The Catholic Thing

The Catholic Thing
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The Catholic Thing

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. 9 HR. AGO

    Let's Make Dogma Great Again

    By Fr. Benedict Kiely. We remember Chesterton's great quip that the object of a New Year is that "we should have a new soul." Part of that, I think, apart from repentance and resolution to avoid the sins and failures of the past year, is to enter the new year with a sense of hope. Not a naïve optimism, but a sense of hope and trust in God, and a willingness to cooperate with Him, to listen to Him. And yes, a new soul means a conversion. Let us, in a profound way, be more committed to our faith, in public and in private, even as we end the first month of the new year, than we were in 2024. That sense of hope has, I believe, solid grounds, even if the grounds are the size of a mustard seed. Although it is necessary to speak realistically and regularly of the great void that has appeared in the West due to the decline of the Faith, and the dark forces that are massing, there are some points of light, visible, even if small, due to the darkness. We are hearing of increasing numbers of people, some well-known - intellectuals, writers, artists - who are coming to faith in Christ. This is heart-warming and hope-inducing. There are also thousands of unknown people who are seeking baptism or want to enter the Church; you will know some of them. This is truly extraordinary as the Church goes through a very public time of great confusion. This must be the work of God because, otherwise, it makes no sense. Therefore, one of our first thoughts, as we enter this time of newness, is to do all we can to help and bring others to the light, and for that, we require something of a new heart and soul. We also, without any partisanship, merely from the point of view of the defense of life, free speech, and common sense, have much to hope for. The election and inauguration of President Trump have brought what we might call a necessary correction to the tsunami of idiocy which has been the hallmark of the last several years. A perfect example of that was seeing, on the "breaking news" ticker moving across the screen of the news channels, "Only two genders, Trump declares - male and female." That, of course, was breaking news in the Book of Genesis. Inextricably linked with that, is our other thought for this new time in God's providence - the gift of our defined faith. This year of Our Lord 2025 is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, from which we get the Nicene Creed, which most orthodox Christians recite on Sundays and Feast Days. Why does that matter? Surely, it is only an anniversary, and a form of words, and isn't dogma a terrible fusty old thing, because we are so undogmatic and free-thinking now, a sign of our maturity, our coming of age. Poppycock. As G.K. Chesterton said, and I'll quote him liberally again, there are two kinds of people in the world, the "conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were the most dogmatic." We saw a glaring example of the unconscious dogmatist lecturing the president and his family in Washington's National Cathedral in a most dogmatic manner. It is fashionable folly to decry dogma, we remember again the words of Dorothy L. Sayers, that the "dogma is the drama." If people are coming to Christ, they want and need to know what they believe in; an undogmatic faith is no faith at all. Chesterton enlightens us on this: "Dogmas are not dark and mysterious; rather a dogma is like a flash of lightning - an instantaneous lucidity that opens across a whole landscape. . . Dogma is education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching." Our age in the Western world desperately needs a period of lucidity. Obfuscation has been the normal modus operandi recently - in the world and the Church. We now need clarity and light. When the world is questioning, the very last thing it needs from Christianity is confusion. "The faith," said Hilaire Belloc, "is the only beacon in this night, if beacon there be." As the Counc...

