Dante in the Underworld by George Augustus Wallis. Public Domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. When I was 24, I was asked at the last minute to substitute teach a religious education class at ...

I am in awe of Father William Slattery’s command of his subject. He is, after all, covering 1,600 years of Western civilization — a civilization that he argues was “born from the womb of Catholicism ...

In the second century, St. Irenaeus coined one of the most famous phrases in Christianity: “The glory of God is man, fully alive!” “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo, Public Domain, courtesy of ...

We are all familiar with Blessed John Paul II’s description of the Culture of Death in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. The good Pope, of course, was not the first to notice and give expression ...

There is a very good reason for every Catholic to know the great works of literature — and that is because the great works of literature help us to know ourselves. This is the reason that we should ...

In Saint Matthew we read: And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and in Saint Luke: And for give us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us. It is the good news of the ...

This year we celebrate the Year of Dante, marking 700 years since the poet’s death on September 14, 1321. It is fitting that Dante died on the day when we commemorate the triumph of the Holy Cross, as ...

Sometime early in 2020 — at different times for different people — we Americans learned about Covid: a disease unlike anything we had experienced. We heard expert predictions that the disease would ...

When I gave a talk recently at the Institute of Catholic Culture on the subject of the Second Coming, I was I asked to describe what our resurrected bodies will be like. St. Paul writes to the ...

I always give the same answer: There’s good news and bad news. As 2022 begins, it’s worthwhile looking at the particular challenges to all of us these days. Being German-Irish and melancholic by ...

Up to now we have always regarded Lent as a time specially set aside for penance, a time for examining our consciences and doing penance for our sins. The struggle against sin was always made the ...

And it’s become increasingly difficult, for obvious reasons, since the advent of the Internet—to say nothing of the deep divisions we face at the start of this crazed election year. Or equally deep ...