The Catholic Thing

By Francis X. Maier

In late July, some 60,000 migrants surged into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco. The migrants were mainly young males. And since 99 percent of Moroccans practice Islam, most were almost certainly Muslim. Ceuta is not a Spanish colony. It's an "autonomous city" integral to the Spanish state, with Spanish sovereignty dating back to 1580. It's thus a (hoped for) gateway to the European Union, and a priority target of "undocumented" immigration.

Spanish police pushed most of the migrants back across the border. They left behind – as the Wall Street Journal noted – a normally tranquil city stunned by the chaos. All of this is now old news. But what sticks in the memory is the response of the Spanish Church: an ambiguous mix of concern for the law; concern for Ceuta's traumatized legal residents; and a vigorous worry that the incident might be used as a "political weapon" to polarize public opinion, demonize migrants, and "stoke fear."

To the latter concern – the treatment of migrants – we'll return in a moment. But first, some background and context.

Jacques Ellul (d. 1994) was a distinguished French philosopher and scholar of history and sociology. He was active in the French Resistance during World War II, helping Jews escape the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. He's best remembered for his many books, including masterworks like The Technological Society and Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. He was also a committed (Calvinist) Christian and a lay theologian in the Reformed Church of France. And in that role, he was an articulate critic of Islam and the emerging prospect of an "Islamized" Europe.

Ellul is inconvenient for today's secular narrative. We live in a moment when Europe's elites have repudiated the continent's Christian past, while revising history to soften and valorize many elements of Islam. Christian thinkers, meanwhile, often minimize the gulfs that separate Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in a search for mutual respect. Public voices who fail to jump on the bandwagon are branded as "racist" like Jean Raspail (see here), or "alarmist and Islamophobic" like Michel Houellebecq (for his novel Submission), or lacking in academic gravity, like the scholar Bat Ye'or (see below).

Ellul, were he alive, could not be so easily dismissed. His robust critique of Islam can be found in two of his books, here and here. Simply put, he argues that the three great "monotheistic" religions have very different understandings of God, each other, and the human person. They do not share a common grounding in Abraham. And they do not relate to their Scriptures in a similar way. This same point is carried forward today by the Ratzinger Prize-winning French Catholic philosopher Rémi Brague. And it has very practical, real-world consequences.

Ellul especially criticized what he saw as an irreformable totalitarian streak in Islam based on a claimed divine right. This led to Islam's introduction of the concept of "holy war" into religious thought. And this, in turn, triggered the Christian notion of "crusade" as a response.

For Islam, violence and coercion – when seen as necessary – are legitimate tools in spreading the faith. They're hardwired into Islam's original structure in a way completely alien to Christianity. As Ellul notes, this has rarely stopped Christians from ignoring their own beliefs in the pursuit of self-interest. But in their fundamental attitudes toward religious violence, the two faiths have very different DNA.

For our purposes here, some of Ellul's key thoughts about Islam appear in his preface to The Dhimmi and his foreword to The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, both written by the Jewish scholar Bat Ye'or (the pen name of Gisèle Littman). The great value of each book is its thoroughly researched study of dhimmi life through the centuries. The dhimmis were and are non-Muslim persons living under Islamic rule. Today much is made of Muslim "tolerance" toward Jew...

By K.E. Colombini

On a trip back home to Southern California, I had the opportunity to visit the church of my baptism, my "mother church," as they say. When I became Catholic at the age of twelve, in April 1976, Holy Family, in the city of Orange, had just the previous month become the cathedral for the new diocese south of Los Angeles. Not much seemed different with the passing of nearly half a century, yet the evolution of the cathedral for the Diocese of Orange in the intervening years is itself an interesting story.

There was nothing spectacular about Holy Family, which was built in the late 1950s, and I don't know why it was selected as the first cathedral for the diocese. In the early 2000s, there was a move by the bishop at that time to build a new, larger cathedral in Santa Ana. His ambition for a seat worthy of his see had a price tag of $200 million, but the timing was bad, with the Church's sex-abuse scandal hitting the diocese hard in those days.

