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I am reposting this article since we are discussing it on EWTN’s Morning Glory radio show. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we commemorate today, is best known as a civil rights leader who worked to end racial injustice, but he had other things to say as he preached each Sunday, first in his own assembly and later as he spoke around the country. Among his recorded sermons is one in which Dr. King addressed the problem of unbelief, of materialism and atheism. His reflections are well worth pondering today because the problem is even more widespread now than it was when he made these remarks in 1957. A complete transcript of the sermon is available here: The Man Who Was a Fool. In this sermon, Dr. King commented on Jesus’ parable of the wealthy man who had a huge harvest and, inst...

4 Seminarians walking (Catholic Church of England and Wales CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) The purpose of discernment is action. The purpose of discerning if you are called to the priesthood is to either be set on the path of ordination or set on the path to marriage. Someone may ask whether all discernment should come before entering the Seminary. Recently, a story about those who had discerned out of the seminary lead some people I know to wonder if such discernment should be done before the seminary. I thought I should give a brief explainer about why discernment should not finish before the seminary. I’ve not worked extensively in a seminary but base this on my own experience and experiences shared by those I’ve known. My goal is not to explain every point about seminary discernment but to point out...

Kevin Wells pleads for the recovering of a Roman Catholic priesthood steeped in the muscular Christianity of bygone days. Invoking especially the memories of his murdered monsignor-uncle, he makes a fervent layman’s appeal for priests to abandon the niceness and complacency that have contributed to the recent woes of the church. The Priests We Need to Save the Church, by Kevin Wells (229 pages, Sophia Institute Press, 2019). Kevin Wells’ monograph was started as a celebration of the priestly ministry of his uncle. Monsignor Thomas Wells was a devout and effectual priest whose ministry was cut short by his untimely murder. While compiling notes and tributes to write about the hallmarks of this pious priest, Mr. Wells unexpectedly found himself writing in the aftermath of the 2018-19 scandal...

Every year since 1908, beginning on January 18 and ending on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on January 25, the Graymoor Institute and the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement have been promoting a focused week of prayer and reflection, asking God to bring unity to the body of Christ. The idea of an octave of prayer for unity among Christians was the brainchild of Servant of God Fr. Paul Wattson, who conceived of it while he was still an Anglican. In a 2016 lecture at St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in Minnesota, Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson gave a thorough and fascinating presentation on the man behind the International Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which you can watch here: [embedded content]

The notion that women must support abortion has “become part of the cultural air that we breathe,” author Carrie Gress told Our Sunday Visitor. While this was not always the case, abortion has been labeled as the solution for women’s problems — namely the “problems” of children and chastity. In an interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Gress, who received her doctorate in philosophy from The Catholic University of America, explains how we live in a culture that is anti-virgin and anti-mother — ultimately anti-Mary, the Virgin Mother herself. Sharing insights from her most recent book, “The Anti-Mary Exposed” (TAN Books, $27.95), Gress gives hope that our Blessed Mother is the antidote to this culture of death. Our Sunday Visitor: This year’s theme for the March for Life is “Life Empowers: Pro-...