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. 36 MIN AGO

    The Perennial Question: "Who Is Man?"

    By John M. Grondelski But first a note from Robert Royal: Probably the deepest challenge of our time, as our columnist demonstrates today, is the defense of the human person, as we've always understood persons in the Christian tradition. AI is the most evident coming challenge (next week we'll bring you commentary on Pope Leo's first encyclical that's on this whole subject). But there are also many deeper questions that have long troubled our times - we can't even say who is a man or a woman. At TCT, we're committed to battling for truth despite the immediate challenges like AI as well as the long-term cultural trends. If you understand what's at stake - and I'm sure you do - please, join us in this work. The harvest could be great but the laborers fewer than we need. Help us make the Catholic case even stronger. Support TCT today. Now for today's column... Modern philosophy flatters itself by claiming it was responsible for the "turn to the subject," i.e., the human (and, usually, a very subjective understanding of the human). But focus on the human is hardly a modern discovery. St. Irenaeus, a second-century bishop-theologian, is noted for his line gloria Dei vivens homo – "the glory of God is man fully alive." Nor did the bishop of Lyons pluck that thread out of nowhere: the Psalmist praises the Creator for making man "a little less than the angels." (Psalm 8:5) Eastern Christianity long recognized that God's work of salvation was really deification: of bringing the full image and likeness of God in man to flower. (Genesis 1:27) The dignity of the human person was so central to the pontificate of Pope St. John Paul II that it was the focus of his inaugural encyclical, "The Redeemer of Man" (Redemptor hominis). Nor did that pope tire of quoting Gaudium et spes (no. 22) that Jesus Christ "fully reveals man to himself." Note what the Council says – and doesn't. The Council doesn't say Christ "fully reveals God to man" (though that's true). It affirms Jesus "fully reveals man to himself." Carl Trueman brings those insights in his new book, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. He argues that, in some ways, Nietzsche was ahead of his time. Proclaiming the "death of God" to a world still coasting on religious gases was ineffective. As with nominalism, the culture still concealed the gaping abyss the "death of God" entails – not least of which is destroying the divine image and likeness in man. In three chapters, Trueman goes on to demonstrate how contemporary man is achieving that in the area of sex (the sexual revolution and abortion), artificial reproduction (IVF and surrogacy), and death (an enemy which, if it can't be stopped, can at least be forced to bend to one's wishes about when and where). Man as the divine image and likeness is the unifying theme in Trueman's work: if the human person is made in the image of God who is good, then man's forays into sin constitute a defacement of that image. That too is not necessarily a new insight: already in the fifth century, Pope Leo the Great, in his first sermon for Christmas, admonished Christians to "remember your dignity" (albeit as redeemed by grace through the Incarnation). But Trueman argues persuasively that moderns are not simply disfiguring their divine image and likeness. Rather, they are actively and almost with pleasure working to "desecrate" that image, to try to destroy the divine image in man by replacing it by an autonomous human god. This isn't just a moral question: what sins people commit. It's an anthropological question, the one the Psalmist posed: "Who is man?" Trueman's starting point is important for two reasons. First, it provides a common ecumenical and interreligious point of departure. Jews and Christians can share a mutual perspective while, Scripturally based, it may ameliorate some of the notions of radical human corruption that reigned among the classical Reformers. Second, it applies to all men: all human perso...

