The Catholic Thing

The Catholic Thing
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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

  1. 18 HR AGO

    Guardian Angels: Not Just Kid-Stuff

    By Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, Like many people years ago, as a child, my brother and I, together with our dad, always prayed in our "night prayers" the traditional prayer to our guardian angels: "Angel of God, my guardian dear to whom God's love entrusts me here, ever this day (or night) be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen." I still ask my guardian angel at night when I go to bed and, in the morning, when I get up, to watch over and protect me. Moreover, before writing, I always ask my guardian angel to give me clarity of thought and expression and to whisper the right words into my ears. Sometimes when I am struggling to find the right word, he places exactly the right word in my mind. Prayers to one's guardian angel are Biblically based: • God instructs Moses, as the Israelites set off for the Promised Land: "Behold I send you an angel before you, to guard you on the way and bring you to the place which I have prepared. Give heed to him and hearken to his voice." (Exodus 23:20-21). • Psalm 91:11 affirms that one need not fear, "for he (God) will give his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways." • Jesus himself states that we should not despise the little ones, "for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 18:10) • In the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter escapes from prison and knocks on the door where the faithful were gathered, his brethren wrongly think: "It is his angel!" (Acts 12:13-15) Although most of us will never see our guardian angels, many saints have. Padre Pio frequently conversed with his guardian angel, who would defend him against demonic attacks. Gemma Galgani was in daily contact with her guardian angel, who taught, protected, and corrected her. Sr. Faustina Kowalska spoke of her guardian angel accompanying her on her journeys. She also saw him when she was immersed in prayer, often asking her to pray for the dying. The point of the above examples is not to say that one has to be a "saint" to speak with or behold one's guardian angel. Rather, it is to illustrate that we, too, can converse with and be assured of our guardian angel's protecting and guiding presence. Moreover, we should dispel the romantic and "cute" notion that guardian angels are only relevant for vulnerable children. Adults are in as much need of their guardian angels – maybe even more so, for their temptations and affairs are often of a more serious nature. Our guardian angels are therefore present to strengthen, to encourage, and to guide us in living out our respective vocations, whether single, married, religious, or priestly. To dismiss them as only suited for what is childish is to place ourselves in harm's way. The question has been asked: After death, do our guardian angels cease to be with us once we enter into Heaven? Obviously, we no longer need to be guarded. Do they, then, get recycled to someone newly conceived? According to Catholic tradition, our guardian angels even remain with us in Heaven and together we give praise and glory to the most holy Trinity – to our heavenly Father who is the ultimate source of life, to the risen Jesus, the Father's incarnate Son, who is our loving Savior and Lord, and to the Holy Spirit who cleanses us of sin and makes us holy. With all of our brothers and sisters in Christ, along with our respective guardian angels, we will sing forever a glorious hymn of praise and thanksgiving. Here, we perceive the confluence of the earthly and the heavenly liturgy. At the conclusion of the Preface at Mass the following, or something similar, is said: "And so, with the Angels and all of the Saints we declare your (the Father's) glory, as with one voice we acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory." With one voice, our earthly human voices, the heavenly voices of the saints, and the host of angelic voices, we all together declare that both Heaven and earth are filled...

    6 min

  2. 1 DAY AGO

    Redeeming Nietzsche's 'Last Man'