Another opportunity presented itself in 2010 when Crystal Cathedral Ministries, founded by televangelist Robert Schuller, declared bankruptcy. The Orange Diocese acquired the modern Philip Johnson-designed Crystal Cathedral complex the following year, and extensive renovations led to the 2019 opening of the newly christened Christ Cathedral.

Sitting in a pew at Holy Family, now just a humble parish church again, I was grateful for it, and what it meant and still means to me. Married and with a growing family, I moved out of Orange County to Sacramento in October 1990. I won't forget Holy Family, even though I had not been there in decades.

During the 1990s, I worked in downtown Sacramento, where the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, built in 1889, sits a stone's throw from the State Capitol, City Hall, and the heart of the city. It was a frequent refuge for me, with weekday Masses at noon drawing a large group of office workers.

In those days, Bishop Francis Quinn lived in the rectory next to the cathedral, and I've always thought this to be a far better arrangement than, say, a suburban home. A bishop should have a strong presence at his cathedral, as Quinn showed admirably when, in April 1993, a gunman killed two workers at the downtown library, a few blocks away from the cathedral, before being killed himself by police.

Quinn was on hand quickly to administer last rites himself and comfort those on the scene, and an image of him doing so was spread across several columns of the next day's front page of the Sacramento Bee. This is the sort of pastoral visibility that is important for the Church, and which we rarely see in our prelates.

Under Quinn's successor, William Weigand, a top-to-bottom renovation of Blessed Sacrament was completed in 2005 at a cost of $34 million. Just from an aesthetic point of view -and discounting needed repair – it was sorely needed; the interior could be dark and dreary. This project opened it up and created a beautiful, light-filled space and a sanctuary worthy of a cathedral, especially one in a capital city.

When one first sees the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, it is easy to be awed by its Romanesque enormousness, with a dome one hundred and fifty feet high, worthily attesting to the significance of a city that was once the fourth largest in the nation. What's hard to believe is that it is half its originally intended size.

In the late nineteenth century, St. Louis Archbishop John Kain acquired land for the cathedral, but efforts were stalled by a tornado in 1896 that killed more than 250. Money that was intended for the cathedral was reallocated to tornado relief, and construction plans were delayed and downsized.

After the success of the 1904 World's Fair, the project began anew, with construction completed in 1914. The cathedral's interior mosaics, one of the largest collections in the world, were not completed until 1988.

Our cathedral basilica may be over a century old, but in St. Louis we refer to it as the "New Cathedral...

By Daniel Guernsey

The state of Florida is threatening to pull over a billion dollars of school choice funds from Catholic schools because those schools refuse to admit unvaccinated children in obedience to the policy of the Florida Catholic Conference.

The Florida Attorney General's notice to the Conference urges it to respect the conscience rights of those Florida citizens who do not want to give their children vaccines derived from aborted fetal tissue. The notice requires clarification of the Conference's religious basis for denying conscience exemptions by yesterday (August 7th).

The Florida Catholic Conference has held that, because the state's bishops believe any relationship between vaccines and abortion is so distant and slim, the vaccines are morally acceptable. Since there is no reason for anyone to object to vaccines according to Catholic doctrine, Catholic schools should not grant religious exemptions.

While this situation is complex, the Catholic tradition has a framework which can help resolve it. Pius XI's 1929 encyclical, Of That Divine Teacher (Divini Illius Magistri ), offers a helpful summary. It identifies three necessary societies: family, state, and Church. Each has distinct rights and responsibilities.

The family, by natural and divine law, has the primary responsibility and most intimate care of the child, including education and health – although the family cannot violate the natural or divine law.

The state has the right and duty to assist the family in accessing services it cannot reasonably provide for itself, such as comprehensive education and basic public health and security.

The Church has the divine right and duty to ensure the spiritual and moral well-being of all humanity and provide definitive guidance on moral and religious matters.

