The Catholic Thing

The Catholic Thing
  • 4.6 (33)
  • CHRISTIANITY
  • UPDATED DAILY

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. 17H AGO

    Who Gets to Say?

    By Randall Smith I read recently that Cardinal Reinhard Marx says he will allow the blessing of same-sex unions, contrary to Vatican directives. Fr. Davide Pagliarani, the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, says he intends to ordain new bishops without a papal mandate. And Luxembourg's Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich says women's ordination is essential to the Church's future; "I cannot imagine in the long run how a Church can survive, if half of the people of God suffers because they have no access to ordained ministry," Well, as a married layman who has "no access to ordained ministry," I can imagine it. I've always thought the priesthood is a special calling to service, not a position of special prestige to which people deserve to be given "access." But Cardinal Hollerich seems to have a different point of view – perhaps because he is feted as a Cardinal. Cardinal Hollerich's statement isn't really news, though. The late Cardinal Pell warned shortly before his death in an article in The Spectator that Hollerich had "publicly rejected the basic teachings of the Church on sexuality, abortion, contraception, the ordination of women to the priesthood and homosexual activity, as well as polygamy, divorce, and remarriage." So, women's ordination isn't the only thing the Cardinal thinks the Church can't do without. I am convinced that the Church can do without those things – quite well, in fact – as do most of the people I know. Cardinal Hollerich may know people with a different view, but there's an old saying that when a man becomes a bishop, he never pays for dinner again, and he never hears the truth again. People tell him what they think he wants to hear. People don't do that with me. And yet, the people I talk to don't seem to count in quite the same way as Hollerich or the "experts" on Synodal Group 9 that announced recently that the Church has been totally wrong on sexual matters. I interact with young people every day, and from that perspective, I would have told them that the Church's teaching is a Godsend – much wiser than anything else on offer today. But that view doesn't seem to count as much, or at all. Which makes me wonder how you get to be a person like Fr. James Martin, S. J., who flies to Rome to consult with the pope and gets quoted as an authority regularly. I suppose one reason that Fr. Martin and others like him have the "access" they enjoy is because he is a cleric, and I'm not. But isn't that clericalism? I thought clericalism was a bad thing, something the Church needs to put an end to. Lots of clerics say this. Some of them blame the entire pedophile scandal on clericalism, not, as one might have thought, on the lax standards regarding sex among some homosexually-oriented clergy. So if clericalism needs to be resisted, why is it especially relevant what Jean-Claude Hollerich thinks about women's ordination, homosexual activity, or divorce and remarriage? The answer, one must assume, is that he is a Cardinal. Fair enough. But Cardinals don't have the authority to dictate doctrine. They are men under authority themselves. And if they don't respect the authority they are under, why should anyone respect theirs? My students come to the Catholic university where I teach not because they want to listen to me. They come because they want to learn what the Church teaches. The only "authority" I have is the authority derived from Church teaching. The class isn't "Randall Smith Theology." Who would take it? The class is Catholic theology. So, when a bishop or Cardinal proclaims something that is contrary to the authority of the Church, it is like he is sawing off the branch he is sitting on. The only reason anyone would listen to a bishop or Cardinal is because that person accepts the authority of his ecclesiastical office based on Scripture, tradition, and magisterium. Otherwise, a Cardinal is just a bizarre old guy in a funny red cap. I know that people on one side or another will say that their ...