    By Auguste Meyrat Friedrich Nietzsche is notorious for his theory of the Übermensch, the superior man who rises above the constraints of morality and mediocrity. But his theory of the "last man" has proven to be far more prophetic – and relevant. A kind of counterexample to the Übermensch, the last man is lazy, weak, incurious, and lives for pleasure. He is the product of an overly civilized, Christianized, and complacent culture. While literary examples of the Übermensch abound, there are relatively few depictions of the "last man" in all his non-glory. Perhaps such a character hits a little too close to home and might make more than a few readers uncomfortable, or perhaps most writers like to imagine themselves as an Übermensch creating and commanding imaginative realms, not last men confessing their weaknesses. Or most likely, last men are by definition so passive that they pose a serious challenge for any writer trying to put together a compelling narrative about them. But just because something is challenging does not mean that it isn't worth trying. In his debut novel The Rhinelanders, Catholic essayist Alan Schmidt takes on the problem of the last man by telling his story and envisioning his destiny. In doing so, he portrays the mundane, quiet despair in which so many people today live, including people of faith. His novel reminds readers not to forget these lost souls since they, too, are children of God, people with a notable past and a potentially notable future. The story takes place in Westphalia, Michigan, a small rural town founded by German Catholic settlers. The hero of the story is Stephen Koenig, a middle-aged, unmarried, and unremarkable man who lives with his mentally handicapped sister, Sarah, and ne'er-do-well brother, Thomas. Unlike most of the Koenig clan, Stephen never left his hometown, lacking the ambition that would inspire such a change. He lives comfortably, working a nondescript office job at a financial consulting firm, attending Mass, praying his rosary every day, and maintaining good relationships with his siblings and neighbors. Certain forces intervene, however, to disrupt Stephen's placeholder existence. At night, he is periodically visited by ghosts of his ancestors along with two menacing wolves who deny him peace of mind. During the day, he is offered a job opportunity that would finally take him out of Westphalia, and is confronted with a romantic relationship with a woman who essentially initiates every meetup. Meanwhile, he uses his sister's disability and his brother's failure-to-launch as excuses for putting off any meaningful action. \ Schmidt introduces each chapter with a passage recalling a moment in the history of Stephen's ancestry. From a tribe of pagan Goths to the generation of German Americans immediately preceding Stephen and his family, the juxtaposition illustrates the gradual loss of will and inner strength that once propelled the Koenigs. Well before he is explicitly identified as "the Last Man," it is apparent that this is who Stephen is meant to represent. Even so, Schmidt refrains from offering a mere Nietzschean allegory set in modern rural America. Certain redeeming factors complicate Stephen's character. Yes, he is indecisive, noncommittal, and insecure, but he is also charitable, pious, and wholesome. This happens to make him much more sympathetic than his brother Thomas, who is the inverse, a man of great energy and will, but also abrasive and rebellious. The modern world shows its preference for men like Stephen by granting them a frictionless existence full of easy opportunities, while it actively punishes men like Thomas who must fight for everything they have. Moreover, even as Stephen and Thomas make their way in the world, Schmidt makes it clear that their choices do not happen in a vacuum. They are the product of their local surroundings, their German lineage, their church, their upbringing, and the life-altering tragedies that occur without warning...

    6 min

  3. 2 DAYS AGO

    Athletes Acknowledging God

    By Michael Pakaluk. The New York Times reported the words, but the Wall Street Journal didn't. When Bam Adebayo, two days ago, was asked to describe the moment when he scored 83 points in an NBA game, second only to Wilt Chamberlain's 100 points, he said, "Man, I wish I could relive it twice. I credit God, my family, my teammates, this crowd." A wag commented that, right after God, he should have credited the Washington Wizards, the team ostensibly defending him. But credit, too, to Bam. The first question most sportscasters ask is "How did you feel?" On the classical view of the passions, this is like asking someone to describe the agitation of his guts, either his viscera or heart. "Describe to me what your guts felt like when you did this." Who cares? But Bam sensibly externalized the question and turned first to God. Others credited Bam's hard work, recounting the long hours he put in as a boy, practicing. Others played up the fact that he had just surpassed Kobe Bryant's record of 81. But Bam sprinted right past the four species of pride identified by Pope St. Gregory. He attributed his excellence to God, not himself. He did not claim that he had merited it. He did not overstate it. And he did not draw comparisons with others. Like all of us, he'll need to battle pride later. But just then, when the spotlight was on him and the cameras were rolling, he spoke with humility. You've noticed that athletes often give credit to God first. Fernando Mendoza, the 2025 Heisman Trophy winner and quarterback who led Indiana to the college football championship, when he was in the spotlight said, "This moment is bigger than me. [sic] First, I want to thank God." Kudos to Mendoza, who is said to be a devout Catholic. By mentioning God first, outside his intention he actually amplified himself. If he had said out loud what many think privately at such a moment, "First, I want to exult in how great I am," he would have drawn himself down in the eyes of others, deservedly so. "I'm a faith-filled guy. I believe in a Creator. I believe in Jesus. Ultimately, I think that's what defines me the most." This was Scottie Scheffler after winning the 2024 Masters, another athlete side-stepping the four species of pride. The interviewer then pressed him on his feelings. Scottie refused to introspect his guts and instead changed the subject, returning to the objective message he wished to convey: "It's hard to describe the feeling. I think that what defines me the most is my faith. I believe in one Creator, that I've been called to come out here, do my best, compete, and glorify God." I've taught many athletes and can report that the conflict that some find between athletics and academics is a false conflict. Pursuing a sport seriously can make an athlete a better student. In the same way, pursuing some sport seriously should make us better Christians. How do other achievers compare with the athletes? Over the last three years of Oscar winners, encompassing nearly 70 speeches, only two recipients referred to God, but how they did so fell short of the athletes. Last year, Adrien Brody, when he took the stage to receive the Best Actor award (for The Brutalist) said, "Thank you, God. Thank you for this blessed life." But even then, he did not quite give credit to God for his achievement. And two years ago, Da'Vine Joy Randolph (Best Supporting Actress, The Holdovers) began with "God is so good. God is so good." And she closed with "I pray to God that I get to do this more than once" – which sounds like greediness rather than gratitude. Already in 2015, a writer for the Huffington Post wrote an essay on how Oscar winners were no longer thanking God. Reviewing almost 1400 acceptance speeches, Carol Kuruvilla found that Stephen Spielberg was thanked the most, with 42 mentions. Harvey Weinstein came in second. (Res ipsa loquitur.) While God received only 19 mentions, and many of these were goofy or off-key: I'd like to thank the Academy first of all. ....

