterous wife. His is a love, writes Fr. Louis Bouyer, "that has no tendency to close his eyes to the weakness of his beloved."

So too with God; He "does not wait for us to be just in order to love us." As St. Paul says: "It is in this that God has shown the greatness of His love for us: that His Son died for us while we were still sinners." This love is so great and so powerful, it can transform the beloved. This is a merciful justice that makes us just. It can do the seemingly impossible: create a new heart in us.

So too, at Mass, we hear from the prophet Ezekiel God's promise that

I will sprinkle clean water upon you

to cleanse you from all your impurities,

and from all your idols I will cleanse you.

I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you,

taking from your bodies your stony hearts

and giving you natural hearts.

This should put us in mind of a similar promise from the prophet Jeremiah that God would make "a new covenant. . .not like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them."

There's that marriage imagery again. In this "new covenant," says the Lord:

I will put my law in their minds

and write it on their hearts.

Some of these readings can be omitted, but the one that should never be omitted is the reading from Exodus about the Passover. This reminds us of what Christ did at the Last Supper when he transformed the bread and wine of the Passover celebration (the "pasch") into His own Body and Blood. He is, as John...

By Robert Royal.

Most Christians - though far from all, in the current decay of education of all kinds, including religious education - know that the events we commemorate this week have had the most wide-ranging effects of anything that has happened in the entire history of the human race. And beyond, into the next world. Anyone, Christian or not, who looks back in time without a jaundiced eye, has to recognize that the Christian revolution has touched virtually everything. And that this has been a blessing as well as - not a curse, but an obstacle, in more recent times to appreciating just how great a change God-become-man introduced into the world.

Because when people assume they know the plot and the outcome of the Christian story, they take it for granted, as something that's just the everyday background. They believe that it has existed always and everywhere. And that whatever is good in it has already been integrated into human life and doesn't need particular attention any longer. Tom Holland, a "cultural Christian" and (probably, though he seems to be wavering) not a believer, traces this whole process in his remarkable book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. Without Christ: no acknowledgment of human freedom or dignity, no transcendence of the merely political, no spread of Jewish monotheism (nor the Christian heresy we call Islam), no end to slavery, no respect towards women, ad infinitum.

By the end, Holland identifies so many things in our world with origins in Christianity that you almost want to pull him up short and ask, "Wait a minute, friend, aren't there things we value that have come from outside the Christian tradition?"

My wife and I have been watching (parva cum magnis comparare) an intriguing BBC series, "SS-GB," based on a novel by Len Deighton, which imagines a counter-historical scenario: What if the RAF had lost the air battle over Britain and the Nazis had taken over England? A police detective finds himself in a dilemma, having to fight crimes and, at the same time, work with the Nazi SS, in the hope that he can learn things that will help undermine and ultimately expel the invaders.

It may seem a stretch, but if you look around the world at the evils that beset us on every side - or even look into your own heart and actions - it's clear that we're occupied by some alien force. The Devil is the father of lies, but when he shows Jesus the kingdoms of the world and tempts Him, "All this power will I give you, and the glory of them: for that is delivered to me; and to whomsoever I will I give it" (Luke.4:6), it doesn't seem entirely implausible.

When I first read C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia to my children, I balked a bit when he would describe Aslan (a lion symbolizing Christ) as "having landed" and being "on the move" with his followers. Like everything Lewis wrote, it was a lively image, but seemed too simplistic to me. Now I realize, I was the simpleton. Lewis - and Tolkien - experienced both world wars and the air battle over Britain. They both knew in their bones, and brilliantly embodied in their books, a sense of the spiritual combat going on in our world - and will be with us until the end of the age.

The spiritual battle ought to be more evident to us now, rather than less. But the Evil One has his dark arts and has been very successful in diverting our attention from the main theater of combat to lesser ones. Most people think our evils are just a series of clashes over politics, economics, sex, power, and other evanescent goals.

