The Catholic Thing

Faith & Reason Institute
Faith & Reason Institute
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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. قبل ٣ ساعات

    The Royal Road

    By Robert Royal Deo volente, and if air traffic disruptions spare me, I'll be home this morning following a late pilgrimage in America after an overcommitted summer. I planned to follow El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") in California starting from San Diego and heading up north, stopping at several missions mostly founded by Spanish Franciscans, all the way to San Francisco and the final two locations across the bay, San Rafael and Sonoma. The faith is dogma and worship, but it's also a lived experience of what is still sacred history. Our bishops would have done well to remind us a lot more about the significant, continuing, but now often forgotten, Catholic presence in this land as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary. California's coastal highways and walkways began as 18th-century footpaths, mostly forged by Franciscan friars (a "royal" road only in aspiration back then). Today, California 101 basically traces out what the missionaries carved out on foot. All those saint names up and down the Pacific – and a capital named Sacramento – reflect the long and storied history of the Church's missionary work in the Americas. It's fitting that we started in San Diego because Diego is a variant of the Spanish name for James. That first of the missions recalls the Camino of St. James in Compostela, the most famous of Christian pilgrimages. The missionary friars, though, weren't on spiritual pilgrimage, but were relentless and intrepid in pursuing the dominical injunction to preach the Gospel to all nations. Revisionist histories these days often reduce their efforts to mere collaboration in colonization – even the saintly acts of the great St. Junipero Serra. The missions did have to rely on some backing from Spanish soldiers. But the California of the 18thcentury was beautiful, yet rugged territory, not a place that lent itself to exploitation. Pairs of Franciscans and a handful of soldiers at each mission carried out exploration, development, and – most of all – evangelization. The best way to learn about all this is, of course, to make the effort physically to visit some sites yourself. But we also have the works of the great American Catholic historian, Kevin Starr, who taught at several universities and was for a decade the official Librarian of California. In California, and especially Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholics in North America, Starr tells a fascinating and stirring Catholic story. I'd visited some of the missions before, but never in a deliberate way. San Juan Capistrano is one of my favorites both because of its sheer beauty and because the California wine industry got its start there. Our Lord's first miracle, at the wedding feast in Cana, turned water into wine of great quality and abundance. And at the Last Supper, He gave us both bread and wine as His body and blood. So let no teetotaler or grape-juice fundamentalist deny the Christian gift. Several missions were damaged by earthquakes – and rebuilt – over the years. Parts of Capistrano, for instance, remind you of the kind of evocative ruins you see in Rome. But some are still functioning – there were funerals at Capistrano and Santa Barbara these past days, and a wedding at Carmel. Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo The Carmel Mission (more properly San Carlo Borromeo) is the most striking. There is a deeply contemplative Carmelite church along the ocean in Carmel-by-the-Sea, which gave the town its name. But in the Carmel "mission" lie the mortal remains of St. Junipero Serra in a church lovingly restored by local artisans. Serra is mostly forgotten, even by Catholics these days, but his contributions to the state of California and America almost pass belief. He was born in Mallorca to poor farmers, but knew early that he had a vocation. At seminary, he excelled academically and became a professor of theology. At age 35, he felt the call to missionary work. He left a comfortable university life, took the 70-day sail to Vera Cruz, studied ...

  2. قبل يوم واحد

    Jewish Catholic, Catholic Jew?