    7 min

  4. 3 DAYS AGO

    What Fertility Really Means

    By Francis X. Maier I'll get right to the point. Leigh Snead's new book Infertile but Fruitful is one of the finest personal testimonies I've read in the past decade. It's a "simple" story in the best sense: concise, intimate, utterly frank, and memorable. It spoke, directly and beautifully, to my own family, as it will to many others. I'll come back to it in a moment. But first, some useful background. In a general sense, a culture's fertility rate hints at its character. It also suggests its health. Bearing and raising children is serious business. It demands sacrifices. But for anyone with a generous spirit, it also creates love and hope, and trust in a meaningful future, because the instinct to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28, 9:1) is hardwired into the human species. Rejecting that has consequences. And here's an example. The minimum replacement rate for a population is 2.1 children per woman per lifetime. The total fertility rate across Western Europe was around 2.66 in the early 1960s. It had fallen to 1.46 in the late 1990s. It continued dropping to a historic low of 1.34 by 2024. That's a fertility decline of 50 percent in barely two generations. Muslim Europeans tend to have somewhat higher fertility on average, but the broader story is nonetheless a massive, sustained collapse in childbearing across the continent. As for the United States: In the early 1960s, its fertility rate was around 3.5, sharply higher than Europe's at the time, because the American postwar Baby Boom was larger and lasted longer. But the subsequent drop off was steeper. The U.S. total fertility rate shrank to 1.59 by 2024. Thus, the net fertility decline over the past six or so decades is actually larger for the United States than Europe in absolute terms. Why the collapse? The factors are fairly obvious: easy access to contraception and abortion; more women in higher education and the workforce; the rising costs of living; a consumption-driven economy; and the decline of religious belief. Christianity strongly encouraged permanent marriages and large families. As Europe secularized, that moral pressure disappeared. Today, most children grow up seeing small families as normal. Their own fertility adjusts downward accordingly. What makes this reality so hard to reverse is that a modernity rooted in the sovereign self and its material appetites has taught so many of us to value these features. The end result is a culture's loss of meaning, an aging population with escalating health care costs, supported by a shrinking workforce. The necessary economic response to demographic decline is immigration, filling the labor gap with working-age people from higher-fertility regions. But the kind of mass immigration needed to compensate for low fertility typically sparks a bitter political backlash. This creates constant friction between economic need and grassroots popular anxiety that has impacted the life of nearly every Western nation. So much for all the social data. How does any of it relate to Infertile but Fruitful? One of the (wonderfully) ironic responses to all of the above is the number of women today, many of them religious believers, who deliberately choose to have large families. Again, fertility – the yearning to be part of bringing new life into the world – is inherent to being human. That can mean children, or a celibate life of service to others. But everyone, without exception, has the need to be fruitful, and ignoring that need deforms the heart. Our own daughter is the mother of seven. For my wife Suann, some of the hardest years in our marriage were those early eight or ten when she was unable to conceive or had multiple miscarriages; this, while friends all around her birthed child after child. Husbands can provide love and support. But they can never fully understand the suffering and sense of loss felt at a cellular level by the woman longing to bear a child, but can't. Especially when the inability to conceive prove...

