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During the month of November, the Church has us ponder the Four Last Things: death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. As the golden gown of autumn gives way to the lifeless look of winter, we are encouraged to see that our lives are on a trajectory that leads to autumn and then to the winter of death. But those who have faith know that this passage to death ultimately leads to glory. Scripture says, And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever(1 John 2:17). In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus gives us a kind of road map of life and calls us to be sober about the passing and perilous nature of this world. There is an historical context in which our Lord speaks. There were political rumblings in Israel in the early 30s AD that would eventually le...

There must be laughter in hell. This kind of laughter is devoid, of course, of joy. It mimics and perverts the kind of life-giving laughter you might hear among friends and family gathered in love. Whether or not this is theologically correct is above my pay grade. But it is my conclusion after listening to laughter on NPR after an abortion they broadcasted. In advance of Election Day, NPR, which receives federal government (read: taxpayer) funding, broadcasted from the room where a woman in Michigan was undergoing an abortion. Michigan voters have the most extreme of extreme proposals on their ballots on Tuesday. It’s called Proposal 3, the “Right to Reproductive Freedom,” which would amend the state constitution giving “every individual” in the state “a fundamental right to reproductive ...

Hey everybody, This is JD Flynn, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post. Today is the feast of Bl. John Duns Scotus, the 13th-14th century Franciscan friar remembered as the “Doctor subtilis,” or “subtle doctor,” for his nuanced and insightful mind. Scotus was a priest, a brilliant philosopher, and, as John Paul II remembered him, “the minstrel of the Word Incarnate,” and the “Defender of Mary’s Immaculate Conception.” Whether you understand his subtle thought on the univocity of being, or – like me – you get lost in the distinctions, each of us can aim to give both our minds and our lives to the Lord, as did the great Scottish Franciscan himself. I’ll have more on him at the end of the newsletter.   Bl. John Duns Scotus, pray for us! The News The biggest story in the ...

In this month of the Holy Souls, Veterans Day must be more than just a day off. Catholics can do a great work of mercy by offering Masses, suffrages and indulgences for our veterans. Nov. 11 is Veteran’s Day. We honor the service of those, dead and alive, who bore arms for their country. Americans observe Nov. 11 because it was the day the armistice ending World War I was signed. Indeed, at its origins as an observance in 1926 and a civil holiday in 1938, it was called “Armistice Day.” The sheer horror and magnitude of World War I, which witnessed destruction on a hitherto-unknown scale, seared it into peoples’ memories: the “Great War” as it was called left its mark on Western culture. Searing memories was not the same as searing wills: it got called the “First World War” only after we ha...

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Happy Friday friends, I’ve been, as you know, in Rome this week. I’m writing this mid-flight. JD suggested that I give myself the week off and just pack the newsletter with tourist pictures, but I didn’t take any this trip. It’s been something of a flying visit, unfortunately — more of an Italian Job than a Roman Holiday. There are, at last count, at least half a dozen friends I didn’t get to see this time around, and I am deeply sorry about that. If I wasn’t following on from a previous trip to Denver last week and we weren’t riding right up against the USCCB meeting on Monday, I’d have stayed longer. I’ll be back in the New Year for a proper visit, I promise. A few readers planning trips to Rome emailed me this week asking for food recommendations, though I am not sure what m...

Listen to this story: NEW YORK – For Deacon Ed Shoener, the overarching message of a new eight-part video series for Catholics who lost a loved one to suicide is one of accompaniment – that support in a time of grief can be found from within the Church. “[The message] is that Christ is with you and is with your loved one who died by suicide and that you should never feel alone, and you’re not alone,” Shoener told Crux. “The church and Christ’s church will be present to you as you walk through this deep valley of grief.” Shoener is the founder of the Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers, who created the videos in partnership with Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries. The series is titled “When a Loved One Dies by Suicide,” and mirrors a book of the same name edited by Shoener and B...

“And if someone dragged him away from there by force, up the rough, steep path, and didn’t let him go until he had dragged him into the sunlight, wouldn’t he be pained and irritated at being treated that way?”Socrates, Plato’s Republic We seldom reflect on a stark reality: our ongoing dependence on others for learning and formation. Yet in this dependence the dramatic human difference from other creatures is especially evident. Though birds and spiders are never really ‘taught,’ their nests and webs display a remarkable crafting. By and large the reality is that for non-human animals to do what they do requires dramatically less ‘training’ than for human persons to do what they do. And this human training in the main must come from other persons. As the Socratic approach to teaching especi...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Nov 08, 2022 People are not always drawn initially toward the Church by apologetical arguments or instruction in the truths of Divine Revelation. There are many “motives of credibility” in the experience of Catholicism which draw us to Christ. A few of them are: Countless attested miracles; the sublimity of Catholic sacred music, art and architecture; the remarkable lives of particular saints; the immense diversity of the saints throughout history and around the world; the stability of Christian doctrine over time; the Church’s astonishing intellectual tradition; the scope of Christian charitable work; the attractive power of the Church’s liturgy; the courageous witness of the martyrs; the testimony of the great mystics; and the Ch...

Having the soul of a child is essential to the recovery of our lost sense of wonder. Flying into Tampa on a recent early-morning flight from Pittsburgh, I watched in amazement as the eastern sky, illumined by the rising sun, exploded in colors of pure and radiant beauty. Not even nature herself could finally account for it. Sure, the light streaming through the window came unmistakably from the world outside, nature wearing her best colors for break of day, as it were. But God was the real artist here, and his palette this marvelous world he alone had made. Freshly remade that very morning, in fact, intended for the delectation of a couple hundred sleepy-eyed passengers bound for Florida.  Suddenly a line or two from Gerard Manley Hopkins popped into my head, which I’d have gladly sha...

I’ve been re-reading St. Augustine’s City of God lately, both for the TCT course I’m teaching this Fall but also because it’s the most insightful – and influential – Catholic meditation on religion and politics. We have an election tomorrow, too – as you may have heard – in which various parties now seem to have a vested interest in claiming that what’s really at stake is an existential “threat to democracy.” I don’t believe that for a moment – at least in the short run – though you’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to be troubled by the many deep crises we face, not least the continuing massacre of the innocents in abortion (and the scientific lying needed to rationalize it), our vicious identity politics cum cancel culture, and the grooming and mutilation of our children by sexual n...

Detail from “An Angel Frees the Souls of Purgatory.” Ludovico Carracci, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons A few weeks ago, my Dominican brother, Father James Dominic Rooney, ended up in a now infamous (in certain theological circles) internet debate with Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart. Their contest? Universalism — that is, the theological idea that at the end of time God will restore all things to himself. For universalists, hell is impossible; all will be saved. It’s not a new subject for Hart. He provocatively asks in his 2019 book whether it is possible to love a God “who has elected to create a reality in which everlasting torture is a possible final destiny for any of his creatures.” For Hart, universalism is the most consistent and worthy reconciliation of all...