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The other night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Michelle Wolf, who I’m told is a comedian, regaled the black-tie and sequin-gowned crowd with her “jokes.” Almost all were in extremely bad taste and/or wildly offensive, but one has become accustomed to that sort of coarseness in the comedy clubs and even on mainstream television.
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Last month, America magazine published a fascinating survey regarding the attitudes of women in the Church. They were kind enough to publish a few of my reactions to the study, but I would like, in this article, to offer a fuller response to their findings.
One of the most disturbing conclusions from the survey is that women are increasingly disengaging from the life of the Church. The America editors themselves observed that this does not bode well for evangelization, for women have traditionally played a crucial role in the passing on of the faith.
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Bishop Robert Barron’s latest exploration into the life and truth of the Catholic faith, To Light a Fire on the Earth, was released recently.
To Light a Fire on the Earth is Bishop Barron’s anticipated follow-up to his book Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of Faith, which was released in 2011. This book differs from the first as it is written in partnership with Vatican journalist, John L. Allen, Jr.
The WordonFire website offers the synopsis shared below.
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Even though I lived in France for three years while doing my doctoral studies, I never managed a visit to Mont Saint-Michel, the mysterious, mystical, and hauntingly photogenic abbey situated on a promontory just off the Normandy coast between Caen and St. Malo.
But last week, in connection with the filming for my Pivotal Players series, my team and I made the pilgrimage.
I first spied the mount from the backseat of the van, when we were still many miles away. It looked like a great ship, moored on the line of the horizon. As we got closer, the place became increasingly impressive, sometimes looming like a fortress, other times seeming to float on the sea.
When we entered the gates this morning to commence our work, we stepped out of our world and into the Middle Ages. Our climb to the top —arduous and steep — mimicked that of thousands of pilgrims and monks and spiritual seekers over the centuries.
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I write these words from Milan, Italy, where I am with my Word on Fire team filming new episodes for our Pivotal Players series.
I’ve seen lots of marvelous things on this trip, including the ruins of the ancient baptistery under the Milan Cathedral where, in the spring of 387, St. Augustine was baptized by St. Ambrose.
But the most fascinating sight I’ve taken in is the vested and mitered skeleton of that same Ambrose, which rests in the basilica that bears his name, not far from the cathedral.
Behind a grille, just under the main altar, lie the skeletal remains of Ambrose and two martyr saints, Gervasius and Protasius, whose bodies were recovered during his lifetime.
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As any apologist worth his/her salt will tell you, the great objection to the proposition that God exists is the fact of innocent suffering.
If you want a particularly vivid presentation of this complaint, go on YouTube and look up Stephen Fry’s disquisition on why he doesn’t believe in God. (Then right afterward, please, do look at my answer to Fry).
But the anguished question of an army of non-believers remains: how could an all-loving and all-powerful God possibly allow the horrific suffering endured by those who simply don’t deserve it? Say all you want, these critics hold, about God’s plan and good coming from evil, but the disproportion between evil and the benefits that might flow from it simply rules out the plausibility of religious faith.
The skilled and experienced apologist will also tell you that, in the face of this problem, there is no single, unequivocal “answer,” no clinching argument that will leave the doubter stunned into acquiescence. The best approach is to walk slowly around the issue, in the manner of the phenomenologists, illuminating now this aspect, now that.
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Mother Angelica, one of the most significant figures in the post-conciliar Catholic Church in America, has died after a 14-year struggle with the after effects of a stroke.
I can attest that, in “fashionable” Catholic circles during the ’80s and ’90s of the last century, it was almost de rigueur to make fun of Mother Angelica. She was a crude popularizer, an opponent of Vatican II, an arch-conservative, a culture-warrior, etc., etc.
And yet, while her critics have largely faded away, her impact and influence are incontestable. Against all odds and expectations, she created an evangelical vehicle without equal in the history of the Catholic Church.
Starting from, quite literally, a garage in Alabama, EWTN now reaches 230 million homes in over 140 countries around the world. With the possible exception of John Paul II himself, she was the most watched and most effective Catholic evangelizer of the last 50 years.
Read Raymond Arroyo’s splendid biography in order to get the full story of how Rita Rizzo, born and raised in a tough neighborhood in Canton, Ohio, came in time to be a nun, a foundress, and a television personality.
For the purposes of this brief article, I would like simply to draw attention to three areas of particular spiritual importance in the life of Mother Angelica: her trust in God’s providence, her keen sense of the supernatural quality of religion, and her conviction that suffering is of salvific value.
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Editor’s note: Because of its length, this column by Bishop Robert Barron is being published in a two-part series. This is the second part of the series.
Hans Urs von Balthasar observes that the beautiful elects the observer and then sends him on mission to announce what he has seen.
Not many years ago, Rolling Stone magazine asked a number of prominent popular musicians to name the song that first “rocked their world.”
Some of the responses were relatively banal, but the vast majority of them had a Joycean resonance: the respondents knew instinctively the difference between songs (however great) that had merely pleased them and songs that had shaken them out of their complacency and rearranged their vision things.
This kind of aesthetic encounter is the spiritual exercise that Irish Murdoch is speaking of.
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When I saw the coming attractions for the new film Risen — which deals with a Roman tribune searching for the body of Jesus after reports of the Resurrection — I thought that it would leave the audience in suspense, intrigued but unsure whether these reports were justified or not.
I was surprised and delighted to discover that the movie is, in fact, robustly Christian and substantially faithful to the Biblical account of what transpired after the death of Jesus.
My favorite scene shows tribune Clavius (played by the always convincing Joseph Fiennes) bursting into the Upper Room, intent upon arresting Jesus’ most intimate followers. As he takes in the people in the room, he spies Jesus, at whose crucifixion he had presided and whose face in death he had closely examined.
But was he seeing straight? Was this even possible? He slinks down to the ground, fascinated, incredulous, wondering, anguished.
As I watched the scene unfold, the camera sweeping across the various faces, I was as puzzled as Clavius: was that really Jesus? It must indeed have been like that for the first witnesses of the Risen One, their confusion and disorientation hinted at in the Scriptures themselves: “They worshipped, but some doubted.”
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Just a few days ago, I had the enormous privilege of performing my first Confirmation as a bishop.
It took place at Holy Cross Parish in Moor Park, Calif., a large, bustling, and bi-lingual parish in my pastoral region. I told the confirmandi — and I meant it — that I would keep them in my heart for the rest of my life, for we were connected by an unbreakable bond.
In preparation for this moment, I was, of course, obliged to craft a homily, and that exercise compelled me to do some serious studying and praying around the meaning of this great sacrament.
It is sometimes said that Confirmation is a sacrament in search of a theology. It is indeed true that most Catholics could probably give at least a decent account of the significance of Baptism, Eucharist, Confession, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and the Anointing of the Sick, but they might balk when asked to explain the meaning of Confirmation.