In applying the rights and duties of each society in this case, we stay faithful to the old notion that to have a right to do something does not necessarily make it the right thing to do:

First, parents have the right and responsibility to oversee immunizations for their children. The state should provide basic access and medical guidance, and the Church should provide moral guidance to inform parents, but coercion usurps the parents' role.

Second, the state has the right and responsibility to provide funding for its citizens to attend the schools of their choice and to ensure public health. It must act morally in exercising these powers. The state may collect taxes to do this, and it may set up the definitions and rules necessary to promote these functions.

In the Florida case, the state can determine that citizens must be allowed vaccine exemptions, and it can define and interpret them. Some legal experts assert that the law often defines religious or conscience exemption in broad terms. It does not need to be limited to a particular doctrinal clause or formal point, but it can include general religious motivation related to a topic. A citizen should not need a ruling from a religious authority to object to vaccines on a religious basis.

The State of Florida has decided that exemptions should be granted to those citizens who want absolutely nothing to do with abortion-affiliated vaccines, no matter how distant, in their children's bodies. This is within the state's rights and duties.

And third, the Church has a right to speak definitively on matters of morality. She also has the right to refuse admittance to Catholic schools to those who do not share its religious or moral precepts.

In this case, the Church has made two relevant and binding moral claims. First, there is no moral prohibition against using the required vaccines, as the abortion link is so distant. Second, "Vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and therefore must be voluntary" (Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in a 2020 statement). The Church, therefore, teaches that vaccines are neither required nor forbidden.

Florida's vaccination exemption does not appear to con...

By Stephen P. White

Next week, my wife and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary. We were just out of high school when we first met – barely a year older than our oldest daughter is now. It's enough to give even a somewhat cynical middle-aged man a case of feelings.

Mostly, though, I am grateful for all the unmerited blessings that have shaped our lives over the past two decades. As is always the case with gratitude, it moves one to share. So, it is in a spirit of gratitude that I presume to inflict on you, dear reader, a few unsolicited bits of advice about marriage from someone who has been at it for some time now.

Obviously, these nuggets are meant primarily for the young, but if there is any wisdom in them, I hope the not-so-young will benefit as well.

First: Marriage is not the mountain top; marriage is base camp. Perhaps it is because young people are getting married later in life, perhaps it is because Catholic dating (I'm told) is so fraught these days, but it seems more and more young people see marriage as a crowning achievement rather than a humble, albeit joyous, beginning.

And it's not hard to see why: Years of discernment, education, formation, and career planning lead up to this biggest decision young people make. It is often the first decision young people consciously approach as irrevocable. They feel the tremendous weight of the decision and are painfully aware of the costs (which they see all around them) of getting the decision wrong. But the whole point of getting married is not to arrive in the married state, but to begin something new.

Which brings me to my second bit of unsolicited advice. Marriage – the grace of the sacrament – is for the spouses; the wedding is for everyone else. Everyone wants their wedding day to be special and memorable. And given what marriage means, that's not a bad thing to desire. But there is also a temptation to make a wedding reception into some sort of ultimate and definitive expression of oneself.

When a man and a woman are bound together in marriage, the whole community rejoices. A new thing has come to be: not just a new bond between two individuals, not just a lasting bond between existing families and communities, but some thing entirely new. A new society has been formed, and the whole community recognizes and celebrates this. A wedding is a cause of joy for the couple, obviously, but for all of us, too. The party is, quite literally, a celebration of the common good. Don't spoil that by trying to make it all about you.

Speaking of not making it all about you, here's my third bit of advice. Cling to Christ; cling to the Sacraments. That's good advice for everyone, but it is especially important for marriage. One of the most important "skills" in married life is learning to apologize and ask forgiveness. The Sacrament of Confession is particularly important. It forces one to be honest with oneself and with God. It forces us to own up to our failings, to be held accountable, to promise to do better, and then to strive to do just that. The devil loves a festering wound. Regular Confession not only heals sin before it has a chance to fester. It trains us to address our own failings honestly and early. This is an indispensable boon in married life.