    7 min

  5. 4 DAYS AGO

    The Body of This Death Comes for the Archbishop

    By Casey Chalk I wouldn't describe myself as a "fan" of science fiction. I shrug my shoulders at Star Wars and Star Trek, and became so frustrated with Frank Herbert's Dune that I barely finished it. Nevertheless, I confess a certain guilty fascination with futuristic dystopian works. The imagery of the Australian bush and the attendant storyline of the revised Road Warrior series haunted my imagination for weeks. Much the same happened with the Blade Runner revamp. Brave New World, 1984, A Clockwork Orange. I gobble up such books up and wonder: How could human society become like that? Surely escapism explains much of this, but there is also a human desire to imagine, even anticipate, what the future holds for us and our descendants. It's a means of grappling with the most acute moral and political questions of our time, but with a certain personal and emotional distance. It's not us or our children suffering at the hands of post-apocalyptic Australian motorcycle gangs or humanoid robots with automatic weapons. This much, and far more, can be said of Ross McCullough's The Body of This Death: Letters from the Last Archbishop of Lancaster, an enchanting book that straddles a variety of genres: epistolary novel, pastoral handbook, and theological science fiction. A sort of sci-fi Screwtape Letters, the reader cannot help but be drawn into McCullough's dystopian (if frighteningly imaginable) world, in which the vestiges of liberalism accommodate an ascendant global Islam, while humanity escapes deeper into an all-consuming artificial intelligence called "IR." Yet like C.S. Lewis's classic, it's also a text bursting with spiritual and theological insight. The letters of the late archbishop certainly paint a sobering picture of a future in which the Church's influence has waned. Citizens' behaviors are carefully documented beginning in school to exert maximum control over the populace. Technological firms promote transhumanism and "transfiguration procedures" to "transfer consciousness from brain to brain." The underlying irony is that in "metamodernity," the modern Baconian quest to control the natural order is realized by fleeing nature. Priests have accommodated themselves to the new reality, leveraging IR in order to visit with more of the faithful, even if the bishop admits "there is little friendship with someone who is in IR, whether they are in the withdrawn catatonia of passive consumption or the excited catatonia of erratic and unexplained motion." It's an admirable description of the dehumanizing tendencies of social media. Or how about this: Think only of how much more control the government has over us on these platforms. Think only of those who control the platforms themselves. This is the problem when reality itself goes up for sale, when we place ourselves in a marketplace of realities. For we are not the hunters in the marketplace but the hunted. The archbishop's reflections on sexuality are equally incisive. One letter argues that AI-generated porn – presented as a means of protecting the human participants from degrading behaviors – only further encourages dehumanizing tendencies, because users of such material are free to do whatever they want within the "safe" world of IR. It's not real, though the effects on the human brain and character certainly are. Elsewhere, the archbishop describes a "second Pill" that was developed to allow sexual partners to not feel any attachment to one another. In a twisted way, that makes sense. Obviously, a baby complicates sex, but so does the unitive quality of the sexual act, which binds people together in complicated ways, even if both tried to keep things "casual." McCullough hints at a panoply of terrifying future possibilities. He describes a procedure ironically titled "transfiguration" that involves removing the patient's eyes and entering the orbital cavities, which subjects "generally come to approve of." The result is "lobotomized rebels" similar to what (lapsed Ca...