    8 min

  2. 1 DAY AGO

    We Need Centers of Human Fructification

    By Michael Pakaluk But first a note from Robert Royal: As Professor Pakaluk explains today, there's all the difference in the world between mere 'flourishing,' and bearing fruit. At TCT, we constantly strive to do the latter. If you agree with that goal, please help. You know the drill. There's TCT, there's the button, there's you. Support TCT. Today Now for today's column... The only time Our Lord came upon something merely flourishing, he cursed it: "In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside he went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only. And he said to it, 'May no fruit ever come from you again!' And the fig tree withered at once." (Matthew 21:18–19) The form of the curse was that it should flourish only and never fructify. For Our Lord, "May you simply flourish" is a curse. Since flourishing ("flowering") is for bearing fruit, however, such a curse makes the tree wither. Transpose the idea to human affairs, and we might say that on the one hand there is human flourishing, and on the other, human "fructification," and to aim to flourish without fructifying is to be subject to a divine curse. Then there is the parable of the tree which is not bearing fruit: A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, "Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?" And he answered him, "Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down." (Luke 13:6-9) This tree was certainly 'flourishing,' but it was to be cut down because it did not yield fruit. The first Psalm, which gives the key to all the Psalms, says that a man who ponders and follows God's law, "is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers." His prosperity consists in flourishing and fructifying both. Indeed, if you pay close attention, you can see that Our Lord is almost fanatical about fruit: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (John 15:1-2) He cares so much about fruit that he expects even what traditionally was regarded as sterile to bear fruit. The man who distributed the talents tells the man who had only one that he should have taken it to the bankers, where at least it could have earned interest. (Matthew 25) In Greek, the word for interest is tokos, which means offspring of a womb. For the Lord, no domain of human life is exempt from the law of fructification. In light of all this, one might at least raise an eyebrow at all the recently founded programs which say they are devoted to "human flourishing": the Human Flourishing Program (Harvard), the Institute for Global Human Flourishing (Baylor), the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing (Oklahoma), the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing (Notre Dame), and the Global Center for Human Flourishing (Liberty University), among others. Do these programs, embedded in a society marked by sterility and self-centeredness, offer anything ultimately different? The Templeton Foundation funds many of them under its "Character Virtue Development" heading, the same unit in Templeton which funds "voluntary family planning" programs in sub-Saharan Africa, on the premise that large families impede economic development. What is the essential difference between an intent to flourish, and an intent to fructify? It consists in the willingness to die for others. Our Lord teaches this principle explicitly: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (Jo...

    8 min

  3. 2 DAYS AGO

    The Replacements or Coming Soon: Mel Gibson's 'The Resurrection of the Christ'

    By Brad Miner But first a note from Robert Royal: So count me impressed with the generosity of our readers these first days of our midyear funding drive. But just between ourselves, I'd like to be even more impressed. And sooner rather than later. At TCT, we work hard to pick through some of the complicated issues we face these days (even in popular culture, as our esteemed Brad Miner does today). And we're happy to announce that the first episode of Reading the Catechism with Fr. Gerald Murray is available (click here and be sure to subscribe to this new series). All this only exists if you do your part in this great work. Now's the time to do it. Support The Catholic Thing. Now for today's column... About this time next year, Mel Gibson will release the 2-part sequel to The Passion of the Christ. Better late than never, some will say, although not, perhaps, Jim Caviezel, who so memorably played Jesus, and who has, over the two decades since, spoken with excitement of the ever-imminent production of The Resurrection of the Christ. But Mr. Caviezel is out, having been replaced by Finnish actor Jaakko Ohtonen. Ever since certain new technologies began appearing, speculation had been that Mr. Gibson would employ AI "de-aging" (as was used in the final Indiana Jones film to make the 80-year-old Harrison Ford appear 40). This in order to make the original actors of Passion, who at next year's premieres (March 26 and May 7) will be a quarter-century older, appear as they did in 2002 while filming the Passion. But the de-aging was recently deemed both too expensive and, likely, too distracting to be effective. It's the "uncanny valley" effect. Thus, in addition to Mr. Ohtonen: Maia Morgenstern (Mary, the mother of Jesus in the original) will be replaced by Polish actress Kasia Smutniak; Monica Bellucci (Mary Magdalene) is out in favor of Cuban actress Mariela Garriga; and Italian actor Pier Luigi Pasino will replace Francesco De Vito as Simon Peter. Indeed, it seems the entire cast will be new. And let's be honest: With a sequel in which the time between the real-world events portrayed is three days, an entirely new cast was inevitable. But 23 years between premieres? Well, without knowing all the specifics, I suspect Mr. Gibson was fairly worn out, physically, emotionally, and spiritually by the Passion. That, and subsequent events, intervened to make a quick turnaround impossible. He and his wife, Robyn, separated and then divorced in 2006 after 26 years of marriage. (She received a $400 million settlement.) Mel was awarded an annulment – of a sort. Denied by the Roman Catholic Church, which is the only authority that could canonically approve an annulment, his father, Hutton Gibson, and a tribunal of members of the traditionalist-sedevacantist Church of the Holy Family in California, approved the annulment on grounds that Mel had felt pressured into the 1980 marriage because Robyn was pregnant, which is surely the lamest of excuses. It is certainly odd when a man turns such important ecclesiastical matters over to his biological father rather than to the Holy Father. I suspect Mr. Gibson is more an American than a Catholic, and a very self-directed American at that. I recently re-watched Passion, and it certainly evoked for me what I deem an unalterably sad flaw in Gibson's worldview: antisemitism. In 2004, the Anti-Defamation League and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a joint statement calling the script "one of the most troublesome texts, relative to antisemitic potential, that any of us had seen in 25 years," adding that the film would "falsify history and fuel the animus of those who hate Jews." This led 20th Century Fox, which had a first-refusal deal with Gibson's Icon Productions, to decide against distributing the film. (Equivocation, not necessarily hypocrisy, not being unknown in Hollywood, Fox later handled VHS and DVD distribution of the film.) In any case, on a reported budget of $30 milli...