    By Robert J. Kurland In a few weeks (as I write this) the Jewish Holy Days will be here – Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. [Editor's note: today, September 21] And again I wonder, am I a Jewish Catholic or a Catholic Jew? There is a difference. The noun, the second word, conveys the fundamental identity; the adjective is a modifier. An Irish Catholic is not the same as a Catholic Irishman. Until 32 years ago, I would not have entertained any thoughts about what the two phrases in the title signified. I was an agnostic Jew who fasted on Yom Kippur and celebrated Passover with a family Seder, but otherwise – no religion. My wife, a cradle Catholic who loved all things Jewish (including me), could cook kugel, matzo ball soup, etc., better than my mother or grandmother ever could, so the ethnic yearnings I might have had (primarily culinary) were satisfied. After my conversion, the place of Jews and Jewish history started to matter. Studying Catholic teaching, I discovered that Judaism was the foundation of the Catholic faith. And I began to wonder: what was my identity – Jew or Catholic? At the first Mass I thought: This is like a Seder, the wine, the washing of hands, all the phrases. I concluded I was like an Irish Catholic, an Italian Catholic, not like the group I associated with in the first years of my Catholic life, the Hebrew Catholics who insisted on retaining a Jewish identity and some Jewish religious practices. I was uncomfortable trying to be both Jewish and Catholic. Didn't I refuse to be Bar Mitzvah'd because, in my adolescent intellectual arrogance, I felt the fur-coated ladies at the Reform Temple were hypocrites? As a child I had suffered bullying and unkind remarks because I was Jewish. And I could not, at 65 (when I was converted), focus on Hebrew, the Torah, Friday candles; they were as unfamiliar to me as if I had been raised a Baptist. I wonder now whether that childhood experience was, in fact, the actual reason I rejected the religion of my rabbinical great-grandfathers. Perhaps trying not to be a Jew runs in the family. My maternal grandfather ran away from his Russian shtetl to Paris because his father, the village rabbi, would not let him study calculus instead of the Torah. My grandfather went to Paris, lost his religious faith, but remained Jewish. Another Jew came to France as a child, converted to the faith as a teenager while being sheltered from the Nazi invaders, became a priest and rose, as a friend of Pope St. John Paul II, to the rank of Cardinal. This was Jean-Marie (born "Aaron"), Cardinal Lustiger. He maintained his Jewish identity to the end of his life and after – he requested that Kaddish, the ceremonial Jewish prayer for the dead, be said outside the church before his Catholic funeral Mass. Responding to criticism from French Jews that he should not claim a Jewish identity, he said, "I was born Jewish, and so I remain." Both my grandfather and Cardinal Lustiger agreed: a Jew remains a Jew. Would that I had their certainty about who I was and who I am. If my fundamental identity is not that of a Jew, why do I fast? Let's first examine that phrase "fundamental identity." Fundamental means primary, before any other quality. Cardinal Lustiger said, "I was born Jewish, and so I remain." Did that mean his fundamental identity was that of a Jew, that being a Jew in all things took priority? I don't think so. My Jewishness is my family background, third-generation Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe – a background that is formative, but not determinative. The Church itself has said in a Declaration of Vatican II (Nostra aetate) that the covenant between Israel and God has never been revoked. Indeed, Cardinal Lustiger went further, to assert that Israel's vocation was to bring light to the nations and that Christianity was the means to do that. His Catholic faith defined his Jewishness. So, what about fasting? I claim it is a means to demonstrate and ...