When St. Anselm wrote Cur Deus Homo? - "Why Did God Become Man?" - around 1099, he, along with much of the Middles Ages, was curious about a different, but related question. In theological perspective, the Incarnation is a "mystery." But Faith and Reason are, as St. John Paul II reminded us, two wings by which the human spirit rises to God. Reason cannot entirely explain the revealed mysteries - which is why truths like the Trinity a...

By Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky.

Praying to Mary by invoking her various titles may disturb people accustomed to dismissing devotion to Mary as extra-Biblical. But John Henry Newman warns, "Throwing off devotion to her, countries cease to worship Christ." (Meditations & Devotions) Mary's virtuous beauty radiates throughout the Gospels.

God reveals Himself through Moses, the prophets, the ministry of Jesus, the testimony of the Apostles, Scripture, and Church teaching. Most - if not all - of the original Scriptural scrolls have returned to dust. Revelation is like a holy swarm of bees, directed by Tradition and held together by the Magisterium of the Church. And Mary - not to press the metaphor too far - is the Queen Bee, interceding to rescue renegade drones. Mary forever directs us to the binding words of Jesus.

Mary's obedience brought us the Incarnation, "the greatest Peace Conference ever held." (Legion of Mary Handbook) At the Annunciation, God and man are reconciled. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to thy word. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." cf. Luke 1:38 & John 1:14).

Mary teaches us how to pray and live. Our Blessed Mother ponders the words of the Angel Gabriel in her heart. Her obedience magnifies the Lord. (cf. Luke 1:46-55). Like Mary, we joyfully receive God's word and hold fast to the doctrines handed down to us through the Church. Mary helps us identify the many pieces of Church teaching, assemble them, and, with God's grace, apply them. With Mary, we, too, magnify the Lord in virtuous living.

Mary teaches us to abide by God's will. John writes the last recorded words of Mary at the wedding feast in Cana: "Do whatever he tells you." (John 2:5) Like John the Baptist, Mary, in humility, decreases as Jesus increases. But Jesus gives Mary the highest compliment in a disguised form:

While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brethren! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Matthew 12:46-50)

Mary's Immaculate Conception and perfect obedience to the Father radiate her virtuous beauty: "Our tainted nature's solitary boast." (Wordsworth)

Jesus commissions Mary to intercede for us as our mother with Saint John as His proxy: "Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, 'Woman, behold, your son!' Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your mother!' And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home." (John 19:25-27)

We can easily imagine the months and years of conversations between Mary and John during their sojourn in Ephesus. John's Gospel was the crown jewel of Catholic theology. (cf., the high priestly prayer of Jesus, John 17) In a way, Mary intercedes as the senior editor of the Gospels, with the Holy Spirit as the Executive Editor. Mary is the guardian of orthodoxy and nourishes her children with the words of Jesus through the words of the evangelists.

The prayerful example and intercession of Mary encouraged the theological reflections of the Early Church Fathers. The disobedience of Adam and Eve ruined our happiness and brought condemnation. The obedience of Jesus unto death reveals Him as "the New Adam," restoring our innocence in Him. Mary's obedience earns her the distinction of "the New Eve," the mother of all the living redeemed in Jesus.

Mary, the co-worker of salvation with her Son, crushes the head of the serpent as prophesied in Genesis 3:15. With the help of faithful and learned theologians, we sort out conundrums in the beehive of Revelation:

The Hebrew assigns the head-crushing to a he or ...

By Auguste Meyrat.

In the New York Time's list of "The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century," the critics placed Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, and by extension the next three books of her Neapolitan series, at the very top. In their estimation, these books represent the best literature of the last quarter century.

Even for those who have read the series (or watched the TV adaptation), it's not exactly clear why this is the number one book of our day. In style and substance, Ferrante hardly breaks new ground. The most that one could say is that her characters and setting are well developed and true to life. Her themes are also familiar, as she charts the challenges of growing up, maintaining relationships, thriving in a career, and coming to terms with one's identity. Again, her depictions and reflections on these ideas are realistic and clear, but not necessarily profound.