    8 min

  4. 3 DAYS AGO

    A Little Wisdom from Toonces

    By Francis X. Maier But first a note from Robert Royal: We've gotten off to a good start in our mid-year fund drive, and I'm grateful to everyone who responded so generously. I was also pleased to find some encouraging messages from readers. To cite just a few: "The Catholic Thing is my favorite way to get my mind going in the morning, the essays certainly are thought-provoking and they're much needed in a world gone mad." "A 91-year-old Englishman, I enjoy reading your daily emails/columns. AMDG" "Thank you for your daily dose of Faith and Reason." "It's comforting to still see some of the bedrock sticking up through the quicksand." "Looking forward to the treatment of the Catechism! God bless all of you at TCT!" It's remarks like these that help all of us keep focused on the task at hand. So I urge the rest of you to act now, do whatever you can to keep The Catholic Thing alive - and kicking. Now for today's column... Most of us live at least part of our lives on autopilot. Most of us also, sooner or later, stumble across Albert Einstein's famous warning: "Doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting different results, is the definition of insanity." Most of us then ignore the warning, because few of us listen the first time. As it turns out, Einstein's words are apocryphal. In real life, he never actually said them. Yet they're nonetheless true. And more importantly, they give us a chance to consider some key tidbits of wisdom, illustrated by Toonces, the Cat Who Could Drive a Car. Who was Toonces? For those too young to know, or too old to remember him, Toonces was a frequent guest on Saturday Night Live, 1989-93. A uniquely gifted feline, Toonces was the treasured pet of an everyday human family with unshakable faith in his abilities. Where that typically led is best captured in the brief SNL "Martians" sketch archived here. Toonces was the brainchild of writer Jack Handey, a comedic genius. We can laugh at Toonces and his antics because they capture something true about ourselves. We all have a few unthinking habits; a pattern of brainlessly repeated mistakes tucked away somewhere in our lives. We're each of us imperfect creatures. And our imperfections, in a marvelously ironic, if too-often boneheaded manner, seal us together in a common humanity. We complete each other in more ways than one. God, it turns out, has a vivid sense of humor. Here's the problem: Our little personal foibles, given the right climate and numbers, tend to metastasize into larger, less entertaining tumors. Remember that other, not so funny writer; the one who suggested "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need"? That particular Big Idea – tried again and again, more and more forcefully over the past century with the same unpleasant results – cost some 100 million lives. Millions more were shoveled into forced labor systems. Some 65 million died in the wake of the Chinese Communist revolution, the "Great Leap Forward," and the Red Guard turmoil. Pol Pot's modest attempt at social reform buried two million Cambodians. This, in a population of seven million. And the same sunny Big Idea currently gestates, like the creature from Alien, in some of our loudest, most annoyingly "progressive" political figures. Happily, we Americans don't believe in utopias. Some of us don't seem to believe in anything more than ourselves. If by "we," one means our secularized leadership classes, we're pragmatic in our convictions. We believe that happiness is a product of maximum personal liberty; maximum self-realization; maximum material abundance. We believe that more of whatever we want, or think we need, is always good. This is why more money for bigger budgets is always the answer to obviously ill-structured, misconceived public-school systems that produce semiliterate adults. Looking back, this also explains our actions in Vietnam. The solution was always more troops, more bombing, more aid programs. In effect, more of t...

