The Catholic Thing

By Francis X. Maier But first a note from Robert Royal: We've gotten off to a good start in our mid-year fund drive, and I'm grateful to everyone who responded so generously. I was also pleased to find some encouraging messages from readers. To cite just a few: "The Catholic Thing is my favorite way to get my mind going in the morning, the essays certainly are thought-provoking and they're much ne...

By Robert Royal St. Augustine famously wrote of having come late to the Beauty that is God: tam antiqua, tam nova ("So ancient, so new"). It's a brilliant and profound way of expressing the truth that the deepest Good is not in the past or in the future, but by its very eternity transcends time. It's like a heart-rending piece of music that, even the very the first time you hear it, is both fresh...

By Fr. Benedict Kiely St. John Henry Newman discovered, after much study, prayer. and pain, that the Anglo-Catholic, or Tractarian, concept of the Anglican Church as a via media between Catholicism and Protestantism, was ultimately a house built on sand, without foundation. There is still a small minority within that communion that advances the thesis. But with both female clergy, and now a woman...

By Brad Miner By first a note from Robert Royal: There's just over a week until I begin my brief course on Pope Leo and the Augustinian tradition. Don't miss this chance to learn more about our American pope, the religious tradition he was formed by, and the ways in which he seems to follow or depart from the legacy of perhaps the greatest thinker in the early Church, St. Augustine of Hippo. You c...

By David Warren Edgar Allan Poe mentioned three things, in connection with the Earthly Paradise, or perhaps there were four; I don't pretend to be a Poe expert. But so far as I remember, they were: life in the open air, the love of a good woman, and the creation of some original form of beauty. These struck me at the time (I was a teenager, and not yet consciously a Christian) as a useful list, so...

By Stephen P. White Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Ascension. (Depending on where you are; check your local listings.) It's worth pondering: Why did Christ ascend? Why, having conquered death, did He not remain? Wouldn't it have been simpler for a manifestly divine, resurrected Jesus to walk the earth, for however many millennia it might take, converting sinners by the unmistakable f...

By Robert Royal It's often been said, though perhaps not often enough lately, that the Devil can cite Scripture for his purposes. Whether the Evil One is operative in many of the current approaches to Scripture – in university departments and some Church circles – is a question best left to true authorities and even exorcists. But there's no question that the people who wrote Final Report of Study...