    6 min

  2. 1 DAY AGO

    A Confession

    By Jackie Dettling When I was seventeen years old, I aborted my baby. Abortion had never previously crossed my mind. I thought I would be a virgin until I fell in love, like the women in the novels I read from the public library. The ones with the handsome man riding up on a horse. Women in the 1970s devoured these new romance novels, featuring explicit depictions of sex, selling millions of copies. I started reading them in elementary school. I knew sex outside of marriage was a sin. In my books, however, sex happened before marriage. Marriage came at the end, when they lived "happily ever after." Getting drunk was expected in high school. A boyfriend was also expected. I thought about boys more than God, school, and current events. Weekends were for getting drunk and hanging out with the boys. No one mentioned God in my public school. My family was Catholic. Mass on Sunday, grace before dinner. But no mention of God after that. Just be good. After Confirmation, I never went to Confession or received any catechesis. I was thankful to be done; religion didn't seem to be important. I never heard abortion mentioned in Church teaching or any teaching. I never heard that abortion is murdering a child. I knew the Catholic Church opposed birth control. But I didn't know why. A friend said it was to bring more Catholics into the world, which at the time seemed right. After the abortion, I went on with my life. I never told anyone. It was as if it never happened. The terror that my parents and the community would learn I was pregnant was all-consuming before the abortion. I could think of nothing else but getting the abortion as soon as possible. If I thought at all about what I was doing, it was "ending a pregnancy." It was legal, easy, and affordable. It must, therefore, not be a big deal. The shame of pregnancy, accompanied by fear of public humiliation, gossip, and the loss of approval by my family and friends was overwhelming. Handling the situation on my own, without drama, emotion, or discussion seemed strong to me, and admirable. I got myself into this situation, I would fix it. No one needs to know. So, I had the abortion and was back in school. Done. Don't think about it. I was one of the valedictorians and received other accolades, then a top Catholic college, and eventually a post-graduate program. I married, had three children, and started a successful career. I would say I was happy. I was actually used to being somewhat numb. If I had to describe my life after the abortion, I would have to say, it was like watching myself live my life. I stopped going to Mass regularly. I rarely prayed. Once an older, Catholic woman who had many children and grandchildren, stopped and softly touched my newborn daughter with great reverence. I remember thinking it odd. I loved my children deeply, but she seemed to see something else, something sacred. I couldn't understand it at the time. Thankfully, my husband is Catholic. We knew that our kids needed their sacraments because that is what Catholics do. I remember telling a friend that we went to Mass to teach our children values. Eventually, one of my daughters was preparing for Confirmation. The parents were invited to go to Confession with them. I had been attending Mass for years by then. I hadn't been to Confession since ninth grade. I confessed the abortion. Some time after, I was at Mass and the Gospel passage "ask and you shall receive" was read. It had never dawned on me to ask for anything, really. I thought you just keep trying to be good; that's the way to God. I asked for faith that day. I knew I didn't truly believe. God was distant, not knowable. But that was the beginning. Over the next several years, the Lord poured his grace over me. He opened my eyes. I read Scripture every day. If there was a Catholic Church nearby, I stopped in to pray in front of Jesus in the Tabernacle. I went to Mass on Sundays, and then daily. I also went to Confession, and read the saints: A...

    6 min

  3. 2 DAYS AGO

    'All Are Punish'd!' The history and import of 'Romeo and Juliet'

    By Brad Miner. I got an. A. although The word "plagiarism" comes from the Latin plagiarius, meaning "kidnapper." I've known writers who've referred to a book or a poem or a play they've written as their "baby." And if somebody had pilfered their text, they'd have considered it tantamount to child abduction. The word, rendered as plagiary, didn't find its way into English until the beginning of the 17th century, specifically in 1601, when dramatist Ben Jonson (author of The Alchemist and Shakespeare's acquaintance and rival) first used it. It's rather like this exchange in Lewis Carroll: Alice: Well, I must say I've never heard it that way before. . . Caterpillar: I know, I have improved it. And it captures the attitude of writers in the 17th and earlier centuries. It wasn't so much that, say, William Shakespeare stole from Luigi da Porto (1485-1529), or Matteo Bandello (c. 1480-1562), or Arthur Brooke (d. 1563) - all of whom had written earlier versions of a tale of star-crossed lovers. It's that the Bard of Avon improved them all in his Romeo and Juliet. Da Porto's was first in 1524: Historia novellamente ritrovata di due giovani amanti ("Newly discovered story of two young lovers.) In 1554, Matteo Bandello - as with da Porto, a name never mentioned in my college Shakespeare classes - wrote his own novella based on da Porto's. It's unclear if it was Bandello's work that Shakespeare principally drew upon. (But thinking of Friar Lawrence in the Bard's version, note that Bandello was a Dominican friar - and a bishop of Agen in France!) Shakespeare was likely conversant in Italian. As Prof. Kent Cartwright - excerpted in the Folger Shakespeare Library article - writes: [Shakespeare] apparently learned Italian. . .in the mid-1590s, and he read sources in Italian for plays such as The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing. For Shakespeare and his countrymen, "the idea of Italy," as [scholar Michael] Wyatt puts it, "took on a life of its own." But Shakespeare also had access to English translations of Bishop Bandello made by William Painter (d. 1595) and, more especially, the narrative poem, The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke (1562). I never tire of reminding myself and, therefore, of boring others with the fact that during this time, England was Catholic, Protestant, Catholic again, and finally Protestant in the space of a bit more than a quarter-century. It was a period of destabilization and violence. But it was also an era of great creativity. And at the end of the chain begun by Luigi da Porto, we have Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597). Hamlet usually tops a list of "Shakespeare's Greatest Tragedies," which is fine. In college, I wrote an essay suggesting that the Prince of Denmark was a kind of existentialist Christ figure. I got an. A. although that was for effort and not because the professor thought I'd proved the point. (I wasn't a Roman Catholic then, or I might have.) In March, my wife and I will see Denzel Washington in Othello on Broadway (with Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago), and one could argue that the great tale of jealousy deserves consideration as Shakespeare's best. The Greatest Writer in the English Language was at his best writing tragedy. I'm not going to suggest that Romeo and Juliet ranks above the aforementioned plays, or King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, et alia. But I think the case may be made that Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare's most influential play. This is because it's the most read and often the first read Shakespeare play by impressionable students. And it is the most-taught, most-performed play in American high schools by far. Scholar Jonathan Burton, writing on the Whittier College website, says, "No play is taught more frequently than Romeo and Juliet, which appears in roughly 93% of all ninth-grade classes." I believe it. If "To be or not to be" is the most quoted line from Shakespeare, "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" can't be far behind - even if...