    6 min

  2. 1D AGO

    New Converts and Ancient Mystagogy

    By David G Bonagura, Jr. Mother Church is still celebrating the record number of converts who were received into her family at Easter. Her task now, like that of all mothers, is to nourish her children so they grow in wisdom, age, and grace before God and man. As mothers with adult children know well, this task has no expiration date: the Church dispenses the gifts of salvation to each child until his final breath. How the Church performs this task, practically speaking, has varied over her long life. The early Church continued formal instruction of the newly baptized during Easter week. Before baptism, catechumens were taught about the faith; after it, they were led into faith via guided participation in the sacramental life. This post-baptismal training was called mystagogy (from the Greek mystagogos, "leading through the mysteries"). And it remains a model for us today. The converts, transformed by baptism into new creations – forever different from their former selves and forever members of God's family – now live the life of grace. That is, they practice the faith through prayer, sacraments, keeping the commandments, avoiding sin, developing virtues, and performing acts of charity. But how exactly are the neophytes, so many of whom have come to Catholicism without a religious upbringing, without a Christian worldview, and without many practicing Catholics around them to serve as models, to turn these Catholic actions into a coherent way of life? Take, for example, keeping the Commandments and avoiding sin. What the Catholic Church calls sins – consider cohabitation, pornography, IVF, surrogacy, same-sex relationships – are considered good by the world and are widely practiced. How will the new faithful be educated to know the truth and to realize what they once thought true is, in fact, a lie? And what about prayer, the bedrock of Christian life? How do they pray in a consistent, habitual way? What kinds of prayer should they practice, and for how long? What do they do when they experience dryness or when it seems their prayers go unanswered? To baptize these converts and then wish them well on their Catholic journeys without additional guidance would be akin to sowing seeds on rocky ground or among thorns. And let's face the painful reality: most Catholics today, even if they were baptized as infants and went to Catholic schools, know almost as little as do most converts, are equally malformed by our anti-Christian culture, and, tragically, their spiritual lives are just as uncultivated. Cradle Catholics have the same need and same hunger as the neophytes: they need ongoing catechesis, a school of Catholic living, a guided progression into union with God. And this modern mystagogy should be done in communion with others; Catholics are not meant to be lone rangers seeking salvation on their own. A modern mystagogy requires serious investments of time, resources, and personnel, gifts in short supply in today's Church with her limited funds and few priests. Yet God has inspired some of His children with the ingenuity and energy to make something like this happen. When done well, the fruits have been abundant. FOCUS, or Fellowship of Catholic University Students, is perhaps the most prominent expression of modern mystagogy. I have been blessed to sponsor two FOCUS missionaries in recent years and receive monthly updates from their respective campuses. FOCUS chapters offer a community for college students to learn the faith and live the faith in environments often hostile to religion. Its peer-to-peer approach and the full-time efforts of missionaries (who have to raise their own funds to operate as volunteers) have made FOCUS more effective than the typical college chaplaincy or Newman club. The latter are often worthy efforts, but often only offer Mass and perhaps an additional weekly event of some kind. Parishes that have mystagogy discipleship groups are few in number, but those that do are almost invariably on fire f...

    6 min

  3. 2D AGO

    A Link in a Chain

    By Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas Homily preached by the Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D., at the Church of St. Pius X, Forked River, New Jersey, for the Confirmation of Nolan Santos. 'I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons,' wrote our latest doctor of the Church – the great St. John Henry Newman – in one of his more famous meditations. His words have been coming back to me as I recall how I first stepped into a classroom of Ocean County College over a decade ago. It was my maiden voyage onto an unknown sea, difficult to navigate, because I was so shocked by the general ignorance of the products of twelve years of public education, let alone the overall lack of moral compass among the student body. I discovered, however, that not a few students were genuinely open to a serious learning experience. I convinced the college administration to offer a course in Latin, after a hiatus of many years. Two of the students in that class were lifelong buddies, Nicholas Bacchione and Nolan Santos. The former was keen on playing academic "catch-up" ball; the latter, not so much so. And he headed for the hills in a couple of weeks. Cardinal Newman frequently spoke about the importance of what he called the "personal influence" of a teacher: the personal influence of the teacher is able in some sort to dispense with an academical system, but that the system cannot in any sort dispense with personal influence. With influence there is life, without it there is none; if influence is deprived of its due position, it will not by those means be got rid of, it will only break out irregularly, dangerously. An academical system without the personal influence of teachers upon pupils, is an arctic winter; it will create an ice-bound, petrified, cast-iron University, and nothing else. My relationship with Nick went beyond the study of Latin and, over time, made him not only a better student but a better Catholic. That "influence" spawned a friendship – something not talked about a lot nowadays. And with a kind of ripple effect, Nick's friendship with Nolan moved Nolan into a more intimate relationship with Christ and His holy Church. They shared a friendship of virtue, as Aristotle put it: "Now equality and likeness are friendship, and especially the likeness of those who are like in virtue." Today, Nolan, marks the completion of your initiation into the life of the Church. In some sense, it's like a commencement ceremony, which marks the end of a process, but which also launches you on a new adventure. Today, the Holy Spirit will flood you with His grace; this is wholly His work in you – it is not your doing. It is God's free gift to you. As Georges Bernanos ends his piercing novel, Diary of a Country Priest, echoing the final words of the Little Flower, "All is grace!" Nolan, the good God has given you the great gift of a hunger and thirst for holy truth and, likewise, a passion for sharing that gift with others. St. John Paul II reminded us in his encyclical, Redemptoris missio, "Faith is strengthened when it is given to others!" And even more to the point, the finest thing that anyone can do for another human being is to introduce that person to Jesus Christ and His Church. That is not an easy mission in this very secular society, but it is not a "mission impossible" either. It is the task of that "new evangelization", and you should be buoyed up for that mission by having this programmatic mantra ringing in your ears – a line heard in today's Gospel – "Be not afraid!" You have been caught up in a web of grace, Nolan. Nobody could have planned it: Me at Ocean County College, Nick, You – and the Holy Spirit. Listen once more to Cardinal Newman's profound meditation; take it to heart: God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessa...