The fourth bit of advice: The average age of first marriage in the United States is approximately 30 years. It varies a little bit for men and women – men tend to get married a bit later – but 30 is a fair approximation. The average life expectancy for Americans is about 80 years. Again, this number varies a bit for men and women – men tend to die a bit younger than women – but 80 is about the overall average.

Which means that if one gets married at 30, and lives to be 80, and everything goes as planned, one can reasonably expect to spend more than half of one's marriage married to a spouse who is more than 50 years old. Choose your spouse accordingly.

Marriage will demand of you and your spouse more than you can reasonably...

By Kristen Ziccarelli

Today, August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration, commemorates one of the most mysterious moments in Christ's public ministry. Ascending Mount Tabor with Peter, James, and John, Jesus is transfigured before them. His face shines "like the sun," and His garments become dazzling white, Moses and Elijah appear beside Him, and the Father's voice declares, "This is my beloved Son. . . .listen to Him."

Peter immediately responds, "Lord, it is good that we are here."

The Transfiguration is recounted in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. It happens in the final year of Jesus's life, before his Crucifixion. So this should lead us to wonder: Why did Christ ascend Mount Tabor with Peter, James, and John before His Passion? Why reveal His glory at that particular moment?

Archbishop Fulton Sheen offers one illuminating answer in his short book, The Life of Christ: "Peter the 'rock,' James, the one destined to be the first Apostle Martyr, and John, the visionary of the future glory of the Apocalypse. Undoubtedly, He chose these three because they most needed strength for the hour of trial."

The crux of Sheen's observation is that Christ did not reveal His glory after the Cross as a reward for their fidelity, but before the Cross to strengthen and support them in preparation for it.

Though Peter would deny Him, he would later repent. James would become the first Apostle to lay down his life for the Gospel. John would stand beneath the Cross, only later receiving the heavenly vision recorded in the Apocalypse. Christ knew precisely what awaited each of them, but before asking them to witness the greatest ugliness in history, He first allowed them to behold its greatest beauty.

It is interesting to reflect on the Transfiguration specifically in light of beauty's purpose in the spiritual life. Or to even surmise – as many might not consider – that beauty has such a purpose.

The world has a way of trying to justify things according to their utility. From that perspective, beauty may seem unnecessary, or even indulgent, compared to more practical concerns. Even in modern Christian circles, beauty may be relegated to something secondary, its relationship to truth and goodness severed.

But the scene of the Transfiguration, where Christ's "face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light," is probably one of the most striking scenes of beauty in the Scriptures.

Beauty presenting the means by which Christ Himself prepared His disciples for suffering? He could have strengthened them another way; he could have simply commanded them to persevere. He could have told them a parable or sent a message through an angel.

Instead, He gave them an encounter with His glory.

Beauty strengthens, but how? For one, it reminds us that the visible world is capable of revealing something beyond the banal, which can offer both hope and solace.

At the time we encounter it, we may feel both fulfilled and unsatisfied, enlightened but desiring more. We recognize the existence of something we have always longed for yet cannot fully possess.

But more importantly, this experience moves us to perfect contrition, which is born not principally from fear of punishment, but from love itself. Beauty awakens that love, and having glimpsed something of God's glory, however fleetingly, we recognize how little we wish to be separated from it.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Peter's response is recorded as, "Lord, it is well that we are here." He continues with Peter making a proposal: If you wish, I will make "three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah."

It is easy for us to relate to his stunned reaction: our encounters with authentic beauty awaken the desire to remain. We listen to symphonies not wanting them to end; we sadden at the thought of the vivid sunset sinking finally below the clouds.

But Christ will lead the Apostles back down, to where crowds are waiting, and where there is suffering still to be endured. Th...

