The Catholic Thing

By Dmitri SolzhenitsynBut 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...

By Stephen P. WhiteEveryone 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...

By Steven Jonathan RummelsburgSitting 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...

By Randall SmithFulton 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...

By Casey ChalkEarlier this year a meta-analysis in Advances in Psychological Science found a correlation between having a heightened sense of self-righteousness and what is called "third-party punishment," meaning punishing someone for a perceived infraction, even when you are not the victim of that infraction. An earlier study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people...

By Anthony EsolenIn the pilot episode of the old television show The Waltons, the six Walton children have gathered outdoors in the cold and the snow, where a lady from a religious charity is handing out Christmas presents to the littler ones. The presents have been donated by people better off than almost anybody in their mountain village. She gives a present in exchange for a Bible verse. Mary...

By James P. MacGuireIn 1896, Episcopal clergyman John Byron Diman founded St. George's School in Newport, R.I. It became one of the so-called Saint Grottlesex schools, that name being a portmanteau of St. George's, St. Mark's, St. Paul's, Groton, and Middlesex: Protestant prep schools that fairly defined the Gilded AgeBut then the Rev. Diman had a change of heart. He converted to Catholicism and...

By Auguste MeyratWith many members of the Gen Z cohort (b. 1997-2012) coming of age and entering public life, it behooves older generations to understand them better. I can recall the many essays, books, and movies examining my own generation, the millennials (b. 1981-1996), as well as those assessing Generation X (b. 1965 -1980) before that. While they were not always accurate or entirely...

By Michael Pakaluk"We know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good" (Romans 8:28).Disasters must come in this fallen world, and maybe they will come to us. There are relatively few sayings of Jesus which the Holy Spirit saw fit to preserve. But one of these addresses the fact of disasters. About those Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, or the 18...

By Francis X. MaierFor three of my 27 years on diocesan staff, I had the attached duty of ecumenical and inter-religious affairs. It was great work. We had good relations with local Protestant and Latter-Day Saint communities; cordial discussions with local rabbis; and personal friendships with local Greek Orthodox and American Jewish Committee leaders.With Islam, the story was different. Over...