    8 min

  5. 4 DAYS AGO

    Ever Ancient, Ever New

    By Robert Royal St. Augustine famously wrote of having come late to the Beauty that is God: tam antiqua, tam nova ("So ancient, so new"). It's a brilliant and profound way of expressing the truth that the deepest Good is not in the past or in the future, but by its very eternity transcends time. It's like a heart-rending piece of music that, even the very the first time you hear it, is both fresh beyond all expectation and, in the same moment, an evocation of a place that you feel you have known and longed for your whole past life, the one true home of the human heart. By contrast, what we're most often immersed in is a false, politicized version of old and new. A limited politics is, of course, a necessary and good thing. But when politics takes on a religious importance, a defining reality for our lives, it's a dangerous and partial substitute for the real thing. What's "conservative" then becomes merely a return to some idealized past; the "progressive" turns into a drive for some future utopia, whatever the cost (which is usually large in terms of human casualties). Compared with that deeper, truer music of Creation, the substitutes – if they come to possess us – are like an organ grinder's tune geared to make the monkeys dance. That's good neither for our souls nor our public lives. And it's always the main task of our lives to take care of temporal matters with our eyes fixed on the eternal. Which is what we strive to do, day in and day out, here at The Catholic Thing. So today I have to ask you to join us in supporting work that seeks some larger, more Catholic way. We only come to you twice a year asking for your support. And as part of this mid-year funding campaign, we have some remarkable new/old things to report. First, we're re-launching today the website of the Faith & Reason Institute (www.frinstitute.org), the parent institution of The Catholic Thing, in a new format that will make it easy to keep up with our writers, fellows, and varied activities. I think the staff did a wonderful job and produced a format that's both attractive and accessible. Please take a look. You'll see not only worthwhile written material by myself and others at TCT, but also an archive of the Posses; our video series on martyrs and persecution "Faith under Siege"; our TCT courses (my new course on Pope Leo's complicated relationship to his Augustinian heritage starts next week); our annual Summer Seminar on the Free Society, which this year features a dialogue between Western and Eastern Catholics about the public square; and several other new initiatives that we'll be rolling out shortly. We're only able to bring you all this thanks to the generosity and fidelity of people like yourself who care about Catholic truth, and are willing to support us in this mission of keeping Faith and Reason present, together, not only among ourselves but in the whole world. As St. John Paul II wrote at the beginning of his encyclical Fides et ratio: Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know Himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. Much is at stake in this dual approach to knowing God. I'd like to call your attention to one new feature in particular that we're launching. Many people these days are confused about what the Church teaches and why. And while columns on this page often address those questions as they crop up in the news and public debates, and our courses look at broader subjects, we decided that lots of readers would benefit from a simple, but more systematic approach. And what better way to do that than by going through the Catechism of the Catholic Church? And not on your own, but with the guidance of my Posse colleague and friend Fr. Gerald Murray. So, you'll shortly be receiving the first installment via email and an...

