Essays

A Case For the Devil

Damian J. Ference

After twenty-three years of Catholic school I can count on one hand the number of lessons or lectures I remember about the devil.

My first bit of formal instruction came in kindergarten. Sister Vincent taught us a song about having joy in our hearts, and if the devil didn’t like it he could sit on a tack. I had a hard time seeing the need for an archangel like Michael, having his way with the devil while wielding a shiny silver sword, if a sharp tack would do the job just as well. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Christmas 2005, Essays Leave a Comment

G.K. Chesterton and the Use of the Imagination

Dale Ahlquist

The purpose of the imagination is to make us more like God. Sounds like something a serpent might say. But it’s not. That really is the purpose of the imagination. To make us more like God. After all, our imagination is a gift from God. It is perhaps one of the greatest gifts God has given us. It not only separates us from the beasts, it allows us to create new worlds of our own. Our imagination gives us a kind of omnipotence. There is almost nothing that we cannot do within the infinity of our minds. The Creator has made us in His own image. That is, he has made us creators. Our creativity is re-creation. And yes, it is recreation as well. It is restorative and rejuvenating. It is a pleasure. It is peace. It is a gift that we have abused, but perhaps even worse, it is a gift we have left unused. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Christmas 2005, Essays 6 Comments

Home Thoughts From Abroad

Joseph Pearce

O to be in England

Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!

-Robert Browning
(Home-thoughts, from Abroad)

O to be in England … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Essays, Lent/Easter 2006 Leave a Comment

“Coming Awake in Love”: A Discussion on the Struggle for Holiness and the Writing of Shirt of Flame: My Year with St. Therese of Lisieux

Heather King

How did the book come about? Why St. Thérèse?

A few years ago, I was approached by an editor at Paraclete Press—an editor with whom I had a long-standing relationship—with the idea of writing a book about “walking” with a saint for a year. Not a biography, or a hagiography, but a sort of lived reflection on the saint’s work, thought, prayer, path. So I thought for a bit and chose Thérèse of Lisieux because there is something kind of irresistible about a beautiful young French girl who wanted to be the Bride of Christ so badly that at the age of fourteen she traveled to Rome, knelt at the feet of Pope Leo XIII, and begged for permission to enter the freezing cold, crawlingwith-neurotic-nuns, cloistered convent at Carmel. Who spent the rest of her short life in obscurity but on spiritual fire, going so far at one point as to offer herself as a “Holocaust Victim” to love. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Essays, Mary Queen of Angels 2011 4 Comments

The Telos of a University

Mark C. Henrie

I.
Why go to college?

Here is a peculiarity of American life today: The young man or woman in high school invests enormous time and energy in the process of choosing and applying to the best colleges and universities within reach. Guidebooks are consulted, campus visits made, prep courses for the SAT or ACT taken with genuine zeal. Essays are honed and polished beyond anything ever written for a class assignment. Applications are placed in the mail, and students then fret day and night about the status of their case. In time, various envelopes arrive by return mail, some large and some small. Students rejoice over the large ones, and the business of leaving home commences with a round of summer purchases of appropriate clothing and other accoutrements of college life. Finally, our young Americans find themselves participating in a matriculation ceremony in the richly-paneled hall of some ivy-covered building. They have arrived at last at college. The only question they’ve never really asked themselves is this: Why am I going to college in the first place? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Essays, Lent/Easter 2007 Leave a Comment

A Man of Culture: Reflections on the Papal Visit

Pope Benedict XVI, the pundits tell us, is not living up to his image as God’s Rottweiler. One almost senses a hint of disappointment in their voice. Admittedly, many recent articles have featured generally positive portrayals of the Holy Father, but they have also given rise to the cliché that Pope Benedict is a “mystery.” This seems to have been the default media position during his recent visit to the United States. How is it, they wonder, that this strict disciplinarian—this former Panzerkardinal—now seems more interested in talking about love and hope—as he has at length in his two first encyclicals—than in hunting down heretics, sinners, and unbelievers? Has he gone soft? Is it a public relations move? So far the media refuse to imagine that the caricature of the pope they themselves created upon his election may have been mistaken in the first place. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Essays, Old Features, Sts. Peter and Paul 2008 Leave a Comment

Two Bases of Morality in Catholic Theology

Robert T. Miller

There are nowadays at least two competing foundational concepts in Catholic moral theology. The first of these is the concept of human dignity, the intrinsic value of the human person, something the human person has simply by virtue of being a person. Because the human person has such intrinsic value, we are morally obligated to respect human nature, both in ourselves and in everyone else, and the content of this obligation is usually explained by saying that we ought to treat the human person always as an end and never merely as a means, especially never as a mere means to our own pleasure. The concept of human dignity appears in the writings of many contemporary Catholic philosophers(1) and theologians,(2) especially the writings of Pope John Paul II,(3) and even in some recent magisterial documents of the Catholic Church.(4) [Read more...]