  3. قبل يومين

    Being Catholic: Hard – and Joyful

    By David G Bonagura, Jr. At first glance, it does not seem hard to be Catholic. Go to Mass on Sunday. Pray. Keep the commandments. Love others. Sounds easy enough. People like easy – it's the key adjective in every advertisement these days: easy meals, easy programs, easy payments, easy installation. The implication is clear: what is hard is undesirable, unpleasant, unnecessary. What sane person would spend hours preparing dinner, completing a task on a computer, or assembling a new gadget when the easy way will whip things up in no time? But if we dig past the surface, being Catholic is not so easy. Go to Mass every single Sunday throughout my 70 to 80 years, even in horrific weather and when traveling? Pray – who has time for that? Keep the commandments – I haven't killed anyone, but am I really liable to judgment and to Hell, as our Lord warned, if I get angry with my brother or call him a fool? (Matthew 5:22) I haven't born false witness, but do I really have to refrain from gossip and calumny too? Love others – even the obnoxious neighbor, the reckless driver, the crazy guy screaming on the subway? To be a Catholic means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. He brokered a deal for us to do so: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) And the reward for following Him in this life? "You will be hated by all for my name's sake." (Matthew 10:22) For our Lord's commandments, easy is not the first adjective that comes to mind. Yet I do see "easy" tossed around in lots of Catholic marketing: easy apps, easy steps to prayer, easy ways to incorporate the faith into our lives. "Easy" has a cousin, "simple," that is used synonymously to make the same point. "Just follow these easy steps and you will be a saint in no time – it's that simple!" So let's offer a clarification: the general principle of being Catholic may be easy to comprehend – that is, follow Jesus – but to be Catholic in practice, that is, to follow Jesus as He commands us, is hard. Quite hard. And we should know that and accept that. For if we live our faith without struggle or challenge, we are not living it correctly. If we are honest about this point, are we communicating to Catholics and would-be converts that our faith is undesirable, unpleasant, and unnecessary, like everything else that is hard to do today? If being Catholic is not easy, doesn't there at least have to be some joy or fun in it? Is there any truth in that famous ditty of Hilaire Belloc: Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There's always laughter and good red wine. At least I've always found it so. Benedicamus Domino! We can reconcile that being Catholic is both hard and joyful by turning to the sports world for an imperfect parallel. Golf is an incredibly hard game to play well. That fact did not stop the 48 million Americans who played golf in some capacity in 2025, and their average scores prove that most stink at the game. The agony, the cursing, the grumpiness that ensue on a golf course for bad shots happen more frequently than the triumphs, joys, and high fives for the good ones. Everyone knows golf is not easy. Yet players keep coming back. The game is hard. Quite hard. They love it anyway. Faith does not thrill the soul like sports, which sharply prick the senses. Faith is primarily a matter of the intellect, or, more colloquially, of heart knowledge. The acts of faith – prayer, attending Mass and receiving the sacraments, doing good deeds – satisfy the heart and mind in the manner of a good book or beautiful sunset. "Satisfy" is the optimal word. Sports thrill. Faith fulfills. We do not perform the hard works of being Catholic because of that cliché: "If it's not hard, it's not worth doing." We do them because that is what God asks of us. There may not be joy in performing these in the moment – prayer can be a slog, bearing another's burdens can be terribly burdensome. And, by definition, there is no joy in the act of...

  4. قبل ٣ أيام

    Sacrifice: Religion and the Revitalization of Christian Life

    By Elizabeth A. Mitchell Sacrifice is a paradox. A compelling paradox. In his new book, Sacrifice: Religion and the Revitalization of Christian Life, Clemens Cavallin dives headfirst into the historical, theological, and salvific nature of sacrifice throughout the human and divine story, calling his readers to a renewed embrace of the true nature of God's redemptive plan. This compelling book is a reflection on the reality of sacrifice, both secular and religious, and its lamentable absence from modernity. Cavallin examines the modern world's attempt to eliminate sacrifice, and the consequent attempt by some within the Church to reconstruct Christianity without sacrifice. This endeavor, Cavallin argues, must ultimately prove futile because there is a fundamental human need for sacrifice, and hence for a priestly office and mediation with the supernatural. Cavallin contends that our non-sacrificial, modern civilization has shaped the Christian churches themselves, weakening their understanding of sacrifice as a fundamental reality. Modern culture fosters the illusion that peace is possible without a serious reckoning with evil. When catastrophic violence erupts, many modern Christians are therefore left bewildered. The secular narrative assumes that history should keep moving steadily upward: materially, socially, and psychologically. Yet when that promise fails – when suffering, violence, and disorder persist – dismay naturally follows. For Cavallin, this confusion points to a deeper loss. To understand civilization honestly, Christians must recover the centrality of sacrifice. Only then can Christian life regain its vigor and renew its capacity to direct civilization beyond itself, toward the supernatural. Evil, Cavallin observes, involves the sacrifice of others as one pursues one's own selfish interests. The gas chambers of the Third Reich, the Soviet Gulags, or the ubiquitous abortion mills of the West are just a few salient examples. But the reality of violent evil, of course, is nothing new – it's as old as Cain and Abel. This is why all the ancient religions contained some form of sacrifice. Indeed, as Cavallin posits, the need for sacrifice, in response to evil and as a means of communion with the supernatural, is inherent in what it means to be human. Cavallin presents an informative study of comparative religion, seeing sacrificial religion as a general human phenomenon present throughout human history, a phenomenon that is indeed even prehistoric. Cavallin builds all this on a solidly Thomist foundation, finding much that is positive in natural religion, even while acknowledging the effects of the Fall on the human intellect and will. The human heart has a natural religious inclination which is ultimately fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, but the Christian can undertake careful discernment and find elements of profound truth in other religious traditions on the philosophical, theological, and spiritual level. Cavallin leads the reader through such a careful discernment, examining themes of sacrifice present in natural religion; the distinction between what is sacred and profane; the relationship between violence and sacrifice; and the ultimate fulfillment of natural sacrifice and its transformation by Christ on the Cross. Ritual sacrifice, Cavallin observes, requires a sacred place and time in which the sacrifice is accomplished. The ritual unites humans with the gods. At the center of the ritual is the offering of the victim, an action which requires violence because the victim must be slain. The victim being slain may serve as a scapegoat, a substitute that offers redemption and fellowship with the gods as a result of its sacrifice. This is why the sacrifice necessarily also includes a meal, a meal to which the gods are also invited. Even when the prophets critiqued the sacrifices of ancient Israel, pointing out that they did not correspond to the necessary interior conversion and obedience to...