    7 min

  6. 5 DAYS AGO

    Politics Does Not Equal Government

    By Daniel B. Gallagher. The 250th birthday of the United States is a good time to remember that 1776 was the year of a new nation, not a new government. It would take another eleven years for the Founders to formulate what the government would look like, and two more to elect the first president. This sequence of events reminds us that it is not a government that makes a nation, but a nation that makes a government. Even peoples who lack a sovereign territory, such as the Kurds or Basques, conceptualize themselves in some way as a nation before devising some sort of governing apparatus. You need something to govern before you can figure out how to govern it. The Vichy regime in France is an example of what can happen if one attempts to establish a government with no true nation behind it. Having been around long enough to celebrate both, I can't help but feel concern about the disquietude surrounding this year's Semiquincentennial celebration in comparison with the Bicentennial fifty years ago. Last summer, a White House task force appointed to plan and to implement the celebrations was already butting heads with a congressional commission established for the same purpose. John Dichtl, president of the American Association for State and Local History, has a point when, referring to plans to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) at the White House, asks, "What does a (UFC) fight have to do with America's greatness?" Writing in The Hill, Myra Adams confesses that she feels "less pride" in this Semiquincentennial year, lamenting that "dangerous trends threaten what our Founding Fathers envisioned." Back in 1976, virtually no one hesitated to wave a flag, march in a parade, and join in singing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." And all this not even two years after an American President voluntarily stepped aside for the first time. Fifty years later, students no longer recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the elementary school I attended. That said – and especially in light of recent chaos in Minneapolis – I do understand how people could lack enthusiasm for the event if they forget we are celebrating the founding of a nation and not a government. The former is much more worthy of celebration if we take it as the primary locus of the shared values and ideals inspiring a diverse people to form a Union. Chief among those is obviously freedom, including the freedom to vote Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, or even Communist or Socialist, if you like. If you want to know what a one-party celebration looks like, look no further than the Tian'anmen and Kim II Sung Squares. The need to revisit the distinction between a nation and a government became clearer to me when, while interviewing political theorist Patrick Deneen, Bishop Robert Barron asserted that, according to the classical view, the purpose of "government" is to cultivate virtue in its citizens. He claimed to have learned this from philosopher Robert Sokolowski at the Catholic University of America. Msgr. Sokolowski was my professor too, and I don't remember him saying this. I do remember him saying that, according to the classical view, the purpose of the polis was to make citizens virtuous and good. That's not to say government has no role, but the polis is a richer and more expansive concept than "government," even though the extent to which the ancient Greek polis resembles the modern state is debatable. In any case, a polis, according to Aristotle, is a natural community where individuals come together to pursue the good life. The politeia is the way a polis is organized, including – but not limited to – its system of government. Politeia also encompasses the values and practices that make a polis possible. Though much more can be said about the distinction, it is enough to draw attention to the myopic view of "politics" we have today. If we limit politics to what happens inside the D.C. beltway, we easily fall into the trap of thinking that it is primaril...

    6 min

  7. 6 DAYS AGO

    Of Forty Days and the Gospel Plough

    By Dominic V. Cassella In the season of Lent, the Church enters the wilderness to fast and abstain. It is a time of testing. The number forty often indicates this throughout the Scriptures. "Forty days" signals a time when God tests the hearts of His people, so that what lies hidden within might be revealed. In Genesis, the deluge that washed the world of living creatures – except for Noah and those on the ark – lasted for forty days. Moses fled Egypt for his life after murdering a man and spent forty years in Midian as a shepherd before God appeared to him in the burning bush. After forty days, the ten spies that Moses sent into the land convinced Israel to distrust God and despair of their ability to take it. For forty years, the Israelites were sent to wander in the wilderness before they could occupy the Promised Land. For forty days and nights, Goliath taunted Saul and his army before David slew him. And Jonah gave the Ninevites forty days to repent before they would be overthrown by God. And in the most famous case of all, of course, Jesus spent forty days in the desert and was tempted by the Devil. These periods of forty days or forty years are not random spans of time. They reveal a pattern in how God deals with His people. As Moses tells Israel: The LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. (Deuteronomy 8:2) God does not test human beings because he needs to learn about the fidelity of his creatures. He already knows the human heart. (1 Samuel 16:7) The test exists so that the man himself may learn what is inside of him. Abraham was tested by God, and came to learn of his complete trust in the Lord. In contrast, Pharaoh was tested by God and he hardened his heart. Now that we are in the midst of these forty days of Lent, we have entered the same Biblical pattern of trial and purgation. Lent should not be just like any other season in life. During this time, we should especially have our eyes turned toward the heavenly Promised Land, and most especially toward the Way that leads to it: Jesus Christ. Yet Lent often passes in vain. Our hearts are not easily moved. They grow dull and indolent when left unattended. In the stagnation of idle thoughts, the heart becomes a wilderness thick with thorns and thistles, tangled with brambles and covered with stones. This inner wilderness is a consequence of sin, both actual and original. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God and attempted to decide for themselves what was good and evil, the curse of that wilderness was the natural consequence. St. John Henry Newman describes this condition: We have stony hearts, hearts as hard as the highways; the history of Christ makes no impression on them. And yet, if we would be saved, we must have tender, sensitive, living hearts; our hearts must be broken, must be broken up like ground, and dug, and watered, and tended, and cultivated, till they become as gardens, gardens of Eden, acceptable to our God, gardens in which the Lord God may walk and dwell; filled, not with briars and thorns, but with all sweet-smelling and useful plants, with heavenly trees and flowers. A careless and frivolous heart gradually becomes a hardened one. But the desert fathers teach that the remedy for such a heart is meditation on the Cross. For instance, St. John Cassian describes this remedy and tells us that we Christians must be "daily and hourly turning up the ground of our heart with the Gospel Plough, i.e., the constant recollection of the Lord's Cross." The hard ground of the heart cannot cultivate itself. The wilderness of the heart must first be cleared of vain thoughts, and then the heart can be broken up with the Gospel Plough, the Cross. As the plough tears into the soil, so the Cross breaks up the hardened heart. Meditation on the Lord's Cross during this season of Lent, and the formation of a habit of frequ...