    6 min

  4. 3 DAYS AGO

    Lay Responsibilities and the Order of Charity

    By Michael Pakaluk. I take it that charity has to be freely given by the person who shows charity. If I steal someone's credit card and purchase all kinds of goods with it for a homeless person, I am not showing charity, because that other person never gave his consent. If we are being strict about it - and why not be strict? - the $100 million that the U.S. bishops received in Federal money last year to resettle refugees was not theirs and does not even exist. At least, you'd need a good argument for why that sum shouldn't be assigned to the Federal government's roughly $2 trillion dollar deficit last year. So, not only does the money not exist, many of the people who will be obliged to pay it, your grandchildren and mine, may still not exist. They certainly did not give their consent. Charity should be ordered. There is something called an "order of charity." Giving that is disordered is not charity. If I am reading the USCCB's financials correctly, the bishops added in $4 million of their own to resettle refugees, from monies taken in weekly collection, for a total of $104 million. One cannot argue from this (as The Pillar has done) that they took a loss on the program, because it was their free decision to add the $4 million. And who knows what amount they would otherwise have spent if they had not received the $100 million? But for the program to be in the strict sense a work of charity - and, again, why not be strict? - they would need to have persuaded parishioners to give 25 times more than the $4 million they were already giving to assist refugee resettlement. Who believes that they could have succeeded in doing this, when - for instance parochial schools are woefully underfunded? There is an order of charity. Vice President J.D. Vance wondered aloud on CBS Face the Nation last week whether the bishops' criticism of Trump's executive orders on immigration wasn't motivated by their desire to protect their bottom line. The claim I take it is not, of course, that they pocket any of the Federal grant but rather: Who wouldn't want a flow-through stream of $100 million? The bishops take a 20 percent cut of that money before passing it on to lower-level entities that deal with the refugees (grant for purposes of argument that they are all "refugees" and not merely economic migrants). Let's say optimistically that those entities take a 20 percent cut too. Let's say, also optimistically, that the Federal government took a 20 percent cut before the money even got to the bishops. Then of the roughly $120 million that never existed and was taken from my descendants without their consent, only half of it anyway gets to actual refugees. $60 million evaporates for no lasting good purpose, if it does not underwrite mischievous purposes. If you are beginning to wonder what any of this has to do with charity and Matthew 25, you are not alone. Doubts have already been raised about "the Church as NGO" by Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. Whether the bishops or some bishops like to see the consequences of $100 million in flow-through monies may be the least of the worries. In administering the Federal funds, the bishops made themselves agents of the government and collaborators in the Biden administration's policies. If they are agents and collaborators, by no reasonable standard accepted anywhere else can they be accounted disinterested or dispassionate. Moreover, recipients of Federal funds know that with grants come strings. It proves very difficult to avoid falling into an across-the-board culture of compliance. Do all of the subsidiary entities, in their expenditure of these funds, follow a Christian inspiration, or do they rather follow Federal codes of compliance? The question answers itself. Does a culture of compliance in one domain have overflow effects in other domains? This question remains to be investigated. An entity receiving many millions of dollars in Federal monies will typically find it difficult to re...