By Casey Chalk

Earlier this month, Orlando-based evangelist and social media influencer Whitney Lynn posted a video of herself offering a brief preaching session as passengers prepared to debark an airplane in San Diego. Below the clip – in which most people seemed either oblivious or trying to ignore her – Lynn wrote: "I just love a captive audience." On 30 July, Lynn was even bounced from a San Diego-bound jet for her sermonizing (something she labeled "spiritual warfare").

Lynn is not an outlier. As a recent Washington Post article reports, airplane preaching is a real phenomenon, and one that seems increasingly common in our world of self-described "influencers" and trending social media. As a former evangelical, I think there's something uniquely Protestant about the temptation to turn a plane into an impromptu pulpit, a temptation that reminds us of an important difference when compared to Catholic evangelism.

Certainly, Christians are called to share their faith (1 Peter 3:15), and Jesus has strong words about those who prove themselves ashamed of him. (Luke 9:26) Few Christians possess the preaching talents of Venerable Fulton Sheen or Fr. Mike Schmitz, but we are all supposed to exhibit the courage to talk about Jesus, even if we sound stupid or provoke ridicule. Sometimes the least effective rhetorician can still be an effective evangelist. (1 Corinthians 1: 17; 2:1–5)

That said, there are plenty of reasons to be prudential about when and where we talk about our faith. If you're a businessperson trying to make a sale, it would typically be unwise to urge your prospective client to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. If you're coaching a youth sports team, parents probably don't want you explaining the rosary. Our First Amendment rights give us wide latitude to discuss our faith in just about every forum imaginable. But that doesn't mean we always should.

On a commercial passenger flight, you ain't going anywhere. You're in an unusually vulnerable position, different from, say, walking down the street or even entering a place of business. As Ms. Lynn told the Washington Post: "They have no choice but to hear the truth."

Given an experience that is already uncomfortable, I think I prefer my flights "preaching free." I paid to get somewhere relatively fast, not for a religious "TED talk." Moreover, consider the precedent this sets. As the WaPo acknowledges, airline policies "generally require passengers to obey the instructions of flight crews and avoid offensive, annoying or disruptive behavior," but "do not specifically address preaching on flights."

If the evangelist is free to get up and offer a sermon, that by extension would mean passengers are potentially subject to any impromptu lecture, whether from evangelicals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, democratic socialists, or transgender furries.

Will there be a designated emcee to offer oversight and supervision during these boarding and deboarding lecture series?

As you might expect, unreligious (if not anti-religious) people who don't like being preached to have made a big stink about impromptu airplane evangelism. "That would be my nightmare," one person commented in response to these airline sermons; "Can't even walk away." Another person wrote: "I would open that emergency exit."

That response is absurd, but I can understand their annoyance. It's one thing when people authentically try to share their faith in a setting where people have the freedom to walk away (as, I'd argue, Catholics should regularly seek to do). It's another thing when it's about manipulatively "influencing" someone in a setting where he has no choice but to listen to your pontificating.

Which, in the case of Ms. Lynn, includes antagonizing federal officers at the airport simply trying to do their job and investigate allegations of public disturbance. (To their credit, they handled her with admirable professionalism).

This illuminates a salient difference between Protestantism and the Ca...

By Randall Smith

There was a bit of a kerfuffle a few years back over the phrase in the Our Father: "Lead us not into temptation." It was suggested that the phrase be changed to "do not let us fall into temptation," reasoning that the original wording incorrectly implies God pushes people into sin, whereas it is Satan's domain to tempt. It is certainly true that God does not lead people into sin, but I think the complaint misses a grammatical point. It is fine to pray: "Do not let us fall into temptation," but I don't merely want God to "not let me fall": I want Him to lead me away.

Consider this image. You see a beautiful, sensuous woman across the room, provocatively dressed. You could walk towards her and be more deeply tempted by her. Or you could turn and walk away. I think it is time to pray, Lord, lead me not into – lead me out of, lead me away from – temptation. It would be foolish to pray: "Lord, lead me into some serious temptation, so that I can see whether I am able to resist it." Better to just walk away.