    6 min

  8. 7 MAR

    Evangelizing Bedlam

    By Anthony Esolen In one of the great ironies of linguistic history, the English word "bedlam," suggesting frenzy, madness, chaos, and noise, comes from what was then the common British pronunciation of the sacred name Bethlehem, in the Hospital of Saint Mary in Bethlehem, a monastery dedicated in 1402 to the housing and treatment of lunatics. Hence we have "Tom o' Bedlam," the name that Edgar assumes in King Lear in his disguise as a madman; first to escape the ministers of law that pursue him, unjustly, as a traitor to England and to his father, the Duke of Gloucester, but second, to remain close to the action, so he can do whatever he can for justice, for his father, and for his country. For the truly mad are those souls devoured with ambition, while the faithful and loyal are called fools. How do you preach the word of God to madmen? How do you preach it in Bedlam? For everyone in Bedlam is going to be afflicted with the twitch. If everyone around you is shouting, you will be led to shout too, if only to be heard at all, but eventually it may come to be a matter of course. If everyone around you howls at the moon, gathering in packs to lift up their hearts and eyes and hollow throats to that satellite, you will likely steal a glance that way too, and maybe join in, at first because you want to meet the madmen where they are, but eventually because you too fall in love with the howling. I ask the question, because Bedlam is where we are, a political, social, educational, and religious Bedlam of distraction in the most literal sense – as of someone condemned to death by horses pulling him apart limb from limb. Let me illustrate. Bishop Robert Barron notes that the Somali welfare scam in Minnesota is a crime against the needy. At a moderate assessment, $1,000 has been filched from every man, woman, and child in the state. He does not launch into a diatribe about it, since he has more important things to do. But for this, I have seen him accused of being as wicked as a Vichy collaborator with the Nazis. Now that, frankly, is not sane. Whatever one may think about what American immigration laws should be (I have yet to hear anybody suggest any specific emendations to the laws in question), it is bizarre to draw any equivalence between American immigration officers and the Gestapo. And as far as an American Kristallnacht is concerned, those bricks smashing the windows of businesses during "mostly peaceful demonstrations" do not have the fingerprints of policemen on them. Nor is it "Nazism" to say that schoolchildren should be taught, first and foremost, to be proud of their country and their culture – whatever of it still remains after the inundations of mass media. It is a part of the virtue of piety, required by the commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." I expect that Italian schoolchildren will be taught the glories of their artistic and literary heritage, and I would be deeply disappointed to learn that it is no longer so. It was not Matteo Ricci who demanded of the Chinese that they should despise their ancestors. That was the Communist, Mao Tse-Tung. This, too, did Bishop Barron call to mind when he criticized, gently enough, a rather loud but dopey congresswoman who seemed to insist that material goods were all that really mattered to people. For at base, the Marxist, along with too many secularists who consider themselves conservative, really does believe that man doth live by bread alone. But we need to pull back from the madness. Bedlam, even for sinful and addle-pated mankind, is not a normal state of affairs. I appeal to this rule. If political division causes you to break charity with a fellow Christian, if you are pleased to learn that such a person has done or said something bad, if you are eager to magnify its badness rather than to interpret it in a less damning light, if you are the Eternal Oculist, so eager to remove specks from other people's eyes that you delight in gouging them out altogether, ...

    6 min
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About

The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.

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  • Creator
    The Catholic Thing
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    60
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    The Catholic Thing

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