I have a confession to make: the past dozen years ruined Rome for me. And it’s my own fault. I suppose it was inevitable that someone who got drawn into the multitudinous labors of the Papal Posse would begin to feel that Rome itself had become an unpleasant task. All the controversy and confusion started...
Yes, even the title of the popular song said it three times. But that’s virtually nothing compared to the repetitions of the word, over and over, during and after the papal funeral in Rome these days, by commentators, lay and clerical alike, as if it were a recent and novel discovery by Pope Francis. And...
Scientists say that, when a strong earthquake occurs, it sometimes causes the rotation of the earth to shift slightly, even minutely changing the shape of the planet and the length of a day. By contrast, it often seems that the Catholic Church and the papacy in these latter days have a weak and not always...
By now, most readers of this site will know about Blessed Carlo Acutis, the Italian teenager who died in 2006 and will be canonized this coming Sunday, April 27. [UPDATE: Because a canonization may only be proclaimed by a pope, the rite has been postponed until a new pope is chosen. -BM] And on the...
Most Christians – though far from all, in the current decay of education of all kinds, including religious education – know that the events we commemorate this week have had the most wide-ranging effects of anything that has happened in the entire history of the human race. And beyond, into the next world. Anyone, Christian...
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) My journey into the Roman Catholic faith began in Rome a long time ago. I was a 20-year-old college student, in Europe for the first time in the...
“NUNC et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. The daily recital of the Rosary was over. For half an hour the steady voice of the Prince had recalled the Glorious and the Sorrowful Mysteries; for half an hour other voices had interwoven a lilting hum from which, now and again, would chime some unlikely word: love,...
In just the past few days, hundreds of Christians have been murdered, raped, and tortured in Syria. When news outlets even notice what’s happening – yesterday’s New York Times only carried an “update” of a previous article and the Washington Post’s latest story on the massacres appeared Friday – they usually only mention the attacks...
say, “Yes!” The better question may be, however: Can a bad person make it to Heaven? The Lord alone knows that answer. One suspects, however, that this is why Purgatory exists. There is the matter of repentance, of course: the notion, as expressed by Lord Illingworth in Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance: “The...
The Cloud of Unknowing is probably the most popular mystical treatise in English, a sort of bestseller when it was written in the 1300s (when England was still Catholic), often republished over centuries, and a favorite of recent, highly discerning figures like C.S. Lewis. It’s also unique (in my estimation) in that its author (an...
high-placed Cardinal complained this past week that some people – particularly some traditional Catholics – are hoping that Pope Francis will die. There are such Catholics, and their open disrespect for the successor of Peter, whatever his record, is simply wrong. But the way that they and the whole world take notice when the Pope...
COSTARD O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon. – from Love’s Labours Lost, Act 5, Scene 2 I begin by drawing the reader’s...