
- Alexandra DeSanctisJournalist
- Tea with Brother VasoComedian
- Chromacat: The Extraordinary Form of ColoringProduct/Service
Mother Teresa on abortion:
“The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.”
A letters exchange from the Catholic Herald that I republish for those interested in JF Powers:
Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein have both been planning films on the explosive Mortara Case. Romanus Cessario argues that Pius IX—usually seen as the story’s villain—was right. And he raises a fundamental question: “Should putative civil liberties trump the requirements of faith?”
“Sexual morality is integral to the Christian vision of redemption.” A great essay by the great Kyle Harper:
Matthew Schmitz shared First Things's post.
Glad to see this listed as one of First Things’s most popular articles for 2017.
In 1966, Christopher Derrick anticipated the gulf that would emerge between the generation of Vatican II and those that would follow. Here is his brilliant explanation of why the Vatican II era must end.
“I am a Catholic. I believe that true cinema is necessarily a Christian cinema, because there is no truth except in Christianity. I believe in the genius of Christianity, and there is not a single great film in the history of cinema that is not infused with the light of the Christian idea. A mystical cinema? Yes, if it is true that a clear grasp of immanence leads to transcendence.”—Eric Rohmer
Michael Sean Winters doesn’t like my last column—which is fair enough! What astounds me is his breezy dismissal of St. Pius X.
How arrogant do you have to be to attempt a takedown of the Sermon on the Mount? Colin McGinn attacks what he calls “a mishmash of antiquated, peculiar, and dubious pronouncements.”
“A theological discernment enables us to see in our time two unexpected threats, almost like two apocalyptic beasts, located on opposite poles: on the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. To use a slogan, we find ourselves between gender ideology and ISIS. Islamic massacres and libertarian demands regularly contend for the front page of the newspapers.” —Cardinal Robert Sarah
Stanley Hauerwas says that his students “convert because Catholicism is an intellectually rich theological tradition better able to negotiate the acids of our culture.” Speaking for myself, I didn’t convert in order to participate in a rich intellectual tradition (after all, one can spend a whole life reading Aquinas and Augustine without submitting to the Church’s discipline—and many do just that). No, I joined the Church so that I might be saved.