    6 min

  4. 3D AGO

    'Synodal Shepherds' Attack the Sheep

    By Fr. Gerald E. Murray The Catholic Church is accustomed to attacks upon her teaching. The history of heresy over the centuries reveals the never-ending efforts of those who seek to replace Catholic doctrine with various errors. What the Church has only recently become accustomed to is attacks upon her teaching coming from some of her shepherds, especially from the never-ending pronouncements emanating from the office of the Synod of Bishops. The latest imposition of the Synod is the recently published full-fledged endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle in the Final Report of Study Group Number 9 "Theological Criteria and Synodal Methodologies for Shared Discernment of Emerging Doctrinal, Pastoral, and Ethical Issues." This report attempts to dismiss Catholic teaching on the inherent immorality of homosexual acts – and the disordered nature of the homosexual inclination – by stigmatizing that teaching as the expression of an obsolete "paradigm" that no longer can be relied upon to communicate God's will to His people. Merriam-Webster defines paradigm as "a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated." To describe Catholic teaching using the analogy of a framework upon which theories and experiments are arranged is to demote it from the realm of truth into just one possible approach to presenting God's revelation. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." (John 14:6) Is that a paradigm needing improvement? The report includes two appendices, which are testimonies in the form of an interview. Two Catholic men (the first Portuguese, the second American), each proudly describing himself as being married to a man, even though the Catholic Church teaches that such a thing is impossible. Why would the Synod of Bishops publish interviews with men who reject Catholic teaching on the nature of marriage, inspired as it is by the Holy Spirit, as part of its effort to discern the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church today? Report Number 9 gives us the answer – the Synod considers so-called homosexual marriage to be an open question: Finally, while listening to the Word of God lived in the Church, it is necessary to address with parrhesia the currently recurring question of whether one can speak of "marriage" in relation to persons with same-sex attractions, equating their relationship to heterosexual conjugal union without recognizing the differences. These include, primarily, the evident impossibility of procreation per se linked to sexual difference, regarding which techniques of medically assisted procreation pose further difficulties. Even worse, Report Number 9 considers all Catholic teaching as subject to change: The Church's mission is not a matter of abstractly proclaiming and deductively applying principles that are set out in an immutable and rigid manner, but of fostering a living encounter with the person of the risen Lord Jesus, by engaging with the lived experience of faith of the People of God in its personal and social relevance, in relation to the diverse situations of life and the many cultural contexts. Only the fruitful tension between what has been established in the Church's doctrine and her pastoral practice and the practices of life in which what has been established is verified, in the exercise of personal and communal life in the light of the Gospel, expresses the generative dynamism of Tradition: against the temptation of the sterile and regressive ossification of principles and statements, of norms and rules, regardless of the experience of individuals and communities. "The lived experience of faith of the People of God" can overrule the doctrine of the Faith? Welcome to the ecclesiastical embrace of "liquid modernity" in which metaphysical realism is cast aside, and the dictatorship of relativism and subjectivism subjects everything to redefiniti...

    7 min

  5. 4D AGO

    The Catholic Church's American Moment

    By Samuel Trizuljak This year is special for American Catholics in two ways. First, there's the upcoming 250th birthday of the American Republic on July 4, 2026. But there's another anniversary to celebrate. Today is the first anniversary of the election of Leo XIV, the first pope to hail from the United States. I'm from Bratislava, Slovakia, and have long had a keen interest in all things American Catholic. I find myself thinking a lot recently about the role that American Catholicism plays not only inside the United States, but across the world. In particular, I recall Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and his 1987 book The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World. While that ambitious volume is concerned with the Catholic Church at large, the book captured a special moment in the life of the Catholic Church in the United States. Neuhaus argued that, by the late 20th century, American Catholicism had matured. No longer a marginalized immigrant faith, it had institutional depth (schools, universities, media), intellectual firepower (theologians, philosophers) and growing cultural legitimacy. This created a rare "moment" where Catholic thought could step into the public as a serious moral framework for society. Whether and how fully that opportunity was seized can be debated. My sense is that, despite many challenges, Catholicism has played a transformative role in recent American history and is far from finished. And my larger contention is that 2026 marks the American moment in the history of the Catholic Church. I have been traveling a lot across Europe in the past several years. I got my first degrees from Cambridge and Oxford, and recently a doctorate in Prague. I have been teaching undergraduates in Budapest, Krakow, and Bratislava. I attended a dozen conferences and summer schools for Catholic students and young professionals across Central and Western Europe. I have a pretty good grasp of the up-and-coming generation of European Catholics. And I can tell you: Where there is life, where there are vibrant, engaged groups of young Catholics – they are, as a rule, plugged into contemporary American Catholicism. One telling example: I recently gave a course on the history of modern Slovak Catholicism. At the end, when it came to evaluating the heroes and villains of that history, the class was united in relatively uniform evaluation of figures from the 20th century. But when we spoke of the present, views diverged widely. In short, the only thing that the class was able to agree on was that there's now much chaos in Slovakia, and indeed across Europe, regarding how one's Catholic faith is to translate into a coherent vision of public or political engagement. There is no one to look up to. But one participant raised her hand and said: "Well, the one thing I'd recommend to everyone to sift through this chaos is the American podcast 'Pints with Aquinas,' featuring Fr Gregory Pine OP and Matt Fradd." I see this frequently everywhere I go across Europe among millennials and Gen-Z: conversions induced by listening to Bishop Barron's sermons; or transformative experiences of Great Books programmes inspired by the revival of classical education in the US; engaged couples preparing for the wedding day by reading Christopher West, Jason Evert or the von Hildebrands; (who were male groups doing the Exodus 90 Lenten spiritual program for the third or fourth year in a row), and increasingly, everywhere, subscribers to the world's most popular and thoroughly Catholic prayer app, Hallow. In the circles of Catholic staffers and policy wonks in Brussels and on the national level, it is hard to avoid alumni of Arete Academy, the leading international training programme of Alliance Defending Freedom, which, of course, is a joint effort by Christians of various denominations, but which has earned its status thanks to the longtime leadership of its founding CEO Alan Sears, an American convert to Catholicism. This American m...

