The Moral Crisis of Our Time Nineteen sixty-eight is rightly remembered as a year of chaos, confusion, and confrontation. As the year began, the noted sociologist of religion, William “Will” Herberg (1901-1977), published an essay entitled “What Is the Moral Crisis of Our Time?” in the Intercollegiate Review (January-March 1968). As a college senior reading that essay, I was struck by its analytical and prophetic power. In Catholic tradition, the word work means efforts that bring order out of chaos. Will Herberg’s essay “worked” for me. Its thesis was – and, I believe, is – so clear and so compelling …
Category: Apologetics
The Irish Referandum
Well, the Republic of Ireland is gone. Gone to the dark side. It has repudiated the Catholic religion. It did this on Friday May 25, 2018, when the citizens of Ireland, the great majority of whom are at least nominally Catholic, voted by an overwhelming majority (roughly 2 to 1) to repeal the article of their constitution (the 8thAmendment) that banned abortion except to save the life of the mother. After having stood by the faith during hundreds of years of Protestant oppression and persecution, they have succumbed to atheistic seduction. More than 1,500 hundred years after St. Patrick, they’ve …
The Glorious Mission of Theology
I recently mentioned to my new boss that I was pursuing a masters degree in theology. “Oh, theology!” he said. “I met some people when I studied in Europe who were into theology. It must be nice to get to sit back and just ponder those big, impenetrable questions.” It was probably meant as a compliment, but it made the field sound obscure and impractical. To an outsider, the doctrine of the Trinity, the homoousion (or sacramental theology) can seem opaque. Yet I’m increasingly convinced that if your theological study results only in esoteric musings, completely detached from your Christian …
The Decipherment of Cupich
The Decipherment of Cupich Basilides Melchischyros offers thoughts on Blase Cardinal Cupich’s recent elucidation of Amoris Laetitia. Having recently returned to Utopia from a scholarly visit to Cambridge (England), Basilides Melchischyros, of the Academia Moriae in Amaurote, offers these tentative thoughts as a reflective accompaniment to the cardinal archbishop of Chicago’s recent elucidation of Amoris Laetitia, which he was privileged to hear at the Von Hügel Institute. He argues that, widespread criticism notwithstanding, the cardinal’s pronouncements are, when properly interpreted, not only consistent with traditional Catholic teachings but a ringing endorsement of them. Of course, he submits all that he proposes here …
The Church Teaches and Judges Consciences
The Church Teaches – and Judges – Consciences A number of bishops have announced that Catholics in irregular unions whose consciences are “at peace” with God must be allowed to receive Holy Communion. This has never been the belief or practice of the Church, yet they assert it is rooted in the traditional teaching that conscience must be respected, even when mistaken. They fail to mention, however, that only the dictates of conscience are binding, not all its judgments, and that conscience is subject to the teaching and judgment of the Church. Once these truths are taken into account, the …
The China Syndrome
The China Syndrome In several decades of living in Washington, D.C., I’ve met my share of scamps and scalawags, fabulists and outright liars. It would take a modern Dante to determine which circle of Inferno each type of misbehavior merited. But of one thing, I am certain: at least in my own experience, I’ve never encountered more brazen and manipulative liars than Communist Chinese officials responsible for relations with religious believers. Which is what makes it so disturbing that last week reports surfaced that the Vatican asked two underground Chinese bishops, loyal to Rome, to step aside in order to …
The Catholic Church Doesn’t Do Paradigm Shifts
Ever since Thomas Kuhn popularized it with his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the notion of a “paradigm shift” has led to fascinating arguments about whether this or that break with previous scientific understanding counted as one. But that a “paradigm shift”—like the “shift” from Sir Isaac Newton’s cosmology to Albert Einstein’s, or the shift from the miasma theory of disease to the germ theory of disease—is a rupture in continuity is not in much dispute. A “paradigm shift” signals a dramatic, sudden, and unexpected break in human understanding—and thus something of a new beginning. So, are there …
The Apostolic Secession
The Apostolic Secession An axiom in the legal profession is that a lawyer should never ask a question in court to which he doesn’t already know the answer. Getting an answer, you don’t want can be embarrassing and may even harm your case. Pope Francis has asked young people to write to him with their concerns. This is part of the lead up to October’s synod: Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment. Reading that text, you may be surprised that every papal document cited is by Pope Francis. No Paul VI, no John Paul II, no Benedict XVI? This …
The Apostasy of Our Times
The Apostasy of Our Times Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek, STD has been a priest of the Diocese of Austin since 1985 and is currently pastor of parishes in Gatesville and Hamilton. His doctoral studies were in Dogmatics with a focus on Ecclesiology, Apostolic Ministry, Newman, and Ecumenism. For over fifty years, there has been a relentless campaign to reinterpret the Gospel in order to remove the Cross from Christian life. This has been done in the name of love, mercy, and realism – but it is none of these. It is a denial of God’s love manifest in the suffering …
Stephen Hawking, John Lennon and Atheism’s Fear of Eternity
Stephen Hawking appears during the 2006 press conference at the National Library of France to inaugurate the Laboratory of Astronomy and Particles in Paris. (via Wikimedia Commons) There is no annihilation for our everlasting souls; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the light. John Clark In the recent book, God or Nothing, Robert Cardinal Sarah makes a comment that seems parenthetical to the rest of the work, but is nevertheless fascinating: “A Godless society, which considers any spiritual questions a dead letter, masks the emptiness of its materialism by killing time so as better to forget eternity.” …