Even by the standards of today's critics, who generally seek out manifestations of the woke Zeitgeist, the novels fall short: the whole cast of characters are white, mostly heterosexual Italians. It's true that socialism and feminism are discussed throughout the series, but the writer's commitment to reality effectively tarnishes these fashionable ideologies. Italy in general, and Naples in particular, are dysfunctional places made all the worse by leftist politics. And the women in the books are far from empowered despite their outward social progress.

So, is there something that explains the books' acclaim among NYT critics? I believe there is. Better than any other novel or novel series, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels thoroughly capture the spiritual, moral, cultural, and material decline of the modern West.

The story centers around the friendship of Elena (Lenu) Greco and Raffaella (Lila) Cerrullo, two girls who grow up in post-World War II Naples. The neighborhood is plagued with poverty, mob violence, radical leftist politics, and domestic violence. Nevertheless, both Lenu and Lila do well at school, Lenu because she works hard and aims to please and Lila because she is intellectually gifted. The two girls' paths diverge as Lenu continues her studies, allowing her to rise above her circumstances, and Lila marries young following the prescribed path of most women in her neighborhood.

Each novel in the series covers a stage of Lenu and Lila's lives: childhood (My Brilliant Friend), young adulthood (The Story of a New Name), adulthood (The Ones Who Leave and Those Who Stay), middle and old age (The Story of the Lost Child). Both characters experience the typical milestones of maturity, enduring the joys and sorrows of marriage, parenthood, and work, increasingly each envying the other in a multitude of ways.

Although this setup might suggest some kind of character growth and several poignant lessons, this is rarely the case. The characters simply grow older, never wiser. Lenu makes a host of bad decisions and hurts everyone around her, but never thinks to blame herself or apologize to anyone. Moreover, unlike every other character in the series, Lenu is often blessed with good fortune, which allows her to accomplish her goals. Yet she never expresses gratitude.

Worst of all, Lenu is an unimaginative, humorless bore, yet somehow becomes a famous writer - maybe a projection of Ferrante herself? All of Lenu's supposed literary successes are instances of her recounting moments in her life, discussing Naples, and/or regurgitating pretentious feminist theory. Nothing and no one actually inspires her, much less teaches her to write the way she does, except maybe Lila from time to time.

As such, each novel becomes successively more tedious: Lenu drifts upward through life, learning nothing; Lila's fortunes rise and fall arbitrarily; and the rest of the characters tend to follow a predetermined (usually downward) course, exhibiting little personal agency. It's a world mostly devoid of redemption and meaning, which is tolerable in the first volume, bu...

By John M. Grondelski.

Our media are intermittently stirred up over the decline of marriage in American society. Many factors play into that phenomenon: confusion over the very definition of "marriage" and its substitution by ersatz stand-ins; economic insecurity that deters young people, especially young men, from entering adult life; a split between "adult" and "professional" life, in which there are gender differences; differing and often unrealistic expectations of marriage; the decline of religious commitment, expressed in religious marriage with a co-religionist, etc.

All these factors feed into the eclipse of marriage. But perhaps there's one other that we just don't take much into account because, like the air we breathe, it affects us, but we don't notice it. It's how we view the "normal" human person. Is the "normal" person naturally situated in a communion of persons such as marriage, or is he a rugged individualist for whom marriage is perhaps an "add-on" but not a "fulfillment?"

Genesis 2:18 teaches "it is not good for the man (ha'adam, הָֽאָדָם) to be alone." Two things are noteworthy about this passage. The first is the speaker: God. It is not "the man" who recognizes his solitude, much less its deficiencies. It is God who authoritatively pronounces that aloneness is "not good" (one of the few times in Genesis something is not "good").

