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Gonzaga president on board of Arlington nuns’ non-profit Skip to content In the latest development of a story rife with surprises, the president of the Jesuit-run Gonzaga University sits on the board of directors for a recently formed Texas non-profit, which was created to hold property for a controversial convent of Carmelite nuns of Arlington, Texas. Thayne McCulloh, president of Gonzaga University. Credit: Gonzaga University/YouTube. Along with his wife Julie, Gonzaga’s President Thayne McCulloh is listed as a board member of the Friends of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Arlington, which in April became the legal title holder for the Carmelite Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity.  After CBS News published a list of board members Sept. 29, the McCullohs’ membership on the board was ...

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For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).  As this saying of Jesus makes clear, service belongs to the most fundamental vocabulary of the Christian faith. It provides the basis for Jesus’ articulation of his own identity and vocation as Son of Man. It is therefore a privileged window into the mystery of the Person of Christ himself, who, “though he was in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. . . . And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:5-7). These passages provide a fundamental biblical rationale for service as an intrinsic element of Christian life. Paul ...

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” We believe it. Fall is our favorite time of the year. It’s a season where things are dying and transitioning into dormancy. But there’s also a last gasp of physical and psychic energy in the air. It’s like our minds and bodies know that we’ll soon be holed up for the winter and need to get out and get stuff done — and have a whole lot of fun — before the cold weather arrives. It’s harvest time! To help you make the most of this fall, we’ve put together a list of 18 things every man should do before the leaves are all the way off the trees. Complete each one before the winter solstice, and you’ll have created a bunch of memories to get you through the cold, dark months ahead. Let the fall ad...

Luxury, justice delayed, and who’s not coming to dinner Skip to content Happy Friday friends, And a very happy feast of St. Vincent de Paul to you all. One of the great cost savings working at places like The Pillar is that there is no office to go to — I’m in D.C. (sort of), JD and Michelle are in Denver, Luke and Edgar are over the other side of the Atlantic, so where, exactly, would we rent an office, even if we had the cash? Working from home is one of the great liberations: from the morning commute, from paying for parking, from the need to wear shoes. I could, of course, tell you the trade-off is that if you never really go to the office, you can never really leave it, either. But the truth is I had a disordered approach to business hours long before I became self-employed. By far th...

Ransom, homeschool, and drive-by commentary Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to JD read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Hey everybody, Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.  Maria de Mercede, fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio. Public domain. If you’re not familiar with today’s feast, you should know that it was until the post-conciliar period known as the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom — and it commemorated the Mercedarian order, which was founded in the 1200s to ransom Christian captives held by kidnappers in North Africa. See, it was a pretty common occurrence in medieval southern Europe that Christians would be kidnapped by pirates or mercenaries during skirmishes between Christian Spanish forces and the Moor states of N...

One of the most memorable and significant stories from ancient philosophy is that of the ring of Gyges: the original ring of power. In it we have occasion through reflecting on the experience of invisibility to think about the importance of being seen by others in our life. When an earthquake opens a chasm in the earth, an adventurous shepherd boy discovers a gold ring that turns out to have magical power. The ability to become invisible and the resulting freedom to act with impunity leads the boy to an ugly romp of seizing power, possessions, and people. The story is told in the second book of the Republic by a student of Socrates who makes the case, in order to hear how Socrates will respond, that people naturally want things conventionally considered to be bad. The main reason people re...

September 25, 2024 The Transgender Movement Is Especially Dangerous for Boys It is a bit ironic that the “bathroom wars” began in Charlotte, NC, my home state.[1] While we war over whether or not a man is a man, or just seems that way, North Carolina’s motto remains engraved in stones around the state: Esse quam videri, which is Latin for “to be, rather than to seem”. Like I said – ironic. Of course, I think both sides of the argument could use the motto to their liking. But there is a more interesting note about the transgender issues of today: how often it is a matter of male identity – i.e. men wanting to become women.[2] While of course the data can be confusing, estimates put the desire for males to become female as nearly three times as prevalent as females wanting to be males. We ha...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Sep 24, 2024 One cannot help but be disturbed yet again by Pope Francis’ seemingly half-hearted commitment to Catholic doctrine. Some time ago he elevated Cardinal Hollerich to a major role in the Synod on Synodality despite his belief that Church teaching on homosexuality is based on an outdated anthropology. Now he has included among 28 new consultors to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith one who disagrees with the Church’s teaching that contraception is a sin. Why would anyone want to appoint an advisor to the Church’s doctrinal dicastery who does not himself uphold the teachings of the Magisterium? And one might well also ask why it is not yet obvious to everyone that the rejection of this teaching has borne an enormou...

Readings:Numbers 11:25–29Psalm 19:8,10,12–14James 5:1–6Mark 9:38–48 Today’s Gospel begins with a scene that recalls a similar moment in the history of Israel, the episode recalled in today’s First Reading. The seventy elders who receive God’s Spirit through Moses prefigure the ministry of the Apostles. Like Joshua in the First Reading, John makes the mistake of presuming that only a select few are inspired and entrusted to carry out God’s plans. The Spirit blows where it wills (see John 3:8), and God desires to bestow His Spirit on all the people of God in every nation under heaven (see Acts 2:5, 38). God can and will work mighty deeds through the most unexpected and unlikely people. All of us are called to perform even our most humble tasks, such as giving a cup of water, for the sake of ...