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Skip to content I’ll continue to honor Lent in my heart all the year. The reason is neither “Catholic guilt” nor “Jansenism.” It is that Jesus rose from the dead so that we might imitate him, take up our own crosses, and experience truly what it means to be an Easter people, freed to love and serve God no matter the cost. It sounds mildly heretical. No doubt some would call it, without historical accuracy, Jansenist. Most people would say it’s masochistic or perhaps a sad manifestation of that great modern bogeyman, “Catholic guilt.” But I’ll say it anyway. I’m glad for the bacon and the other goodies of Easter, but I’m sad to see Lent gone. And I prefer to carry it with me throughout the year. Many people do this with other liturgical seasons, for worse or for better. Among the worse are ...

LONDON — “I thought I would like her to know about the Church not just because I’m a Catholic but also because it is part of our culture,” says Piers Paul Pead, speaking to the Register. The “her” he is referring to is his non-Catholic granddaughter, currently a student at Oxford University. She is, he says, “clever” but freely admits that she knows nothing about the Catholic faith. She was the catalyst — and first, intended audience — for Read’s latest book, A History of the Catholic Church (Meid Books), begun during the 2020 lockdowns and published in September 2023. Described by one reviewer as “a tour de force,” Read’s History has 127 short chapters, from the Church’s roots in Jewish history to the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. The narrative describes how a small community of belie...

Dignitas Infinita, the new declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), affirms that “every human person possesses an infinite dignity” and enumerates assaults on that dignity, with particular attention to new developments in “gender theory.”  While the sections dealing with abortion, surrogacy and gender ideology contain nothing new, the April 8 text has received “widespread praise” from many Catholic commentators who were apprehensive after last year’s declaration, Fiducia Supplicans (on blessings for “irregular same-sex couples”), proved disastrous.  The language on gender theory was unambiguous: “Therefore, all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected” (58). Not only would that preclude p...

By Jay Nies SCROLL THE ARROWS to see more photos.  Nate Pfenenger took his chances, rolled the dice and came out a winner. Specifically, he turned 20,400 black dice into an intricate, larger-than-life-size mosaic portrait of Venerable Father Augustus Tolton. “I didn’t think it was going to be a big thing,” said Nate, a senior at Fr. Tolton Regional Catholic High School in Columbia. “I just thought it would be a really fun and memorable art project.” Never one to settle for the ordinary, Nate says all of his art projects are “out of the box,” or beyond the scope of everyday thinking. “I’ve used Rubik’s Cubes to make a mosaic of my dog,” he said. “I’ve made a bonsai tree out of twisted wire. I’ve painted cartoon characters on a pair of shoes. And now, I’ve made a mosaic out of dice.” In...

A new study has revealed that Gen Z is the first generation where more women are leaving religion than men. This shocking flip in the gender divide is another mile marker that women are on the wrong path.  I recently published the book The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us to navigate and understand contemporary trends among women. I argued that feminism from the beginning has promoted an ideology that undermines faith and family. Several critiques have voiced disappointment that the book did not include a robust endorsement of Mary Wollstonecraft as a model for today’s women.  The most recent, by Nathan Schlueter, a Catholic father and professor at Hillsdale College, explains why I ought: “Wollstonecraft was pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro-motherhood and...

Readings:Acts 3:13–15, 17–19Psalm 4:2, 4, 7–91 John 2:1–5Luke 24:35–48 Jesus in today’s Gospel teaches His apostles how to interpret the Scriptures. He tells them that all the Scriptures of what we now call the Old Testament refer to Him. He says that all the promises found in the Old Testament have been fulfilled in His Passion, death, and Resurrection. And He tells them that these Scriptures foretell the mission of the Church—to preach forgiveness of sins to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. In today’s First Reading and Epistle, we see the beginnings of that mission. And we see the apostles interpreting the Scriptures as Jesus taught them to. God has brought to fulfillment what He announced beforehand in all the prophets, Peter preaches. His sermon is shot through with Old Testame...