Second, who is this "man?" The usual reading is the male without the female. Indeed, we've even taken the Hebrew collective noun for "man" - adam - and made it his proper name, Adam.

Pope St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body in fact pushed this question further. In this state of original solitude, is the "man" the male - or the human? Can "man" know what it is to be "man" prior to the complementary contrast of "woman"? "The man" knows things negatively, i.e., that in the Dr. Doolittle parade of Creation that God presents to him there is no "suitable companion." God says it is "not good." But does he, Adam, recognize it as "not good" or merely "not there?" Is his recognition conscious? Visceral? Neither? Both?

God remedies man's "not good" situation by the creation of woman, which - as John Paul pointed out - clearly establishes the experience of "male" and "female," again making the point that sexual differentiation is not something incidental or valueless to human anthropology. My question is: Do modern people have that same experience of "male" and "female?"

Do 20- and 30-something American males living in their parents' basements feel it is "not good" that they are alone, or is it a "take-it-or-leave-it" situation? Do 20- and 30-something American females, often better educated and quicker into the job market than their male counterparts, consider being with another some kind of a sine qua non "good?"

Borrowing Brad Wilcox's terminology for how we treat parenthood, do those women consider marriage a "cornerstone" necessary to building a "good" life, or a "capstone" achievement, a crowning element on life's resume?

There was a time when parents nudged their children, subtly or less so, towards marriage. Young women were especially asked, "Are you going with somebody?" "When are you going to get married?" "What are you waiting for?" "Are we ever going to have grandchildren?"

But those questions were not unique to women: young men got them, too, along with such socio-cultural expectations, like "When are you going to get a job so you can be on your own?" - which really didn't mean alone as much as with a spouse in an adult relationship. (Note the expectation was "When are you going to get a job, not necessarily when are you getting a degree.")

These parental pushes towards marriage still exist, though they are often muted or simply cast in terms of "choice." The present writer is also old enough to remember when "state of life" for a Catholic meant either the married or the formally religious. It wasn't until sometime in the 1970s that people really began talking about "mar...

By Anthony Esolen.

Suppose you enter business with a partner, and your contract specifies the work each partner will perform, the remuneration, and how the partnership may be dissolved so as not to kill the business. Now suppose your partner says to you that the contract is "alive," so that where it says that the physical plant will not be included in adjudicating the value of half of the business upon dissolution, it really means that it will be included. "The contract has grown since we signed it," he says, "and I know how it's grown."

The claim is absurd. It uses the metaphor of life in development, but what it implies is that no contract at all ever existed. It nullifies it from the start.

Or consider the marriage vow, whereby you promise to keep yourself only for your spouse, as long as you both shall live. That rules out adultery. But suppose your spouse says, "The marriage vow is alive! It was intended for our happiness, right? But variety makes me happy. And if I'm happier, then you're happier, see? So what's called 'adultery' isn't so at all, not when you consider the big picture. In fact, I'll be more devoted to you than ever. Aren't you lucky!"

That too is absurd. It forecloses the very possibility of making a vow. It kills the promise in the egg. Not only is such a vow not alive. It is assumed that it never was alive: it was never an active principle to organize married life.

I believe the teachings of Christ are alive, as a body is alive. Here again, as in my previous essay, I call on Catholics to consider what a body is not. It is not a mere collection, a group. When the child grows up to be a man, the powers that were latent in him assume full force. The muscles that looked like rolls of dough on his arm, but that did foreshadow the fully developed musculature, are now there in actuality. The little boy does not "develop" into a dog, a girl, a rock, a computer, or a fictional character in a novel. He becomes in act the man he was in potential.

I can remove an item from a collection and replace it with another, without changing the nature of the whole: I toss away the agate from a collection of semiprecious stones and replace it with carnelian. I trade a Morgan silver dollar for a Flying Eagle cent. I still have a rock collection. I still have a coin collection. That is because the items in a collection bear no organic relationship to one another. I can consider all the prime numbers below 1000. If I stretch the boundaries of the set to include all the primes below 100,000, I have not altered a single number. Their relations are not organic. They do not form a body.

