Let’s face it. Catholicism is weird. This is true for ignorant outsiders and for dissenting insiders. Like the Hebrews of old, Catholics are a peculiar people, a people set apart (Deuteronomy 14:2; Psalm 4:3; 1 Peter 2:9). The ethno-hyphenated Catholics (“My sainted grandma was born in Galway and my son is at Notre Dame – so [...]
In my recent YouTube rant about Pope Francis's comments about Medjugorje and the Ruini Commission, I mentioned Donal Foley's fine book on the whole phenomenon, Medjugorje Revisited. If you're interested in this story at all, especially if you think the Blessed Mother is appearing there, grab a copy. (Full disclosure: Mr. Foley asked me to write the [...]
BY PCM | ORIGINAL SOURCE: National Catholic Register The next time you run into failure or setback, turn to Father Solanus, the patron saint of apparent failure and setbacks. He knows all about it. If you heard about a seminarian who struggled all the way through seminary, failed one language class after another, and then was [...]
This past week has been the picture of eclectic news items. Paris, France: Marine LePen (never described in the media without the prefix “far right” or “firebrand”) lost the French presidency to Emmanuel Macron, a “centrist.” I confess to knowing too little about the minutiae of the candidates’ positions but I do remember reading what M. [...]
BY PCM | ORIGINAL SOURCE: National Catholic Register The Resurrection is not a metaphor for the need to “rise above” life's difficulties or a well-meaning myth about fulfillment. Rather, Christ's resurrected body is a solid thing. As mysteries of the Faith go, even apart from the Easter Bunnification of Easter, the Resurrection is one of the hardest [...]
The good people at Covenant Eyes have produced a thought-proving four-part ebook titled Transformed By Beauty, which points toward the antidote for compulsive (or causal) porn use. Edited by Sam Guzman and Amanda Zurface and strung across four interviews, I guarantee you haven't come across a treatment like this. We dive deep with (in order) Father Thomas [...]
I just got back from a 12-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land with 30 on-fire Christians including our spiritual director Monsignor Charles Pope of Washington DC. And what a trip it was. Bathed in the clement Israeli sun, we saw Magdala, Capernaum, Caesarea Maritima, Cana, Nazareth, Bethany, Calvary, Qumran, Jericho, Bethlehem – stunning and quite impossible [...]
The news a moment ago that Father Michael Scanlan, TOR -- my beloved former boss and the president emeritus of Franciscan University of Steubenville has died -- brought with it a flood of Holy Spirit-tinged memories. I landed at Franciscan University of Steubenville, in the fall of 1994 as, in the University nomenclature, a "grad non-trad" [...]
For those who care deeply about celebrities, no matter how "has been," the bloom was taken off Christmas this year with the one-two loss of singer George Michael on Christmas Day and actress Carrie Fisher just hours ago as I write this. Here is one of Carrie Fisher's final TV interviews, only taped weeks ago. [...]
You have no doubt seen the greatest film ever made, It's a Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart and Donna Reed and directed by Frank Capra. Stripped down to its essentials, it's a story about the intercessory prayers of a woman named Mary... Imagine my astonishment when I got an email from a daughter (I'll preserve her [...]