I knew a man who participated in group "anger management" sessions. While he listened to the stories of how several people had lost their tempers, he kept saying to himself as each story proceeded through the sequence of events leading up to an explosion: "Just walk away; just walk away." But they hadn't.

The problem is, in some instances, that can be hard. It's not something you would do "naturally" on your own. So a little outside help might be necessary.

There is a humorous scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the ostensibly pure and noble Sir Galahad finds himself in a castle full of women who are tempting him sexually. At that moment, Sir Lancelot and a group of other knights break in to "save him."

LANCELOT: We were in the nick of time; you were in great peril.

GALAHAD: I don't think I was.

LANCELOT: Yes, you were; you were in terrible peril.

GALAHAD: Look, let me go back in there and face the peril.

LANCELOT: No, it's too perilous.

GALAHAD: Look, I'm a knight; I'm supposed to get as much peril as I can.

LANCELOT: No, we've got to find the Holy Grail. Come on!

GALAHAD: Well, let me have just a little bit of peril?

LANCELOT: No, it's unhealthy.

This is often the way it is with temptation. Even the great St. Augustine says in his youth he prayed: "Lord, give me chastity and continence – but not yet." The Lord's prayer contains the admission that there are certain things I am tempted by, to which one adds the request: "Lord, lead me away from them!" Sometimes, we need some stern, serious help to get moving in the opposite direction from the one we are disposed to follow.

But there is something more. "Lead us not into temptation" comes directly after the prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." One common temptation is to allow others who have offended us to "live rent free in our minds." We say we forgive, but the offense can live on in our hearts and minds.

Sometimes it "lives on" in the form of resentment toward the person who wronged us. But sometimes, if we have in fact forgiven that person, it can still "live on" in the form of fear that such offenses may happen again and again or in the form of fantasies about how one would react and boldly fight off such offenses in the future.

This too is a grave temptation – a temptation not to let the past be past and allow it instead to live on in you. So we pray: Lord, let me forgive the trespasses of others the way you have forgiven mine. And don't let the residual effects of those trespasses live on in me. Something bad happened; there's no denying it. But O Lord, don't let it lead me into temptation to do evil myself to others or to become cold, arrogant, or embittered.

Temptation is just something that comes along with life. We all have desires. What kind of miserable, lifeless life would it be if we had no desire? The problem is we can desire the wrong things or desire good things in the wrong way.

I see a...

By Robert Royal

This is the first summer in quite a while that circumstances have prevented me from taking a walking pilgrimage, usually something like the Camino de Compostela (here) or the Via Francigena (which nearly killed me a few years ago between the heat and distance (here). My favorite, however, is still St. Cuthbert's Way, which runs from Melrose in Scotland over the mountains on the border with England and down to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne (here).

I'm deeply convinced that a walking pilgrimage – in its combination of the spiritual and the physical on God's green earth– is of far greater human and religious value than anything we've yet seen in the interminably bureaucratic synodal "walking together"(here).

But it must be a real pilgrimage, and there are disturbing signs that many people are now turning even some of the most hallowed pilgrim routes, followed by great saints and penitent sinners over centuries, into just one more self-involved path to "personal fulfillment." There are even pilgrimage "influencers." And those who enter classic pathways in search of "wellness." (Mercy, Lord.)

To be clear: a pilgrimage doesn't have to be a perfect ascetic or soulful exercise. Or a perfect anything. Even in the Middle Ages, Chaucer (realistically) included the lusty Wife of Bath and tipsy Miller in The Canterbury Tales, his poetic account of a group of pilgrims – sinners as are we all – on the way to the shrine of the great martyr St. Thomas Becket.