But the teachings of the Church are organically related to one another. They are communications by God, the divine Person, communicating through persons, about persons individually and about persons properly speaking: beings whose existence is founded in communion with others.

We find a distant analogy in what a parent teaches a child about right and wrong. Those exist antecedent to the teaching; the parent merely adapts the teaching to the child's fitness to receive it. What seem to the child as mere rules - do not tell a lie, do not stuff yourself with food, obey your teacher - are living principles, or the immediate applications of those principles. They are interrelated, as members of a living body. The moral laws do not change. Their interrelationships do not change. What changes is the child's ability to understand them.

Therefore, you cannot teach a child that it is wrong to tell a lie, and then many years later say that it is all right to break a sacred promise if you believe you will be happier if you do so. You cannot excuse yourself by claiming that the law against falsehood is "living," when what you are doing is rendering it a dead letter, or when you have foreclosed its operation in the body, reducing it to something constricted or feeble or inert. Or when you have failed to consider that it is a member of a body in the first place.

...

by Francis X. Maier.

I'm a 4 a.m. guy. I rise early to think and work in the silence. But every once in a while, the outside world intrudes. I'll turn off the lights and listen in the dark to a symphony beyond my window: the long sigh of falling rain; the percussion of faraway thunder. It's the music of nature, alive and fertile. It's suffused with beauty. And we humans were made to be part of that beauty, with a dignity unlike any other creature. We have the ability to dream and build, and the genius to make things happen. J.R.R. Tolkien described our species as "sub-creators." In effect, we're junior partners with the Creator himself. We have a unique role in making all things new. For better or worse.

I was reminded of this recently while reading yet another lurid tale about Elon Musk. Musk is now something of a hate magnet. He's routinely cast as the dangerous, unelected Tech Bro of Washington's Boogeyman-in-Chief. A late March Wall Street Journal report highlighted the DOGE master's role in disrupting NASA's plans for a return to the moon. According to the Journal, Musk has pressed the agency to pursue a manned mission to Mars instead. This would arguably benefit his own company, SpaceX, in a perceived conflict of interest. And it would fit very comfortably with Musk's lifelong personal goal of colonizing Mars. "Occupy Mars" is the slogan on his favorite tee shirt.

So how does this connect with anything Christian?

I'll explain. Musk is a conundrum; a cocktail of the brilliant, the awkward, and the naive. He has Asperger's syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum. This accounts for some of his more curious behaviors and views. His intimate personal relationships are, to put it kindly, eccentric. But as a visionary with a genius for making his dreams real and useful, he has very few peers. Both he and his fixation on Mars embody something hardwired into the human condition. They're an expression of man's chronic appetite for exploring and understanding things unknown. In Musk's case, that appetite has billions in cash and immense skill to feed it. And, on the balance, I'm glad. Here's why.

I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s on a steady (if sometimes cheesy) diet of science fiction books and movies: novels like The War of the Worlds and The Martian Chronicles; films like Invaders from Mars, Devil Girl from Mars, and Mars Needs Women. Mars is the red planet, earth's failed twin. It's a tractor beam for the imagination; a stubborn itch on man's curiosity precisely because it's so mysterious, so seductive, and just out of reach.

C.S. Lewis argued that all great science fiction has an undercurrent of theology, a disguised religious quest for human meaning and our place in the void. Musk describes himself as a "cultural Christian." Whatever that means, and however scant the evidence, it suggests something more human in the man than the standard materialist desert at the heart of so many of today's techno-scientific luminaries.

Here's the point: Elon Musk, and the gifted men and women like him, personify our species: both its strengths and its brokenness. We may one day go to Mars. We might someday colonize whole planets. But we won't escape ourselves, because we can't. Ever since Eden, we drag our sins and delusions along with us.