    6 min

  5. 4 DAYS AGO

    What We Need, and Don't Need, Now

    By Francis X. Maier. The new autobiography by Pope Francis, Hope , written with the help of Italian journalist Carlo Musso, is a mixed experience. On the one hand, it's filled with revealing personal details; Gospel wisdom on the futility of war and the urgency of mercy and forgiveness; the difference between hope and optimism; and exhortations to trust in God and the future. So far, so good: The intimate personal witness of a pope from the peripheries should have natural appeal. Alas, on the other hand, much of the text is tedious platitude, with familiar nods to climate and the environment, complaints about "rigidity" in the Church and the dangers of populism, and a confessional tone that's meant to be absorbing but ends up feeling awkward and embarrassing for its lack of depth. The book was designed to be released after Francis's death. He moved up its publication to coincide with the Jubilee Year. That was a mistake. Death can throw an enhancing veil over the memory of a man. In life, there's such a thing as TMI: too much information, especially when it's not compelling. Such is the case with Hope. Whatever its long-term value, the book is, regrettably, of little help to faithful American Catholics who face a new and challenging cultural terrain. Consider the following factors, in no particular order, but all of them serious: The Obama and Biden presidencies with their systematic mendacity and appetite for "equity" and social engineering; the application of behavioralist "nudge" techniques to the political environment; the growth of the administrative state; the spread of government-approved "snitch lines" for citizens to report each other for perceived offensive speech; invasive developments in surveillance technology; legacy media polarization; fragmentation in popular sources of information via the Internet, thereby intensifying social conflict; and the rise of the social sciences (especially psychology and sociology) as a kind of alternative clergy. These realities, when combined, offer the foretaste of a "soft totalitarianism" uniquely suited to the American environment. This was a concern among bishops interviewed for my 2024 book True Confessions, but the perception is held far more widely than in Church circles. Secular scholars with no religious affiliation such as Christopher Lasch saw the emerging ingredients of this reality decades ago. And in his collection of essays, Technology and Empire (published nearly 60 years ago), the Canadian (Christian) political philosopher George Parkin Grant observed that "the dynamism of technology has gradually become the dominant purpose" in Western civilization, in effect, its state religion. The result, said Grant, is predictable. The "motive of wonder" in scientific inquiry has become "ever more subsidiary to the motive of power" - with a consequent drive for mastery not merely over nature and the element of chance, but over man himself. The urge to control human nature in the interests of improving it - whatever that might mean in the mind of the "improvers" - "is the chief cause of the development of the modern 'value-free' social sciences." In a world where notions of good and evil are reduced to value judgments and subjective preferences lacking bases in fact, sociology and psychology serve "the function of expanding that knowledge which gives [social] control." They also provide, for those in power, "a large percentage of the preachers who proclaim the dogmas which legitimize" the modern argument for more intrusive social controls. In the end, what results is a minority leadership class with a monopoly of power, and a majority of the led who might "live in affluence but are removed from any directing of the society" and whose purpose is found in an ethos of pleasure and distraction. Writing at the height of the Vietnam War, Grant suggested that the theme of North American life had become "the orgasm at home and napalm abroad." Whether anything fundamental has change...