    7 min

  6. 5D AGO

    If I Were Created a Cardinal

    By Michael Pakaluk If I were created a Cardinal and dispensed from the canonical requirement to be ordained a deacon or priest – my vocation is as a layperson – this is how I would counsel the Holy Father on the first anniversary of his pontificate. "Holy Father, the first thing you must do is correct Francis, because only the pope may aptly correct a pope. There is no need to judge his motives. But he often caused confusion and distress, and his attempts to unify often seemed rather to divide. "In at least one matter, you must correct him clearly, deliberately, and self-consciously. I advise that you change the Catechism's treatment of the death penalty back to where it was before. Francis's insertion of 'inadmissible' was autocratic and unhelpful. He purported, with this change, to correct his immediate predecessors, Benedict and John Paul II, who were fully satisfied with the text as it stood. Do you, then, in union with these other Pontiffs, correct Francis, and restore the Catechism to its state of unalloyed truth. "With this one change you signal, then, that you are aware of the problem, and you give the faithful confidence that, going forward, you will deal with like matters firmly and prudently. "You also cast doubt on the premise that a change, especially an apparently relaxing change, is a genuine 'development.' Sometimes a change may simply be a mistake, which will need to be reversed. This one act will deflate the pretensions of those who wish to use Newman to change Church teaching. It will remove much of the toxic confusion caused by Amoris laetitia chapter 8 and Fiducia supplicans. "We know that casuistical moral theologians, who mischievously want to change Church teaching, especially in sexual matters, always start in the classroom with the death penalty, domestic slaves, and usury, as cases in which the Church has supposedly changed her teaching. Francis emboldened these wolves in sheep's clothing. As the guardian of the Deposit of Faith, you have a serious responsibility to protect the sheep against them. "I advise at the same time that you reverse Traditionis custodes and reaffirm Summorum pontificum, with the judgment, which only you can render authoritatively, that the wisdom of Benedict in this matter is greater than that of Francis. After all, was not Benedict the great teacher of the beauty of the liturgy in our age? His wise 'settlement' brought peace: Francis's actions have sown division and provoked anger. "This one act of deliberate correction, to my mind, is the first priority. But in other matters too, Francis's departures from John Paul II and Benedict can be seen to be unhelpful, such as his demotion of the role of the (former) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; his destruction of the JPII Institute on the Family; and his undermining of the Catholic character of the papal academies. Francis's actions here were harmful to the Church; someone who can reverse them, should. But prudence and practical constraints may, admittedly, point in favor of a slower but steady overturning. "Other definite changes I would advise include: to embrace Courage and sideline Fr. Martin; to bring back a major auditor to attain needed transparency in Vatican finances; and to reform marriage tribunals, so that the common abuse of annulments as 'Catholic divorces' is brought to an end. "In this last regard, the work of reform achieved so laboriously by John Paul II over three decades seems to have been effectively unraveled by Francis. "These are definite evils 'in your own household' which need to be addressed. They are not unimportant. "But I know that in choosing the name, 'Leo,' you expressed a strong desire – with a magnanimous, indeed a leonine heart – to achieve great things in your pontificate. What legacy of teaching can you pass down to the lasting benefit of the Church? "I advise against focusing on AI, because its nature and consequences are still not clear; and because it would be a distraction...

    6 min

  7. 6D AGO

    Confessions of a Catholic Writer

    By Robert Royal Someone asked recently what it's like to be a Catholic writer these days. That brought me up short. Because the situation of a Catholic writer at present is pretty much like that of any Catholic – we're all bewildered by the many things now that seem to have passed beyond human, rational thought and action. Except, it's worse for the writer because he has to set down words to try to make some kind of sense about not only deep mysteries and moral controversies, but how they relate to our current chaos. The best thing he can do as he faces a blank sheet of paper – or more often now an empty screen – is to implore the Divine Mercy to send down a few decent sentences that might spread a ray of hope amid the darkness and noise. Our time is marked by what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur called a "hermeneutic of suspicion" – about everything, in both the Church and the world. Which is not entirely misguided, so long as it doesn't become the only lens through which we view the world. But social media has had the additional effect of whipping up doubts and conflicts into what often borders on hysteria. On such "platforms," every event becomes either the final cosmic apocalypse – or a "new outpouring of the Holy Spirit." A Catholic writer has to tell what truth he can, soberly, and without fear or favor, in the face of all that, without adding to the hysteria or despair. But given the nature of modern communications, we're all barely afloat on a very iffy sea of half-understood facts, much-jumped-to conclusions, and therefore uncertainties about serious matters that call for caution, reflection, and considered judgment – an asceticism in the use of the word. In my experience? I've been physically present in Rome for almost every controversial Church event since Pope Francis was elected in 2013. There are some things about the past dozen and more years that I'm quite certain about amidst many large gaps and ambiguities. (When the distinguished historian Henry Sire's Dictator Pope about Francis appeared in 2018, I thought he already had the basic story at least 75 percent right. And still do.) But more often, especially in comments disseminated on social media, I've observed people guessing, usually badly, and seeing sinister motives – even conspiracies – where often enough Roman ignorance, laziness, and incompetence suffice as explanations. The papacy is a non-hereditary monarchy with a disproportionate share of palace intrigues. There have also obviously been efforts at heterodox coups in recent years that have largely fizzled owing to their inherent emptiness. (See under heading: "synodality.") The nearest analogy to all this is what George Orwell, that troubling truth-teller, said about the Spanish Civil War (which he covered in person as a reporter). It's even more true of various disputes in our social-media age: I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. ("Looking Back on the Spanish War") Most of this, now as then, is clearly a product of journalists and intellectuals wanting to feel passionately and say something significant about what they wish to see as a radical moral or political question – but abstractly, not in what is going on, verifiably. Most of the time, a few actual facts are spun into a "news" story or opinion piece, but then yoked to some grand "narrative" that is, at best, only loosely tethered to reality. People now also routinely make severe judgments of others online, at a distance – ou...