Anyone who makes a walking pilgrimage even today will find that there are days of drudgery and distraction amid others of lightness and purpose. Sometimes even a single day will take you through many combinations and permutations of highs and lows. In all that, the walking is like life more generally – with the difference that you've chosen, if you've chosen wisely, to pursue a particular path to a definite end. Which is not normally something you do every day. And if you're also lucky, it will make other paths clearer and more bearable.

There is a kind of "personal fulfillment" in all this, but it's a fulfillment that results from being less focused on yourself and more focused on the Way. I think that this is one reason why the early Christians were often described as followers of hē hodós "the Way" (Acts 9:2, etc.). That Way would be the Very One who told us He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

It's worth reflecting on that historical fact. Later, of course, maybe within a decade after the Crucifixion, the name changed: "the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." (Acts 11:26) Which seems to suggest that it was, at least initially, as important to walk the walk as to talk the talk.

As the disciples on the way to Emmaus and St. Paul on the way to Damascus found out, some earth-shaking things can happen when you leave the familiar and are "on the way."

The apostles travelled far, mostly on foot – Paul, of course, all over the Eastern Mediterranean; Peter to various places and, with Paul, eventually to Rome; James, maybe (according to later records) to Spain and then back to martyrdom in Jerusalem; Andrew to Russia; Philip to Turkey; Matthew to Ethiopia; Thomas to India, etc.

Where and how they died in several cases are now, like many ancient things, rendered somewhat uncertain in the mists of time. But we can be certain that they all took seriously Jesus' great command to preach the Gospel to all nations. Which is why their graves, too, have themselves become places of pilgrimage.

There's something bracing about getting up in the morning and, instead of following your usual routine or jumping into the car, instead tying on your walking shoes and heading off on you know not what.

I have friends and family who like what's predictable and balk at the idea of taking off on unknown paths. I – sort of – get that. It's good and necessary to have a certain amount of predictability in your days. But it's also an illusion. Even if you're sitting at home today (...

By Fr. Thomas Kuffel

Nike, the shoe company, not the ancient Greek goddess, famously said, "Just Do It." But why is the company called "Nike," and what does the word mean? Nikê is the Greek goddess of victory in war – and life. Battles bring victory, and she brought victory to Zeus, supporting him in his wars. Taking note, Nike became the shoe company that brings victory to athletes.

St. Paul, too, noted this mythology and reordered it to Christ: "In all these things we are more than conquerors (hyper-nikomen) through him who loved us." (Romans 8:37–38) Victory is ours because Christ intercedes, not Nike. Jesus is the one true God. He gives us victory not in mythical battles, but real, spiritual battles with Principalities and Powers, evil spirits, trying to conquer us through temptation and suffering.

Suffering is a profound problem and breaks many people. Suffering people weaken and, in their weakness, forsake the fullness of life. They give in to temptations, trials, and tragedy. In the abyss of suffering, despair arises, and sin suffocates hope. Yet St. Paul, a man who suffered intensely while living and preaching the Gospel, replies: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Romans 8:35)

Moses warned of these seven woes, telling the Israelites that if they broke the covenant with God, these curses would occur, not as a condemnation but as a correction. Corrections cause suffering, but the sufferings are curative, not harmful. Yet many see suffering as vengeful, criticizing God, saying that He causes suffering and cannot, therefore, be all-loving and all-good.

In contrast, the wise see suffering as God's way to stop people from sinning and losing their lives. Sin destroys us. It separates us from Christ, as St. Paul tells us, "I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:21)

What things? "Immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like." (Galatians 5:18–21)

Sin, not suffering, separates us from God. Separated from Him, the spiritual battle is lost (though the larger war is not yet over). Sin impedes the Holy Spirit from working in our lives. God, however, intervenes and sends His Son. In His death (ironically) and resurrection, Jesus is victorious. He defeats the Powers and Principalities, and restores us to life with his grace.

