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Twice in the last ten days my dear friend and colleague Fran Maier has drawn attention to the importance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer for the church in America today. At the Catholic Thing he noted that this year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the Barmen Declaration, in which a number of prominent theologians in Nazi Germany publicly opposed the “German Christians” who were seeking an accommodation with Nazism. Bonhoeffer was one of the signatories. Then, at the launch event for his fascinating new book, True Confessions, he quoted from Bonhoeffer’s letters, that it is “only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”  That Maier, a Catholic, calls on Bonhoeffer is a sign of the times. This is not simply because in the current climate Catholics and Protestants share common cultura...

I partially understand the predicament Nicodemus felt he was in when he snuck over to Jesus in the middle of the night in the Gospel we hear on the  Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year B. But I know the predicament I feel like I’m in. And I think the best way to describe it is this: I am drowning in sewage, unable to pull myself up and out of the filth, when the one whose image I bear, the one who gave me everything I have, including my very life, plunges down into the muck beside me and pushes me up and out, into the fresh air and sunlight like a second birth — while he drowns in the sewage in my place. But I’m getting ahead of myself. To get the full effect of Jesus’s words in John’s Gospel this Sunday, imagine him saying them in a pitch-black night. “Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemu...

On Sunday, March 10, the 96th Oscars ceremony will unfold in an annual ritual which is every year more remarkable for being less important to the global theatergoing audience. Starting in Hollywood’s Golden Age and for several decades thereafter, the Academy Awards were generally reckoned spectacular. But for most people today they are just an absurd and even annoying spectacle. The Academy doubled the number of Best Picture nominees a few years ago, ostensibly to make room for fan favorite films, but then filled the new slots with obscure and weird pieces mainly meant to curry favor in the creative community.  This year is no exception. Practically no one outside Beverly Hills and two streets in Manhattan’s Upper West Side are even aware of seven of the reputedly best films of the ye...

VATICAN CITY — Reports have circulated for several years now of Catholic priests being told to cease saying private Masses by themselves and celebrate with other priests instead, a practice called concelebration. In 2021, for example, the Vatican banned priests from saying private Masses at the above-ground altars in St. Peter’s Basilica. The edict was later eased after a public outcry, but concelebration in the basilica is now “the norm.”  That same year Archbishop Roland Minnerath of Dijon, France, expelled members of the traditional Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter from his diocese because they would not concelebrate Masses — specifically the Chrism Mass in the ordinary form — and had not done so for many years. Various religious communities, houses of formation and parishes have s...

Augustine Institute eyes Missouri move Skip to content A Denver-based graduate school and Catholic publishing non-profit is close to a deal that would see it buy a sprawling Boeing-owned property outside of St. Louis. The move would see the Augustine Institute expand its graduate programs, begin new retreat and conference programming, and work closely with the St. Louis archdiocese, which first proposed the move. Boeing Leadership Center. Credit: Boeing. Reached for comment Friday, Augustine Institute president Tim Gray told The Pillar that his organization is in the final stages of discernment, and is likely to soon reach an agreement to purchase the Boeing Leadership Center, a 284-acre training campus in Florissant, Missouri, which includes conference space, classrooms, 204 hotel-like ro...

By Fr. Victor Feltes We say their names at every Sunday Mass. We recall them at the start of every Rosary. They are the only two, non-divine persons referred to by name in the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds. They are the Virgin Mary and Pontius Pilate. “For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” Consider how many other figures from salvation history could have been justifiably cited in these creeds; from Adam and Eve to Peter and Paul. Yet only Mary and Pilate are mentioned. Why? At the heart of human history, where on our timeline B.C. becomes A.D., the...

When God chose to make man in his image and likeness, man’s response was to give honor, glory, and praise to God for this wonderful and unique gift of life. The entire creation narration embedded within the first two chapters of Genesis explains the order of man’s relationship with God, first to represent Him in image, and likeness, and second, to care for the land bestowed upon him. In both instances, man enjoyed an unimpeded relationship with God. The preternatural gifts bestowed upon man were specifically offered and given to freely reciprocate the love that God revealed to Adam and Eve. The introduction to original sin removed the initial gift of grace, the beatific vision, and the perfect union with God. Now both man and woman must endure the advent of concupiscence, venial and mortal...

In 1971, Glen McLaughlin came across a strange map in a London map shop. Americæ Nova Descriptio, produced by Anne Seile (1) in 1663, showed California as a big, carrot-shaped island, floating off the coast of North America. McLaughlin, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, bought the map and hung it on a wall at home. It turned into a popular talking point with visitors, and California-as-an-island became McLaughlin’s decades-long obsession. Over the next 40 years, he collected more than 700 maps, charts, and other cartographic objects on the topic, building up a visual library of what is one of history’s most persistent cartographic fallacies. A New and Correct Map of AMERICA (London, 1752). Courtesy Stanford University Libraries / Public Domain PDM 1.0 DEED First mention Perhaps that ...

Expel from him (her) every evil and unclean spirit which hides and makes its lair in his (her) heart. Priest: The spirit of deceit, the spirit of evil, the spirit of idolatry and of every 4 covetousness; the spirit of falsehood and of every uncleanness, which operates through the prompting of the devil. And make him (her) a reason-endowed sheep in the holy flock of Thy Christ, an honorable member of Thy Church, a consecrated vessel, a child of the light and an heir of Thy Kingdom, that having lived in accordance with Thy commandments, and preserved inviolate the seal, and kept his (her) garment undefiled, he (she) may receive the blessedness of the Saints in Thy Kingdom. (From the Orthodox baptism rite) The name of this Substack project is “Rational Sheep.” I am told that, i...

Within the liturgy, within our academic life, within our hard work in serving the poor in a needy parish, we are seeking in our own small way to take the Benedict option. Like St Benedict we’re not trying to change the whole world. We’re simply doing what we can with what we have where we are. I first encountered the Rule of St Benedict while I was a student at Oxford. I had enrolled to train as a priest in the Church of England, but a Catholic woman in the United States who had befriended me wrote and suggested I visit a Benedictine monastery. She didn’t quite understand that for a boy from Bob Jones University, monasteries and convents were one of the big dark secrets of the Catholic Church. The monks and nuns crept around in long black robes in huge, old buildings that looked like somet...