Our Barren Garden of Symbols

It is becoming increasingly clear to me how vehemently our modern culture loaths symbolism. Our society is so ridiculously analytical, so bull-headedly rationalistic, that we can have no patience for the subtle communication of the economy of symbolism. That's not to say we don't like visual representations; we love those, but only if they are rationalized, corporatized, and utilitarian. We are a society obsessed with logos and mascots but cannot abide signs and symbols. 

Happy Feast of Christ the King

Hey everyone! Blessed Feast of Christ the King in the traditional calendar. I hope you all are well. I've been very busy and have had less time to write than I would like, so I don't have much new for you this Sunday. I do have several essays in the works though, which I hope to be getting out shortly.

Walking to Church

One thing that’s so nice about Europe is the walking culture. Because the vast majority of European cities emerged before the invention of the automobile, they are built to a human scale, with the expectation that the average person will be able to get around town by simply walking from Point A to Point B.

Crises of Faith: Letting Go to Hold On

A lot of Catholics ask me for advice on how to process what is unfolding these days. Events are really challenging people's paradigms of how they understand the Church, the papacy, and even the faith itself. They want desperately to understand how everything fits together—how can we process what we've witnessed within the framework of our beliefs? This causes people considerable anxiety, even agony; sometimes it consumes their spiritual lives entirely. They feel profound unease at not being able to account for every jot and tittle within their understanding.

If I Were Kidnapped by ISIS...(but it's actually about the Church)

Don't ask me why, but sometimes I imagine myself in the Middle East—in somewhere like Erbil or Mosul—and I imagine getting kidnapped by terrorists. I imagine being held in some secret ISIS detention center, bound and malnourished, maybe bloodied by mistreatment, tortured, and awaiting certain death. I imagine the swell of emotions I would feel trying to steady my resolve in the face of imminent doom, dealing with regrets of things left undone, sadness at leaving those I love so prematurely, and preparing my soul for judgment. I imagine the simple but fervent prayers I would likely make in such a harrowing ordeal.

The Nuance Required Reading Historical Texts

Peter Kwasniewski recently kicked up a hornet's nest with two articles on his substack Tradition and Sanity lauding well-ordered social dances as a wholesome past time for Catholic youth (see "Why Catholics Should Learn to Dance" and "The Great Good of Social Dancing"). This innocuous suggestion was met with fierce pushback from people who insisted that dancing is sinful.

I am not particularly interested in weighing in on the argument about dancing, which Dr. Kwasniewski has discussed thoroughly in his two articles quoted above and which I concur with. I am more concerned with the hermeneutics of the contrarians arguing against dancing, because I think it illustrates an important lesson about how not to read Church documents. In following the discussion on social media, I noticed the contrarians typically argued their point by posting a slur of quotations from popes and saints, insisting that "the Magisterium has condemned dances." Now, I personally learned long ago that strings of quotations mean little without supporting context; many statements that seem to say one thing actually say something different when read in historical context. Or a statement that seems absolute turns out to not be as universal as initially assumed. Context is everything; as Scott Hahn says, a text without a context is a pretext.

Two Deaths and Two Masses: The Healing Power of the Requiem

The following is a guest post submitted by a friend of this blog who wishes his reflections to remain anonymous.

Let's Talk About Married Priests

Let's talk about married priests. Well, not married priests per se, but our attitudes toward married priests. I had a very unpleasant interaction with a reader the other day that has left me sort of fuming and feeling like there's some issues that need to be cleared up. So, be warned, I'm a bit saucy.

Belloc: How Status Protects Labor

In his classic 1937 work The Crisis of Civilization, Hilaire Belloc convincing argues that the rejection of the Catholic Church at the time of the Protestant Revolt is directly responsible for the social and economic troubles of modernity. According to Belloc, the most pressing economic problem is that the vast majority of people are wage-earners to a small owner class who have a disproportionate control of the means of production. This situation Belloc calls 'Proletarianism.' While modern wage-earners have political rights, full economic freedom eludes them because they are too dependent upon those who pay their wages. Unlike the Communists who assert that private ownership of property is the fundamental evil, Belloc states the problem is not that capital is owned and utilized by so few, but that so many are proletarian wage-earners.

Why I'm not Orthodox

Everytime I post something on my YouTube channel, there are always a band of obnoxious OrthoBros who show up in the comments chiding me for not being Orthodox, or nagging me to convert. It's super annoying. They must think that because I am critical of the current state of Catholicism that I'm on the verge of going Orthodox or something. I guess that is a thing for some Catholics; I often see comments from Catholics who, when responding to bad news in the Church, will say something like, "Looks like it's almost time to go Orthodox!" If your big plan is to "go Orthodox" when things get "bad enough" in the Catholic Church, then you're already a bad Orthodox—because if you really believed the claims of Orthodoxy enough to join it, then you would convert right now, not at some hypothetical future when things get "bad enough" with Rome. 

Make Your Devotion Attractive

If you consider yourself a devout Catholic, then your devotion should be the most attractive part of your personality. Like turning on a light, your devotion should radiate over every other aspect of your character, enriching it with warmth and goodness. Whether you work a career or are a full-time parent or spend your days as a volunteer, your piety permeate these activities in such a way that it is attractive to others—in a way that makes others say, "I want what they have."

Update on Latin Mass and Youth Book Project

Back in April, I put the word out that I was seeking young essayists for a book project titled The Latin Mass and the Youth. The goal of this book will be to explore, in their own words, why the traditional liturgy is so appealing to the youth. This email is an update on the progress of the project.

The Propriety of Eucharistic Devotions

July's Eucharistic Congress saw tens of thousands of Catholics gather in impressive ceremonies in Indianapolis to honor the Eucharistic presence of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. While there's certainly critiques that can be made about the Congress, it was heartwarming to see so many pious souls coming together for the love of the Blessed Sacrament. I'd say the Eucharistic Congress itself was a success; whether it will bear lasting fruit remains to be seen.

Two Saints Describe What It's Like Receiving Prophecies

Saints are notoriously humble people. They know that whatever gifts and graces they have come by the goodness of God, not by any merit of their own. They are extraordinarily fearful of their own pride, and consequently do not like to talk about their own mystical or miraculous experiences. Those who do write about them often do so only under obedience. It is thus very mysterious, from a layman's perspective, what it is really like experientially to receive these special charisms from God—what it is like "behind the veil" for those who truly receive prophetic revelations and visions.

So Long, Pater Familias

Welp, another Catholic blog from the golden age of blogging bit the dust this spring. On May 13, Rob Marco announced he was wrapping up his blog Pater Familias. Rob had been a fixture in the Catholic blogging world going back to 2006 and had two other blogs prior to Pater Familias. It took me awhile to discover Pater Familias; there were several years when I was far too busy to read any Catholic blogs and it was all I could do to just keep this one afloat. I think I met Rob through his own persistent efforts to get to know me through the combox of own blog, and we eventually started communicating. It has been a fruitful friendship for which I am grateful. I have always found Rob's insights into Catholic life pervaded with a nitty-gritty, on the ground realism that seeks to get behind cliches and platitudes to dig into the core of what the struggle for holiness actually entails. I know many other people found Rob's ruminations an anchor of spiritual stability in a tumultuous time as well.