Grace, partaking in God's life, changes sins into victory and sufferings into triumph. Any victory costs. It entails suffering, but the suffering we endure has a purpose. It is not worthless. In fact, St. James tells us, "Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him." (James 1:12)

Yet many people see their sufferings as meaningless. They live in the here and now, not in the eternal hereafter. St. John Paul knew this. In his great work Salvifici doloris, he writes:

Suffering seems to belong to man's transcendence: it is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense "destined" to go beyond himself, and he is called to this in a mysterious way. (¶ 2)

That call asks us to go beyond our present self and discover the great experience of encountering God. Through suffering, Christ's passion, death, and resurrection become alive in us. And through our own cross, we conform our wills to the Father's as did Jesus. In other words, suffering embraced saves.

Instead of seeing suffering as a way to God's victory, many reject God's will, thinking suffering is foolish. Christ dismisses that thinking, telling us to take up our cross daily and follow Him.

Following Jesus, at first, leads us into the desert. Alone, hungry, and lost, Jesus speaks to us. He gives us Himself not just in words and miracles, which ...

By Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg

When I ask my classes, "What is a cat?" inevitably the answer is, "Whatever someone says it is." Not so long ago, every seventh grader knew what a cat was. Now, that certainty has evaporated into subjectivity. But after a few months of instruction in logic, a kind of mass awakening occurs: the class discovers that "truth is not consensus, but the convergence of the mind and reality." That moment is a glimpse of what our Catholic Tradition teaches about language, and of what is at stake when words lose their grounding in reality.

"Cat" is not the eternally correct sound for the purring, sharp-clawed mouse predator curled up in the corner. Nor is it an arbitrary noise, infinitely malleable, determined by our desires and consent. Somewhere between those two errors of excess and defect is an elevated golden mean of what our Catholic Tradition teaches about language. Anyone raising and educating children today is submerged in the wreckage of both errors; grammar, rightly understood, is the remedy.

Before any grammar lesson can be taught, however, three preliminary questions must be answered: What is the origin of language? What is the nature of a word? And what is the purpose of human speech? The answers to these vital questions are not principles belonging to grammar itself. They are borrowed from higher science, the way a carpenter builds a house to a set of principles that belong properly to the architect. Grammar is a construction project subordinated to reality itself.

The most important question about the origin of human language is: Does it come from man, or from God? Scripture is explicit. In Genesis, God spoke the universe into existence. St. John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word," and He is the Second Person of the Trinity. Man's capacity for language proceeds from his creation in the image and likeness of that Word, and every true act of naming is a participation in the Logos through whom all things were made.

God gifts man the power to name things properly. In Genesis 2:19, God brought every animal to Adam "to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was its name." The task of naming was entrusted to man as an act of vicegerency, the exercise of delegated headship, undertaken in true freedom by man made in the divine image. (ST I, q.96, a.1)

Adam named each creature according to what it truly was, not according to what he wished it to be. If we lose sight of this distinction, we drift into wishful thinking about language and its proper use. But if we recover this distinction, we are reminded that language is a covenant, a gift bequeathed to a communion of souls who are bound, generation to generation, to hand it on faithfully.

So, what is a word? A word is not merely a sound or a random collection of phonemes. A word has a material body, made manifest in the syllables we utter, and a soul – the immaterial concept or intelligibility it conveys. St. Thomas calls this the verbum mentis, the inner word the intellect abstracts from a real thing; the audible word is only the outward sign of a form conceived in the mind.

Say "cat," and the sound carries us past itself and the cat to "catness," an essence we recognize whether the animal before us is calico, Siamese, or Persian. Essence is one thing in a cat and another thing in a word about a cat. A word is an artifact of reason, bound to its concept not as a natural being but as a sign is bound to what it signifies. A word is a small act of communion between a mind and the real. Because it is communion and not composition, the bond can be broken, but not without cost – and even abuse.

St. Thomas teaches that the purpose of speech is to convey reality in the charitable service of the other. Reality and truth are convertible. Truth is a virtue bound to justice, what we owe to the other. To speak falsely is to fail justice. To convey reality in service of the other requires charity, exercised prud...