    6 min

  6. 5 DAYS AGO

    The Angelic Doctor Today

    By Robert Royal. I sometimes wonder whether Thomas Aquinas, whose feast is today, hasn't been ill-served by being so universally praised - and therefore less really read. Please don't misunderstand. He's the GOAT ("Greatest of All Time," in sports parlance) among Christian thinkers. And - except for a few names like Plato and Aristotle - among all human thinkers, period. But in the general decline of culture and its many current perversions, to have once been thought great in that way is now to become a prime target. When I was young and trying to find my way through the thickets of thought, I had a Catholic-schoolboy's assumption that Aquinas was, at the very least, someone to be reckoned with. But then you might come across a passage like this in what many might think an authoritative source: He [Aquinas] does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times. That's from Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. I wonder if anyone reads it anymore, except for those ensorcelled by Russell's narrow, mid-20th-century skepticism cum libertinism. It's clear that Russell didn't read Aquinas; "he already knew the truth" about him and therefore made obvious assumptions. Many still do read Thomas - people not easily fooled, with names like Maritain, Gilson, Wojtyla, Lonergan, McInerny, MacIntyre, Feser, and many more. Because at the same time that he is creating a vast cathedral of thought and spirit, Aquinas establishes the gold standard for distinguishing between human reason (i.e., philosophy), and what by nature exceeds the scope of human reason (i.e., revelation). He sets out as a convinced Christian, to be sure, but uses his brains on matters that reason is fitted to address: It seems that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated. For it is an article of faith that God exists. But what is of faith cannot be demonstrated, because a demonstration produces scientific knowledge; whereas faith is of the unseen (Hebrews 11:1). Therefore it cannot be demonstrated that God exists. [ST Ia, ii, i.] Among the many interesting things about a passage like this in Aquinas is that it's presented as a question (actually an "objection"), one of three similar objections to demonstrating that God - absolute Being - exists. And so a kind of intellectual dialogue begins: people have said this on one side, and on the other side these other things. How can they be reconciled? Thomas thinks that the Absolute can be demonstrated by Reason - the famous Five Ways. To oversimplify and give them names, he posits an Unmoved Mover, First Cause, Necessary Being, Greatest Good, and Final End. These notions he gathered from thinkers like the pagan Aristotle and many Christian sources, to be sure. But they are categories of reason, not faith or revelation, which he recognizes as something quite different. Readers over the centuries have disputed whether these "ways" are watertight proofs or not, but they are at least material that can be rationally examined. And there's no denying that engaging those ideas has resulted in much remarkable Christian thought. Many Catholics and others believe that St. Thomas was the primary intellectual figure in Church teaching from the moment he appeared. He was always regarded as a great thinker, of course. But contrary to widespread impressions, Thomism had not been particularly prominent in Catholic philosophical training prio...

    7 min

  7. 6 DAYS AGO

    Excellence and Catholic Education

    By David G. Bonagura, Jr. "Excellence," along with its cousin "success," is the most overused word in education. It adorns mission statements and admission pitches at all levels of both Catholic and secular schools, seeking to convince prospective students to enroll and prospective donors to give. The Catholic elementary school where I was educated, to name but one, had a citation on its outdoor sign: "A National School of Excellence." The honor was bestowed by some accrediting agency that somehow wielded the majestic power to define what is excellent. And there is the game: everyone uses "excellence," but no one really knows what it means. The dictionary defines excellence as "the state of possessing good qualities in an unusual or eminent degree; the state of excelling in anything." For Aristotle, excellence was synonymous with virtue, arete in Greek. A thing is "excellent" if it performs its purpose at a high level. A knife is excellent if it cuts well, a calculator is excellent if it calculates well, a person is excellent if he lives well. A school is excellent, then, if it educates well. As we celebrate Catholic Schools Week, whose bland theme for 2025, "United in Faith and Community," does not conjure excellence, we should consider what Catholic education is so that we can ensure that it is, in reality, excellent. Education, a word whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder, is the process of developing the minds and characters of youth through the study of nature and culture. Catholic education, as explained by the Sacred Congregation of Education, perfects education with grace, for it "works towards this goal [of education] guided by its Christian vision of reality." Young minds and characters are cultivated in order to foster "those particular virtues which will enable [the Christian] to live a new life in Christ and help him to play faithfully his part in building up the Kingdom of God." In other words, Catholic education employs academic study to develop young people's capacity to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves. All courses and activities at Catholic schools - from arithmetic, art, band, and basketball to science, technology, theater, and writing - ought to contribute to meeting these two ends of Catholic education in their complementary ways. God is the Creator of all things; to study any aspect of Creation and to exercise the abilities He has given us leads us back to Him. Each Catholic school has its own style and emphases, yet each has to unite its particulars to the whole - the catholic - vision of God as Creator, Jesus Christ as Redeemer, and human beings who, made in God's image, are on pilgrimage to Heaven. A Catholic school achieves "excellence" to the degree that its particulars - curriculum, sports, activities, programming, and religious formation - contribute to bringing students to God. And the particulars cannot be viewed apart from the whole. If an academic curriculum helps students grow in wisdom, virtue, and faith, it is excellent; if it is a disjointed series of courses that do not foster growth in both reason and faith, it is not excellent, regardless of how many students matriculate at Ivy League universities or work for Fortune 500 companies. If a sports program teaches sportsmanship and helps athletes grow in their talents with an awareness that their abilities are gifts from God, it is excellent. If it cares only about winning without an eye to the greater good, it falls short, regardless of how many trophies it accumulates. If a band program makes terrific music conscious that, as an expression of human creativity, its power points to the infinite creative powers of God, it is excellent. If it requires practice every Sunday morning before performing in that afternoon's football game, it contradicts everything that a Catholic school stands for, regardless of how much admiration its music draws. Given how difficult it is to...