Our tools - our technology and science - can ease our burdens or destroy us, but they can never redeem us. They can never make us whole or more than what we are. And every attempt to use them for that purpose, every attempt to make ourselves into little gods, backfires in a revenge of unintended consequences because we're not gods, we'll never be gods, and we were made for something more than this life.

In Ray Bradbury's memorable novel, The Martian Chronicles, men do go to the red planet. They find an ancient civilization with a refined and elegant people. But as one of the explorers warns, "No matter how we touch Mars, we'll never [really] touch it. And then we'll get mad at it, and you know wha...

By Eduardo J. Echeverria.

In his recent book, Catholic Fundamentalism in America, Mark S. Massa, SJ, claims that five characteristics mark a "fundamentalist."

A "sectarian [resistance to] dialogue and collaboration."

Overemphasis on the institutional model of the Church such that fundamentalism identifies the Kingdom of God with the institution of the Roman Catholic Church.

An "a-historical understanding" of Church teaching such that "the meaning of Christianity, in which development was not possible because it represented apostasy from faith once delivered." (This point is so basic to Massa's understanding of Catholic fundamentalism that he takes it to be the "controlling metaphor of Catholic doctrine as the 'Deposit' of faith [that] seems to imply an unchanging (and unchangeable) list of positivist propositions that cannot develop or 'unfold' over time."

Focus on theology and doctrine using "the essentially political monikers of 'conservative' and 'liberal' to delineate their own position vis-à-vis mainstream American Catholicism."

And "a rhetorical style marked by apocalyptic urgency," reflecting an "almost breathless, accusatory, militant tone [in] their denunciations of others, especially fellow Catholics."

All these points are debatable, of course, but the most problematic is Massa's understanding of Catholicism as such, and not merely of fundamentalism: the phenomenon of "change." Massa explains change in light of Thomas Kuhn's notion of "paradigm shifts." The upshot is to embrace an unqualified "fallibilism," the claim that all beliefs are open to revision, that we cannot know anything definitively and finally. Also, he embraces an implication of Kuhn's paradigm - that there is no independent reality to explain and interpret.

Furthermore, he opposes the "classicist" worldview to historical mindedness, which he derives from Bernard Lonergan's essay, "The Transition from a Classicist World-View and Historical Mindedness." Massa explains, "For the classicists. . .[t]he Truth . . .remains substantially the same throughout history. For classicist believers, right (orthodox) belief [means] necessarily static realities." For the historical-minded approach, "everything is shaped by the changing circumstances of history."

Massa's appeal to historical mindedness involves denying the enduring validity of truth - which is what historicism means. According to Massa, one cannot take "change" of doctrine seriously if you hold truth to be propositional and objective, timelessly and eternally true. This view of truth, allegedly, reflects an a-historical and static understanding of doctrinal truth. Given this emphasis on historical mindedness, Catholicism becomes a perpetual reinterpreting and recontextualizing of the Gospel.

But Massa misunderstands doctrinal "development." A theory of doctrinal development is one "which allows for genuine development in doctrine," as Aidan Nichols rightly notes, "yet respects the substantial homogeneity of revealed truth." John XXIII suggests this theory in his opening address at Vatican II, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia. "For the deposit of faith [2 Timothy 1:14], the truths contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing; the mode in which they are expressed, but with the same meaning and the same judgment [eodem sensu eademque sententia], is another thing."

The subordinate clause in this passage is part of a longer passage from Vatican I's Dei Filius, and this passage itself draws on the Commonitorium 23 of Vincent of Lérins.

Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and all, in individuals and in the whole Church, at all times and in the progress of ages, but only with the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same meaning, the same judgment (eodem sensu eademque sententia).

Yves Congar, O.P. (1904-1995), among many others, has argued that this distinction between propositional truths of faith and their historically conditioned form...