    7 min

  6. 5 DAYS AGO

    On Moderation

    By Fr. Benedict Kiely St. John Henry Newman discovered, after much study, prayer. and pain, that the Anglo-Catholic, or Tractarian, concept of the Anglican Church as a via media between Catholicism and Protestantism, was ultimately a house built on sand, without foundation. There is still a small minority within that communion that advances the thesis. But with both female clergy, and now a woman occupying the throne of St. Augustine in Canterbury, that embattled band is like King Cnut vainly attempting to hold back the waves of the ocean. An old joke, perhaps a little unkind, saw that the famous "middle way" was actually the ultimate fudge, an "on the one hand this, on the other hand," that resulted in a position of perpetual fence-sitting, both extremely painful and rather embarrassing. There is, however, a position much needed today in our discourse, certainly on that which used to be called the "printed page," which is neither fence-sitting, nor a vain attempt to keep all sides happy by adopting an anemic position. Hilaire Belloc, the greatest exponent since Jonathan Swift of the specialized form of writing known as the "essay," wrote many essays with "On" in the title. He might write "On Cheese, On Laughter," and "On Getting Rid of People," to name a few. With that in mind, the position, or practice, needed today, especially by those committed to caritas in Veritate, not only those of the clerical order, but also those who claim to speak as Catholics, would be an attitude of moderation. A timely example of this is opinion about the State of Israel. The very mention of this contentious topic is likely, depending on the position chosen, to reverse Dale Carnegie, and "lose friends and influence no one." The moderate stance, entirely in keeping with revealed Catholic teaching and the Magisterium, would acknowledge the right of the secular State of Israel to exist, while discounting the extremes of a certain theology, which sees such a State as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. It would also firmly reject any form of antisemitism, whilst at the same time holding to the eternal and unbroken teaching that the Catholic Church is the new Israel. This moderate stance will infuriate many, on all sides, and lead to loss of friendships from those unable to see through the red mists of prejudice and fear. To practice moderation is not a comfortable place to be, if all you want is to avoid conflict. But it is most certainly not a sign of weakness. Moderation can, and should, also be seen in those who refrain from vulgarity and profanity, particularly in writing, but also in private. It's unseemly to find Catholics using profanity on social media, or other forms of communication. Why, we might ask, is moderation so difficult – and why, now, so necessary? Its very definition implies a sense of "keeping within reasonable limits," with its etymology encompassing the idea of staying "within bounds." That Middle English noun gives us a sense, not only of physical limits, but also of an unreasonableness that, if violated in conversation or writing, inflames rather than informs, and exacerbates rather than brings comprehension. There are phrases and expressions that we know, are "beyond the bounds of decency." But there are also polemical styles, very popular today, which do not serve the Common Good. Moderation encourages us – along with its good companions: temperance and judiciousness. Temperance, we know, to be a virtue, in fact, a Cardinal Virtue, not only in matters of the appetites, but in word and action. Intemperate language may be all the rage, and may encourage clicks, and followers, for those known as 'influencers,' but it does not signify wisdom or civility. Moderate but wise and erudite commentators may not command the highest viewing or listening figures in the illusory world of podcasts, but they will contribute more to intelligent discourse in the long term. And what they say will be remembered, long after the last infl...

    6 min

  7. 6 DAYS AGO

    Lucky Sevens: Caravaggio's 'Works of Mercy'

    By Brad Miner By first a note from Robert Royal: There's just over a week until I begin my brief course on Pope Leo and the Augustinian tradition. Don't miss this chance to learn more about our American pope, the religious tradition he was formed by, and the ways in which he seems to follow or depart from the legacy of perhaps the greatest thinker in the early Church, St. Augustine of Hippo. You can register easily and quickly by clicking here. I hope to see you then. Now for today's column... First, let's review the Corporal Works of Mercy, which are seven in number: 1. To feed the hungry 2. To give water to the thirsty 3. To clothe the naked 4. To shelter the homeless 5. To visit the sick 6. To visit the imprisoned 7. To bury the dead There's a church in Naples, Italy, devoted to them. And its founding is a lovely story. In 1601, seven (how appropriate) young Neapolitan noblemen, all in their 20s or 30s, joined together to form Pio Monte della Misericordia (the Pious Mount of Mercy). And on every Friday, they gathered at the Hospital for Incurables (Ospedale degli Incurabili) to minister to the sick. Then they decided to elevate their commitment by founding the Mount – and a church with it. The charitable institution and the church survive to this day; the hospital is long gone. But when the construction of the church was finally completed, an altarpiece was needed, so one of the seven young nobles, Giovan Battista Manso, a patron of the arts (and a friend of the poets Torquato Tasso and Giovan Marino, and the scientist Galileo Galilei), knew that a certain young painter, Michelangelo Merisi, had just arrived in Naples. We know him, of course, by the name of his birthplace, Caravaggio, and he was on the run from the law for having murdered (on May 29, 1606), a young Roman nobleman, Ranuccio Tomassoni (noble only in the sense of his family's "dignity"). Giovan Manso did not care about that, and he was happy to shelter Caravaggio – if he would paint an altarpiece for the Pio Monte della Misericordia. Besides, Caravaggio had been spirited to Naples by the Colonna family, and though I don't wish to evoke vile stereotypes, that bunch stepped right out of a Baroque-era version of The Godfather. Of course, what we think of today as "the law" was rather ad hoc in the 17th century Caravaggio didn't hesitate to accept the commission. Work was his drug. Besides, Manso and the Monte didn't nickel-and-dime the artist. His fee is estimated to have been in the range of $150,000 to $220,000 in 2026 U.S. dollars! That's more than a fair wage for the amount of time the painter spent creating it between September 23, 1606, and January 9, 1607. Three months and a skosh, for heaven's sake. The painting is extraordinary. It is also, perhaps, the most difficult to "see." Caravaggio was the preeminent tenebrist. That term comes from the Italian word tenebroso, meaning dark or brooding or mysterious, and the words tenebrist or tenebrism likely weren't used in the 17th century – may, in fact, be 20th-century coinages. But I think we can be confident that when Giovan Manso – or if not he another – first saw the finished work, there was a whispered, "Tenebroso." Being an art lover but not an art historian, I can only speculate that Caravaggio's development of the technique (and he was surely its master) had something to do with his love of the human figure and the drama in humanity, and with his rather unique process (working quickly, painting directly on canvas without sketching), and (here I speculate) looking over his shoulder to see if the law was about to kick down the door. Whatever the reasons, the results were always stunning, and you see it from his earliest work all the way to the last: from Boy Peeling Fruit (c. 1592) to Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (1610). But it was never so stunning or as impenetrable as in The Seven Works of Mercy. Let's break down The Seven Works of Mercy into four parts: top, middle (right and left), and bottom. At t...

