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Robin Hood’s legend lives on as a model for all who try to serve God when government, the rich, and, all too often, those vowed to God’s service explicitly are fighting against us. The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green, illustrations by Arthur Hall (Puffin Books, 2010, 294 pages) The most difficult conflicts are often with those with whom one agrees on the general lay of the land. That was apparent to me many years ago when my wife and I started publishing positive articles on the Harry Potter series. In contrast to those who assumed that this was a series leading readers to actual witchcraft, we had read the books and found them to be wonderful tales animated by a concern for virtue and character. What we determined was that most of the opponents of the series had not actua...

COMMENTARY: Cases can be made for three eras by considering their paradigmatic greats. Amidst a presidential campaign in which many of our countrymen deplore the choices we face in November, let’s take a break, follow the counsel of Ecclesiastes 3:1 (“For everything there is a season …”), and turn our attention to a question of major — even transcendental — import: Are we in the Golden Age of baseball? Or was that the 1920s-1930s? Perhaps the 1950s-1960s?   Cases can be made for each by considering their paradigmatic greats.    The argument for a 1920s-1930s Golden Age is built around the epic career of one George Herman Ruth, my fellow ex-Baltimorean, who learned the game through the disciplinary and athletic ministrations of Xaverian Brother Matthias at St. Mary’s Industri...

3 days ago 3 days ago “It’s like the more we worship ourselves, and we certainly see this on social media, the less we worship God,” says Patrick O’Hearn, a devout Catholic, husband and father. “Most of the time I’m just telling Jesus what I think, even complaining to him. How often do I say to the Lord “What do you want from me? What do you need from me?” In his new new article in Catholic Exchange, How the Eucharist is Not Loved, Patrick confronts the reality that most Catholics fail to spend enough time adoring and revering our Lord. Patrick is an author, literary consultant, speaker and a freelance editor, previously serving as TAN Books’ acquisitions editor for two years. He grew up in the Midwest and spent close to three years in a Benedictin...

COMMENTARY: The Vatican’s apparent openness to forgo some of its longstanding institutional privileges risks reducing the Church to the status of being merely another secular organization. On Aug. 8, Pope Francis received José-Lluis Serrano Pentalant, coadjutor bishop of Urgell, in audience. On paper, it looked like just another visit with one of the many newly elected bishops in the world. But there was something more interesting about this meeting.  The bishop of Urgell is, with the president of the French Republic, also co-prince of the tiny state of Andorra, a small enclave between France and Spain in the Pyrenees.  Bishop Serrano, coming from the ranks of the Secretariat of State, is Catalan, an essential precondition for genuinely understanding the Diocese of Urgell and the...

This spring saw the publication of two books arguing forcefully that our children are struggling and the adults are to blame. One of the books met with nodding heads all around and generated real enthusiasm for curbing the pernicious effects of technology on adolescent mental health. The other, Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, met with a much chillier reception, but it confronts parents and teachers of adolescents with questions that are both challenging and important. To understand the controversy regarding Bad Therapy, it is helpful to consider it as the second part of a one-two punch to parents and educators. Contexts and Comparisons In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, also published last s...

By Clement Harrold August 16, 2024 In John 1:43-51 we encounter the puzzling scene of Nathanael coming to accept Jesus as the Messiah on the basis of what seems like very little evidence. In the narrative, Nathanael is approached by his friend Philip, who comes bearing the startling news that “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (v. 45). Faced with this outrageous claim, Nathanael retorts, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (v. 46). Perhaps understandably, Nathanael is skeptical that the humble, backwater village of Nazareth could be the place of origin for the long-awaited Messiah. Nevertheless, Nathanael agrees to meet with Jesus, and while he is drawing near, Jesus declares “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in ...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 15, 2024 Evangelization is not just a matter of preaching the Gospel. For any effectiveness at all, it requires that we first live the Gospel. We don’t have to live it perfectly, but we have to be seen to be “different” in that respect, and when we fall, we need to get up and try again. Where relevant, we also have to apologize. In other words, to evangelize others we must be seen not only to preach the Gospel, but to live the Gospel; not only to claim an integral authenticity, but to live it. Indeed, a friend recently mentioned to me that he thought the most important part of evangelization today is simply living in a way that causes others to notice that we are different. At least for many people, who are inundated with words...

Lay parliament to help pick new Swiss bishop Skip to content One of the Catholic world’s most unusual episcopal selection processes is underway in the Swiss Diocese of St. Gallen, involving cathedral canons and a lay parliament, as well as the pope, of course. The Collegiate Church of St. Gall and Otmar, the cathedral of the Diocese of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Andreas Praefcke via Wikimedia (CC BY 3.0). The  St. Gallen diocese, in northeastern Switzerland, announced Aug. 15 that Pope Francis had approved the start of the process to find a new bishop after incumbent Bishop Markus Büchel submitted his resignation upon turning 75. Share The diocese, which dates back to 1847, is known to Catholics worldwide thanks to the St. Gallen Group, an informal circle of senior churchmen unhappy w...

Tim Walz identifies himself as a “Minnesota Lutheran.” But long before that, he was a Nebraska Catholic. Walz, 60, doesn’t say much about religion publicly, though he says he became a Lutheran after he got married in 1994.  He has described his family as New Deal Democrats. The Minneapolis Star Tribune described Walz in October 2018 as “steeped in the Catholic social justice traditions of his parents.” “Growing up Catholic, we had John Kennedy memorabilia in the house,” Walz told Minnesota Public Radio, according to The Independent. He noted that his mother was pregnant with him when Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, “and I guess there was a debate about calling me ‘John’ when she was picking names.”  Instead, they named him Timothy James. He was born in April 1964 in We...

In the Courts of Three Popes  An American Lawyer and Diplomat in the Last Absolute Monarchy of the West   By Mary Ann Glendon  Image, 2024  219 pages, $27  To order: IN THE COURTS OF THREE POPES – An American Lawyer and Diplomat in the Last Absolute Monarchy of the West | EWTN Religious Catalogue  Over the past six decades, Mary Ann Glendon has compiled a fascinating résumé. She has taught at Harvard Law School; been appointed to significant leadership posts under Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis; and served as the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See under President George W. Bush.   The goal of her latest book, In the Court of Three Popes, is to communicate the details of these appointments from her perspective as “an American ...

This past spring, the Mattinglys of East Tennessee did something that we have wanted to do for several decades — we took a cruise to Alaska. Basically, and I say this as someone who lived in Colorado for a wonderful decade, the Alaska coast looks a lot like the Rockies, only with an ocean. One of the highlights was cruising up into Glacier Bay on a cruise ship that is small enough (a relative thing, I know) to have a permit go all the way into one of the fjords to the glaciers and then go a slow 180 degree turn before proceeding back out. It’s an astonishing way to see the blue ice, the cliffs, flocks the seals, the whole shebang. I visited quite a few choice viewing locations on the old-school wooden promenade and, during one stop, I saw something rather sad. It was a young boy sitting in...

Republican presidential nominee former president Donald Trump speaks after officially accepting the Republican presidential nomination on stage on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee. / Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Let’s begin with the obvious. No social conservative could possibly justify voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. They are pro-abortion extremists, as Ryan Anderson shows in an article on Harris at First Things and Dan McLaughlin shows in an article on Walz at National Review. Their records on other matters of concern to social conservatives are no better. It goes without saying that they are absolutely beyond the pale. Despite his recent betrayal of social con...