  5. قبل ٤ أيام

    The Original 'Liturgy Wars': Between East and West

    By Dmitri Solzhenitsyn But first a note: This summer, the Faith & Reason Institute held its first "Enrichment Days" – conversations about the relations between Eastern and Western Christianity – in Kosice, Slovakia. We're hoping to make this a regular activity in order to promote the presence of all orthodox Christians in the world. We're delighted to have this first column in what will be a series from Dmitri Solzhenitsyn, grandson of the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Now for today's column... In August 2026, America Magazine reported that "the liturgy wars are back (and never really left)." The fight Catholics have been having on and off – regarding the Traditional Latin Mass versus the Novus Ordo, Traditionis Custodes versus Summorum Pontificum, and so forth – is nearly six decades old. Yet where the Orthodox are concerned, the original liturgical-canonical divergence goes back more than twenty-five times further. In the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, liturgical matters are not usually as contested as are theological questions. (Among the latter are papal authority and the filioque, as I explore in my book Reuniting Rome with the Orthodox.) Nevertheless, differences in rites can hinder the ability of communions to claim the same experience of worship and, at the extreme, can even make it harder for them to identify with one another as fellow Christians. Accordingly, the gradual East-West divergence is worth exploring. Rome and the East still had more in common than not throughout the early Christian period. Significant differences, however, were appearing by the fourth century. By the end of the 300s, invoking the Holy Spirit in the Liturgy of the Eucharist was more emphasized among Constantinople and the Greek Churches than among the Western Churches, which instead focused on the words of institution. Also, during the later 300s the Greek liturgy was uniquely refined: garments like the sticharion (a kind of long tunic), hymnography like the short troparia, and sophisticated vessels were a much more prominent feature of Byzantine rites than of the simpler Latin rites. Language differences, too, arose: while Rome had initially used Greek, Latin was added in the third century and became dominant by the fourth. To express its faith, the West preferred the pre-Nicene Apostles' Creed (the "Roman Symbol"); the Greeks adopted the Symbol of Faith produced at Nicaea. By the end of the seventh century, East and West had diverging prayers, hymns, cadences, and even iconography. And by the 9th century, the West had switched to unleavened bread in the Eucharist, while the East maintained leavened bread. All of this established the Roman rite as distinct from the Byzantine. Meanwhile, from the fourth century on, East and West also developed starkly different attitudes toward clerical celibacy. Priests throughout the communion of orthodox Churches had been allowed to marry prior to ordination. Rome campaigned, however, to make celibacy universal. By the 700s papal decretals had solidified the Western practice. On the other hand, the Apostolic Canons, better received in the East, forbade clergy to divorce their wives on grounds of celibacy – on pain of excommunication – and the Synod of Gangra anathematized certain radical proponents of clerical celibacy. At the Quinisext Council of 692 under Justinian II, Eastern Churches limited celibacy to the episcopate. Those differences could be tolerated for a long time. But in the eleventh century, when cultural contacts became more widespread, the combination of erstwhile isolation and sudden contact dramatically soured East–West relations. Long-endured differences in discipline – unleavened versus leavened bread, fasting, clerical celibacy – came prominently, and painfully, into view. Patriarch Cerularius of Constantinople wrote combatively to Pope Leo IX in 1053, critiquing the use of unleavened (azymes) bread in the Eucharist and Saturday fasting. And the infamous schism of 1054 was at least i...

