If from time to time you have a sense that all things held dear in both Church and State seem to be collapsing, you might find a comrade in the Irish poet William Butler Yeats: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and…
In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, directly over the very spot where our Lord’s Cross stood, right where our Savior died for our salvation, there stands a Greek altar. Directly next to it stands a Latin altar. In between the two altars hangs an icon of the Mother of God. Right at…
Most of our Founding Fathers were not deeply informed about Catholicism, but they appreciated moral integrity when they saw it. When John Dubois, eventually the first resident Bishop of New York, fled the French Revolution, he lived for a while in the home of James Monroe. Patrick Henry taught him English, and Thomas Jefferson arranged for…
In my last article we looked at forming and accomplishing your vision, more on that later, and not worrying about being a people-pleaser. This month we look at someone whose actions demonstrate she cares more about the truth and doing what is right rather than worrying about what someone will think or say about her…
Scientists say that diamonds need more than 350 tons of pressure per square inch and heat levels above 2200 degrees Fahrenheit to form within the earth. And since we know that God’s own inner order and life imprint themselves on all of creation, this simple scientific fact has something to teach us about spiritual reality. …
Life in New York City can be hard for anyone who has difficulty accommodating paradoxes. For instance, the same City Council that has just banned the sale of foie gras on the grounds that it involves cruelty to force-fed geese, previously made New York the first city to pay mothers from other states to come…
Invite God into Your Life and into a world in desperate need of spiritual solutions for today’s challenges, a review of Rev William Watson, S.J.,’s Inviting God Into Your Life: A Practical Guide for Prayer. We live in turbulent times characterized by injustice, violence, and misinformation (what we use to call propaganda). Happiness and peace…
A 1973 film directed by Orson Welles was about forgers, and it turned out to be something of a forgery itself. Some of the information in “F for Fake” was itself faked. Later on, Welles claimed that this was deliberately done as a kind of joke, and he took to calling it an “essay” and…
Anyone who knows me understands that among the books I’ve written, one of my favorites is The Truth About Employee Engagement. My affinity for this book is the simplicity and efficacy of its message: employees only need three things from their managers to love their work. Really. And if that doesn’t sound unbelievable enough, those…
If “religio” is translated as being bound to a particular outlook on life, then everyone is religious. The saints simply have bound themselves to true religion. Today that is a socially unacceptable assertion, but “political correctness” is itself a form of religion. Early Christians were condemned as atheists because they refused to worship the gods…
It is time for us to look at some of the things influencing good, God-fearing people in the United States and to identify what is holding them back from taking action to accomplish an objective or preventing them from being people who don’t just know their faith but live their faith outwardly. Two of these…
Last week’s canonization of Saint John Henry Newman will have universal influences that I trust will include our own parish. It should be remembered that his achievements, for the most part, hardly seemed successful at the time. He might even be called a patron saint of the disappointed. Newman was so nervous in his university…
More than forty years ago, I told a wise Protestant theologian that I had been reading the Apologia pro Vita Sua of John Henry Newman (1801-1890). He warned me that it is “a dangerous book.” That was just the sort of advice that makes a young thinker all the more eager to read it. And so I did,…
CNA—It is important to consider what we are willing to die for, Archbishop Charles Chaput reminded students and faculty in a speech at the University of Notre Dame on Friday. “It’s a good thing, a vital thing, to consider what we’re willing to die for,” Chaput said in a lecture given to the Constitutional Studies…
If Warren Buffet hadn’t conquered his fear of public speaking, he may never have become the billionaire we admire today. He was “terrified” of public speaking and took specific steps to overcome his fear. He took the Dale Carnegie course and today, his certificate is the only “degree” that he displays in his office. He…
Book Reviews of Sharyl Attkisson’s The Smear and Howard Kurtz’s Media Madness. Journalism is in my blood. My grandfather was editor of the Chicago Times and then served as Executive Editor of the Chicago Sun-Times after the Times was acquired by Marshall Field Enterprises. My mother followed in his footsteps with a local newsletter, SCOOP,…
At the start of October, life in Manhattan recovers from those late September weeks when the opening of the United Nations General Assembly ties up traffic, even blocking many streets, and takes over many hotels and clubs for expensive receptions—some of the costliest, it seems, being those of some of the poorest countries. With so…
by Tim Busch and Kevin Stidham—Another Supreme Court term has ended, and once again the court failed to revisit the question of abortion. In our time, it seems that abortion is discussed everywhere except the Supreme Court, where most justices seem intent to do anything to avoid the topic. And still, each passing term, the…
In thinking of angels, you need humility, for a couple of reasons. First of all, a cynical culture mocks anyone who believes that angels exist in any way that is real rather than sentimental. Secondly, since angels, who were created before humans, are intelligent beyond any material measurement, that means they are smarter than any…
As with quotations that are variously attributed, journalists including Charles Anderson Dana of the “New York Tribune” and John B. Bogart of the “New York Sun” are said to have coined the aphorism: “‘Dog bites man’ does not make the news, but ‘Man bites dog’ does.” Human nature is fascinated by what is exceptional and…