    8 min

  8. 15 MAY

    For a More Manly Catholicism

    By David Warren Edgar Allan Poe mentioned three things, in connection with the Earthly Paradise, or perhaps there were four; I don't pretend to be a Poe expert. But so far as I remember, they were: life in the open air, the love of a good woman, and the creation of some original form of beauty. These struck me at the time (I was a teenager, and not yet consciously a Christian) as a useful list, so long as I could choose the location, the girl, and the art. Of course, location would include the season, with temperature, precipitation, and wind velocities, for I come from Canada where it can be awesomely cold, wet, windy, and uncomfortable if one is not dressed properly. There are other considerations, and as the reader will immediately see, many are not man-made. Too, other men may have divergent opinions. Fights over Paradise may, alas, easily erupt; indeed, fights even over what we are dreaming. It is difficult to be laissez-faire about Paradise. This was never a Christian strategy, however. It is not even a Christian practice to enjoy the good, and suffer through the evil. Nature provides this service, which is built into our very physiology, as it was built into that of dogs and mayflies. Short – and usually until just short – of death, we have some moral control over our own behavior, and through family and friends some slight influence over the behavior of others. But it is through politics that we form the illusion that we can take more of the decision-making away from God when we disagree with Him. In the end, however, we may not be consulted on our own fate. Is the world unfair? We have a gunslinger culture, as one learns by paying attention to "the media." This gives us the illusion that every gun-toting (or "empowered") person has the means to change history, even more than with the vote. It is an illusion because the consequence of a killing – whether as crime or within the scale of a war – can seldom be anticipated. All the "go back in time and shoot Hitler" scenarios I have audited over the years shared this one easily overlooked feature: each is astoundingly naive. For all you know, you have just made the Nazi party more efficient, by getting rid of its principal liability. And thus, you have helped the Axis win the war. The Catholic Church has long been aware that interventions in politics work like this. Those who think that a single clever move, or even a sequence of them, can improve our lives, or even bring Paradise, are, we KNOW, the enemies of prudence. Instead, things improve when men and women cease being evil, and instead become good. In consequence, we have wisely directed our creative energies to recording and celebrating the Saints, starting, of course, with Saint Jesus. The "downside" of this isn't immediately apparent, or rather, is itself an illusion. True, our economy might languish, if people everywhere became Saints, and I could foresee other unfortunate statistical correlations. But these in turn would be the occasions for more saintly acts, and perhaps the odd miracle. My readers are advised against expecting any specific miracle, however. (I'm not a politician, after all.) Wisdom and prudence generally warn us against doing anything that will bring about change. It is as the estimable Fr. Frederic William Faber (1814-1863) said. He famously, though perhaps apocryphally, declared himself against all change, including Change For The Better. This blessed Oratorian was expressly opposed to innovations in theology and the liturgy, and noted that among His majestic qualities there was God's immutability. Fr. Faber also partook of the divine kindliness, which is why he is safe to follow. But in recalling the creation of man in God's image, we must consider God's manliness. And in thinking prudently, recall that prudence has multiple aspects. One must consider what could be the consequence if one acts in the way indicated, but also what will happen if one doesn't act this way. In other words, on...

    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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