  6. قبل ٥ أيام

    Theology of the Body in the Age of AI

    By Stephen P. White Everyone who knows anything about Pope John Paul II's "theology of the body" "knows" that it is about sex. Anyone who knows more than a little about the theology of the body understands that to say it is about sex is a bit like saying the book of Genesis is a treatise on the morality of fruit consumption. The theology of the body is an extended exercise in incarnational anthropology. It is about human embodiedness. Because of this, it has a great deal to teach us beyond the realm of human sexuality. To the point, the theology of the body offers a striking and underappreciated relevance for our thinking about Artificial Intelligence. Much of our fascination with (and anxiety about) AI has understandably focused on the ability of AI to simulate the human mind. And so much of the discussion about AI focuses on our ability to reliably distinguish AI "thinking" from human thought. In his encyclical Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo XIV distinguishes some of the tantalizing capacities of artificial intelligence from the authentically human capacities that AI is designed to mimic: So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. (MH, 99) Pope Leo mentions the human body right at the outset, but he focuses on distinguishing AI's capacity to simulate human language and learning from our human capacity for the same. These are all important distinctions, to be sure. But the evident, objective differences between AI and the human mind are not the only – and perhaps not even the most important – distinction between humanity and AI. The old Scholastic categories of form and matter are suddenly relevant again. To be human is to be body-and-soul, not simply a soul in a body. Our souls are the form and principle of our bodies. The one cannot exist independent of the other, except by supernatural means. This is why we are mortal and why we are made for resurrection. To be human means to be, in a way, incomplete in ourselves. We were made for communion, a reality of which our very bodies, male and female, are a sign. To be human is to be a social and political animal, both of which require bodies. To be human is to be, as it were, a matrimonial animal. None of this could be accomplished simply by uploading a mind into a machine (even a biological machine) even if such a thing were possible. It's worth noting that we humans also learn language through imitation. We learn "behavior and analytic skills," "empathy and understanding" in much the same way. If we are to identify what separates us from AI, we will have to dig deeper than the assertion that AI's abilities are a mere "simulation" of human qualities, however accurately imitated. Our consciences are formed (or disfigured) by learning through imitation. Through conscience, we can distinguish good from evil, but we do not always do so. We can feign moral judgment and conviction. In fact, we humans are so good at feigning certain judgments and behaviors that we can deceive others, and even ourselves, about our true motives and feelings. While we may be good judges of our own authentic intentions (provided our conscience is well formed), we are often quite bad at judging the same in others. Each of us is intimately aware of our own personal experiences of both consciousness and conscience. But these experiences in others, while somehow communicable, remain in some way utterly inaccessible to...

  7. قبل ٦ أيام

    All The King's Men

    By Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg Sitting atop his ivory wall, the pedantic egghead Humpty Dumpty tells Alice that any word he uses means "just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." Humpty Dumpty deflects: "The question is. . . .which is to be master – that's all." Humpty Dumpty means master in the sense of ruler, the one who holds power over the word. But "master" carries an older sense that he has discarded: the ancient term for teacher (magister), whose authority ought never to be power, but the conformity of his mind to reality. In this scene with Humpty Dumpty, Lewis Carroll gives us a portrait of a certain kind of Oxford academic: pompous, contemptuous, and confident in his own authority. He subordinates the true source of speech, which is reality, to his will. Humpty Dumpty is the prototype for a veritable army of modern professors, convinced that in controlling the meaning of words, they control the world. Sit through an accreditation review, or a staff development day, and you'll encounter Humpty's prolific progeny. The radical abuse of speech is no isolated phenomenon; it is the new norm in "education." What Carroll conveyed through Humpty Dumpty has now proliferated throughout the entire profession. Even the most vital words in teaching, "school" and "education" have lost their grounding in reality, a crisis academia fails to address. We ought to follow, instead, St. Augustine's thought in De magistro "On the Teacher"; a word's meaning is never ours to invent. Augustine gives us a dialogue with his son on what a teacher's words can actually do when they pass from one mind to another. Augustine demonstrates that words cannot put truth into another human soul; they can only prompt the hearer to accept or reject the truth of what is said. He asserts that it is only the "teacher within," the Logos Himself, who is the one true teacher. In Augustine's own borrowed wisdom, we are "not to call anyone on earth our master because there is only one Master of all who is in Heaven." A teacher who arrogates to himself the right to have his words mean whatever he wants them to mean has abandoned the source of all truth. We are apt to think that "school" is a building where children go for instruction. Our modern notions of "school" differ radically from ancient exemplars like Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, or the gymnasium where bodily discipline accompanied the contemplation of philosophical truth. The word "school" once conveyed a surprising meaning. In antiquity, school meant leisure, not in the modern sense, but as an interior disposition of the soul: at rest, still, and yet wide awake to receive all of reality as it truly is. School, or leisure, is the proper interior state of being to hear a good lecture or to receive from a master teacher what is real and true. In past ages, if one was gifted with leisure time, it was the proper response to spend that time cultivating the interior life. The word "education" is as much abused as "school." A few years ago, I interviewed top teachers, school leaders, and county administrators to ask them to define the word "education." The answers were noteworthy in at least two concerning ways. First, I received as many different definitions as the people I asked. Second, none of the answers conveyed a concept of education rooted in reality. In the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, to educate has always meant to educe, to lead a student forth, out of the darkness of error and sin, and into the light of truth and virtue. Education is the formal cause of a nation, or as Chesterton put it, "education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." This understanding of education is nowhere to be found in modern schools. It's no small irony that leisure and "leading a student forth" are now conspicuously absent from the very institutions we call "schools." Th...