    6 min

  8. MAY 5

    A Trip to France Triggers a Midlife Crisis of Faith

    By Auguste Meyrat Although the idea of a midlife crisis feels like an outdated concept these days, there is still something to be said about it. It may look different for men today, but they are still forced to confront certain personal challenges that arise around their forties. This is because men at this point in their lives often must assume responsibility for everything and everyone everywhere: at home, at work, and in the community. In order to successfully manage these responsibilities, men in their midlife learn to develop routines, clear moral structures, and a stoic outlook. This approach to life may seem dull and repetitive, but it also ensures the necessary stability and progress that enable lasting contentment. Nevertheless, there comes a time when a man must step back from the routines and responsibilities and reflect on their meaning. What goals does the father/employee/citizen/Christian/neighbor still have for himself? After all, many of these goals were set when he was a young man unconsciously adopting the ways of adults around him. Maybe he has grown out of these beliefs, or maybe they no longer fit with his world. Or perhaps they still hold, but require further refinement. Such is the subject of Peter Giersch's new book Talking of Michelangelo: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell in the Burgundy Region. Right around his 40th birthday, Giersch – a father of five, former teacher, business consultant, and active Catholic – decides to visit France to take part in a spiritual retreat. What begins as a breezy pleasant travel log eventually deepens, however, into an emotionally fraught spiritual renewal that fundamentally changes Giersch. Unlike many spiritual memoirs, Talking of Michelangelo is not a feel-good narrative of a distraught individual finding joy in his religious beliefs. Rather, it something more unusual and provocative: it is the story of a complacent yet virtuous individual experiencing an intense disturbance in his faith. Judging from its beginning, one would never suspect this kind of conflict from a man like Peter Giersch. From any angle, he comes off like a Catholic version of Ned Flanders, the corny Christian neighbor of Homer Simpson. He's wholesome, devout, and even sports a goofy sense of humor. The very prospect of this type of person doing a retreat in France mostly portends gentle reflections on gratitude, grace, and good food. And much of the book fulfills this expectation. As he makes his way to France, he recalls past journeys, the people on those journeys, and offers a thoughtful analysis about a decadent French comedy that he watches on the airplane. When he arrives in Paris, he reconnects with old friends, attends Mass at Notre Dame, and enjoys a few hand-rolled cigarettes. He takes in exquisite views of the city, visits the Louvre and Eiffel Tower, and relates a time when he once played an extra in a World War II movie. So far, so good. Giersch is obviously an intelligent, cultured person with a wealth of interesting experiences. And he is not a stuffy intellectual snob, but a down-to-earth goofball like the rest of us – his story proceeds enjoyably. All this changes as he leaves Paris and heads to the monastery in Flavigny, which hosts a weeklong Ignatian retreat. As if mirroring his emotional state, the weather becomes unseasonably cold and rainy. Giersch concedes that he began the retreat with no small amount of condescension, bragging about his accomplishments to the man guiding the program, Fr. Andre. The monk seems unimpressed and treats Giersch like everyone else anyway. At first, Giersch goes along with the program, thinking about the sermons and mental exercises that he is asked to do. But when he brings up a personal matter (something to do with contraception) with Fr. Andre, he learns that he's in a state of mortal sin. This revelation triggers his conscience and a sudden doubt about God's existence. The narrative soon drifts into a stream of reflections and arguments...

    6 min
See All (60)

Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
33 Ratings

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.

Information

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

You Might Also Like