If you fly up to high altitude to study the past 50 years of American religious life, here is what you will see. Yes, there is the trend toward “nones” and then the “none of the above” believers, which began with the “Sheila-ism” phenomenon that the late sociologist Robert Bellah described in his classic book “Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life.” In it, the woman who was the real Sheila proclaims: “I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice. … It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think God would want us to take care of each other.” Remember, that was already happening in th...

Is Sen. JD Vance telling the truth about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets? If not, should a Catholic political candidate be corrected for spreading falsehoods? The Catholic bishops of Ohio have done just that, as has the Catholic Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine. Former president Donald Trump repeated the claim about Haitians killing and eating pets in his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. Vance, who represents Ohio in the Senate, repeatedly has made the same claim about his state. The controversy illustrates a different concern about Catholic candidates for political office. For many generations, the usual question has been whether the policies of a particular Catholic candidate cohere with Catholic social teaching. For example, 40 years ago, Catholic v...

(Matthew 27:35-61; Mark 15:21-47; Luke 23:26-56; John 19:18-42) If you stop and think about it, the Christian message is utterly out of sync with what human beings would expect. That the Son of the All-Powerful and Ever-Living God would allow himself to be brutally killed, tortured for hours by some people in a backwater place in the Roman Empire, boggles the mind. That he should have allowed that out of love for human beings, from whom gratitude was not assured, is even more mind-boggling. That he even bothered … shows you what Love means. God could have redeemed us however he chose. In suffering for our sins, Jesus is teaching us, showing us graphically just how hateful, destructive, violent and malicious sin is. “For us men and our salvation,” he came down from heaven. To teach us he ca...

The Gospel for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, shows Jesus denouncing sin in the strongest possible terms. It’s no wonder: The world has been destroyed by sin and the Church has been shipwrecked by it — in fact, by men and women who were taught to sin as children. But Jesus also gives a giant promise of hope for our future. Fully 60% of the words in this Sunday’s Gospel passage are Jesus warning of harsh, dire consequences for sin. Jesus says, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna.” He says the same thing about your feet and your eyes. This is Semitic hyperbole; it doesn’t mean you should literally maim yourself. But it does mean that it is better to be a blind quadruple-amputee than to b...

I am compiling a “Back-to-Basics Catechesis” by focusing on Biblical Stories. Here is a reflection on the Fall of Man. A PDF of this reflection is here: THE FALL OF MAN God had made all things, and He pronounced it “very good.” And yet, something very tragic took place that would shake and alter the very foundations of what God had set forth. That event is call by various titles: Original Sin, the Sin of Adam, The Fall of Man, and so forth. The story begins in the third chapter of Genesis: Now the serpent was more cunning than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not ...