    6 min

  8. JAN 26

    The Ecclesial Body's Authority

    by Fr. Paul D. Scalia. The Acts of the Apostles recounts Saint Paul's conversion three different times. Some details vary, but one is constant. When Saul of Tarsus, lying on the ground outside Damascus, looks into the blinding light and asks who it is, the response is the same in each telling: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." Saul was forever changed by that revelation. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Our Lord makes no distinction between himself and his Church. Paul discovered that Christ and His Church are so profoundly one that to persecute the Church is to persecute Christ. He had struck at Christ's Church and found that he was striking Christ himself. Years later he wrote to the Corinthians, "Now you are Christ's body, and individually parts of it." (1 Corinthians 12:27) The doctrine of the Body of Christ was one Paul learned directly and painfully. This doctrine is the fundamental and most ancient way to understand the Church. As in Saint Paul's day, so also now, the doctrine of the Body of Christ keeps us from various errors about the Church. The first of which is how exactly the Church is related to Christ. Most people don't see an intrinsic relation between Christ and the Church. Christ is one thing, the Church another. At best, the Church is merely the community that gathered to continue His memory. At worst, it's a bunch of Pharisees who coopted Jesus' message of [insert your agenda here]. The doctrine of the Body of Christ teaches differently. It's more than a metaphor to speak of Christ as head and the Church as his Body. It's not "as if" Christ is the head or that the Church is "like" Christ's Body. Nor is their connection the legal union of a contract or the moral union of a shared purpose. Christ and the Church have an organic oneness, as between a head and body or a vine and its branches. The Church is the extension of Christ himself throughout the world and throughout history. One effect of this doctrine is to deliver us from the anti-hierarchy heresy of our culture. Since this Church organism is both Head and Body, there is an actual hierarchy as there is in the union between your head and body. The head governs. But Christ the head doesn't rule over the Church tyrannically. He governs the Church the way your head rules your body, as one organism. This is an organic hierarchy, not one imposed. Christ entrusted his headship first to Peter and the Apostles and now exercises it through their successors, the pope and bishops. They must exercise this headship - no one else can. Of course, there are advisors and consultors and all the rest. But at the end of the day, the Church is not governed by committee or council or synod but by the Shepherds who watch over it in place of the Apostles. This doctrine is also a healthy corrective to our culture's fascination with equality. The burden of Paul's words to the Corinthians is that no member of the body is less a member than the others. There's a fundamental equality because every member of the Body was "in one Spirit. . .baptized into one body." Our egalitarian age loves to emphasize this equality but omits an important aspect of it. Namely, that the equality of the members means also an equal obligation to holiness. Nobody is off the hook. Equality in the Church is a truth that shouldn't be used to tear down the hierarchy, but to remind all the baptized of their obligation to strive for sanctity. To the fractious Corinthians Saint Paul emphasizes the oneness of the Body of Christ. "As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ." This oneness is based on the supernatural not the natural. It doesn't come from common descent, mutual social interests, or a shared political purpose. It's not something willed by us or imposed by external forces. It comes from being incorporated into one Body by one Baptism in one Spirit. This oneness means that each member has responsibilities to the wh...

    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 - 2025
  • Episodes
    60
  • Rating
    Explicit
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