  8. ١٥ سبتمبر

    Three To Get Married

    By Randall Smith Fulton Sheen, officially to be declared "blessed" in a few days, began his wonderful book Three to Get Married with these four sentences: It takes three to make Love in Heaven – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It takes three for Heaven to make love to earth – God, Man, and Mary, through whom God became Man. It takes three to make love in the Holy Family – Mary, and Joseph, and the consummation of their love, Jesus. It takes three to make love in hearts – The Lover, the Beloved, and Love. This was a brilliant summary of the relationship between the threefold communion of love that binds the three persons of the Triune God and the love that should bind the spouses and children within a family. How can we begin to understand the Triune God, a reality that transcends our human reason? We begin with what we know concretely in our own world: human marriages. So too, we begin to understand God as "Father" in relation to our own fathers. "He is not merely an angry, distant God," we say, "He loves us like a Father." But upon reflection, we come to understand that the relationship really operates in the reverse. God is the paradigm "Father," and our human fathers merely participate in His "fatherhood." Our human fathers are partially responsible for our existence, but not fully, as is God. Our human fathers care for us, but not perfectly, as does God. So, as we reflect upon the fatherhood of God, we better understand what human fatherhood is meant to be. The closest we come in this life to understanding the loving communion of Father, Son, and Spirit is the family. It begins with a man, a woman, and the love that binds them. But then the love they share becomes incarnate in an actual person – a child. Anyone who has married friends has probably experienced a slight awkwardness spending time with one but not the other. It may be that you were close friends with one of them before the marriage, so you just mix more naturally with that spouse. But if you know that these parents love their children, then you will also probably know that there are few things better you can do for your friends than to love and support their children. Loving and supporting their children is loving and supporting them – the fruit of their union as a couple. It is not his child or her child; it's their child. The child is the embodied union of their love. So we start with human marriage, but upon reflection, we realize that we can understand marriage and the family best as modeled by the Triune God: a unity of love that does not destroy their distinctness, and a distinctness of persons that does not make impossible their true unity. And this is a unity of persons that is not closed in on itself, but is expressed outwardly, abundantly inviting others into communion and fellowship. The love of a great family never stops at the door of the house. It goes out to invite others in. What makes this sort of love in marriage possible? As Catholics, we believe that we are given the grace to love this way by the Holy Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit is the Love shared between the Father and the Son instantiated as a distinct divine person, when we share in the gifts of the Spirit, we participate in the very Love shared between the Father and the Son. In Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, Konstantin Levin, an unbeliever, marries Kitty, a woman he has loved deeply for years. At the wedding ceremony in the Church, Levin is led through what are to him a series of awkward steps he barely understands. But he does them anyway because of his love for his bride, and he is delighted. At one point in the service, he hears these words: "Vouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we beseech Thee." Tolstoy writes: "Levin heard the words and they impressed him. How did they guess that it is help, just help that one wants? thought Levin, recalling all his recent fears and doubts. 'What do I know? What can I do in this fearful business,' he thought, 'without h...

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