R. Jared Staudt PhD, serves as Associate Superintendent for Mission and Formation for the Archdiocese of Denver and Visiting Associate Professor for the Augustine Institute. He is the author of Restoring Humanity: Essays on the Evangelization of Culture (Divine Providence Press) and The Beer Option (Angelico Press) and the editor of Renewing Catholic Schools: How to Regain a Catholic Vision in a Secular Age (Catholic Education Press). He and his wife Anne have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate. Catholic schools exist for a fundamental purpose, as they are called to help our young Catholics to reach the goal of life: true happiness in God. …
Category: Apologetics
Russia, Ukraine, and moral reckoning
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), and Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse …
Disobey and you’ll get your way
Peter M.J. Stravinskas is the editor of The Catholic Response, and the author of over 500 articles for numerous Catholic publications, as well as several books, including The Catholic Church and the Bible and Understanding the Sacraments For fifty years “liberal” disobedience and disregard for liturgical norms most often resulted, not only in no punishment, but in having disobedience enshrined in law. In my senior year of high school, I was taking fourth-year Latin and third-year French; in the latter course, Sister Maria Gemma offered us a proposal: If we completed the whole textbook before semester’s end, she would give us a treat (which she …
Priest’s Book Tells Sad Tale of Jesuits’ Abortion Complicity in the US
Father Raymond J. de Souza is the founding editor of Convivium magazine. COMMENTARY: The late Jesuit Father Paul Mankowski knew how badly some of his brother priests and his superiors had betrayed the Society of Jesus. Need a prominent cleric to give cover to Catholic politicians who vote to preserve and expand abortion access? For more than 50 years, the Jesuits have had a man at the ready. It is a grave scandal in one of the Church’s most venerable orders. Jesuit Father Pat Conroy, who served as chaplain of the House of Representatives from May 2011 to January 2021, gave an interview published …
Growing in Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus
Father Roger J. Landry, a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA. COMMENTARY: To pray in Jesus’ name is to do more than finish our prayers by saying “through Christ our Lord.” It means to pray in communion with the person of Jesus, to turn to the Father together with the Son. One of the fruits of the Year of St. Joseph just concluded was the opportunity to enter into his contemplative, hardworking silence and to ponder how the only word Scripture records him saying is the name of Jesus, pronounced eight days …
Did the Church Change the Name of Confession?
Mr. Shaun McAfee, O.P. is the author of Reform Yourself! and other books and is the founder and editor of EpicPew.com and contributes to many online Catholic resources. He holds a Masters in Dogmatic Theology from Holy Apostles College and Seminary. Shaun has made his temporary profession as a Lay Dominican and temporarily lives in Italy. “The forgiveness of sins committed after Baptism is conferred by a particular sacrament called the sacrament of conversion, confession, penance, or reconciliation.” (CCC 1486) When I entered the Catholic Church some years ago, I recall someone in RCIA saying that the focus on Confession had shifted in …
The Immaculate Conception Revisited
Dr. Leroy Huizenga is Administrative Chair of Arts and Letters and Professor of Theology at the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D. Dr. Huizenga has a B.A. in Religion from Jamestown College (N.D.), a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University. During his doctoral studies, he received a Fulbright Grant to study and teach at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt, Germany. After teaching at Wheaton College (Ill.) for five years, Dr. Huizenga was reconciled with the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil of 2011. Dr. Huizenga is the author of The New Isaac: …
The Personhood of the Fetus
Raymond B. Marcin is a Professor of Law Emeritus at The Catholic University of America School of Law. He has taught Constitutional Law for four decades and has co-authored The American Constitutional Order: History, Cases, and Philosophy (with Kmiec, Presser, and Eastman), 3rd ed. (Charlottesville, VA: LexisNexis, 2009). All but ignored in the Dobbs arguments was the issue of whether the living, developing, and growing human child in the womb of her mother has the right to life guaranteed to persons in the text of the Constitution as well as in the text of the Declaration of Independence. In the arguments before the United States Supreme Court in Dobbs …
‘The Music of Christendom’: Why the World Should Thank the Church for ‘Classical’ Compositions
By Trent Beattie In addition to assembling Finding True Happiness, Trent Beattie is the author of Scruples and Sainthood and the editor for Saint Alphonsus Liguori for Every Day. He lives in Seattle, Washington. The Music of Christendom A History By Susan Treacy Ignatius Press/Augustine Institute, 2021 235 pages, $16.95 To order: ignatius.com It would probably come as a shock to many people today, but the Gregorian chant is the foundational music of the Western world. Although monophonic, this type of music is anything but monotonous. There is variety in the modes of chants themselves and in the various forms of music that have developed from …
Is Christ Really Our King?
Msgr. Charles Pope is currently a dean and pastor in the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, where he has served on the Priest Council, the College of Consultors, and the Priest Personnel Board. Along with publishing a daily blog at the Archdiocese of Washington website, he has written in pastoral journals, conducted numerous retreats for priests and lay faithful, and has also conducted weekly Bible studies in the U.S. Congress and the White House. He was named a Monsignor in 2005. User’s Guide to Sunday, the Solemnity of Christ the King Sunday, Nov. 21, is the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus …