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God’s purposes are often unknowable by us, but there’s no question that he has a plan. A chorus of populist theologizing greeted the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Much of it was along the lines of “Considering that the shot missed killing him by only a couple of inches, God must have been looking out for him.” I fully agree. God certainly was looking out for the former president. So what else might we say about what happened? Although pushing too hard to explain God’s ways can be presumptuous, we can at least say that any serious attempt to understand will run up against mystery. Comprehending God’s plan in its literally unimaginable extent and complexity lies far beyond our limited capacity for grasping divine realities other than those he reveals. As for the little that we do ...

The Congress, the Olympics, and cocaine sharks Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to JD read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Hey everybody, Today is the 16th Wednesday in Ordinary Time, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post. If you’re not sure why you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post on Wednesday, well, I sent you a note about it yesterday. But the long and short of it is that Ed’s on vacation this week, I’ll be on vacation next week, and so we’re doing things a bit differently to adjust to being short-staffed. There will be a podcast this week, albeit without Ed, and I believe he’ll aim to make one next week as well.  Anyway, as you probably know, the 2024 Paris Olympics kick off in just two days, and will probably begin with some bit of avant garde made-for...

In times like these, it’s easy to despair about evangelization in the modern world. But a new Ignatius Press book by Mike Aquilina, Rabbles, Riots, and Ruins: Twelve Ancient Cities and How They Were Evangelized, not only offers some much-needed hope when thinking about evangelizing today’s culture but also serves as a guide on how to go about it. The Register caught up with the book’s author at his home in Pittsburgh and asked if Christian hope can persist amid the despair of modern Western cities. “Absolutely,” replies Aquilina. “Was there any earthly reason to hope in the midst of the Decian persecution? I can’t see any. The Romans mobilized as a police state for the eradication of Christianity. In the natural order, the world was falling apart, because of severe climate change and resul...

“Brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2: 37) Such was the response of “devout men from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5) to St. Peter’s Pentecost Discourse. The Holy Scriptures tell us that “that they were cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37). St. Peter had proclaimed to them the truth of the Redemptive Incarnation with these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know — this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised Him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.… This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being th...

J.D. Vance is an election away from becoming the first Catholic vice president from the Republican Party. But the Ohio senator, who is running alongside Donald Trump on the GOP ticket, is not your typical Catholic conservative — at least not the kind that has been the norm in American politics over the past half-century. Instead, Vance is a self-described member of the “post-liberal right,” an upstart political movement that flips the conventional conservative script and emphasizes the good of the community over individual liberty. The controversial approach, which is both inspired by and contested within the Catholic Church, includes harnessing state power to secure its aims, another break from the standard operating procedure of the American right. And if Vance is elected vice president,...

Open disagreement between spouses, or even just not seeing eye to eye, can be very painful. It is also quite common. Central to the art of marriage is to be able to accept this while also addressing it. Experience shows that it is to be expected. To some extent then, disagreement need not mean that anything has gone wrong. We do well to begin by recognizing that how we deal with disagreement is precisely a key feature of how we grow our marriage and as individuals; I’d even go so far as to say it is ‘natural’ and part of the plan. This should be a very heartening thought. Of course certain deeper disagreements might cross a line of seriousness and call for intervention or other such remedies. But most of us will be within a range of discord, variance, or tension that is ‘normal,’ the addre...

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Josephine Hope-Scott Ward (1864–1932) wrote at the crossroads of the implementation of Catholic Emancipation in England—particularly the Universities Tests Acts of 1871—and the Catholic Modernist Crisis (1893–1914). The author of ten novels, a novella, and numerous articles and personal writings, Josephine Ward’s body of work provides a unique look into how the modernist controversy was experienced by English Catholics in the first decade of the twentieth century. Josephine Ward was the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, which demonstrates her ties to Recusant England. She was also the daughter of the Tractarian and Oxford convert, James Robert Hope-Scott (1812–1872). In 1887, Josephine married Wilfrid Ward (1856–1916), who was the son of the notable Oxford convert, William George Ward (1812–18...

For the past few weeks, the world of U.S. politics has seemed especially contentious and unstable, with an overabundance of supercharged storylines producing a new wave of anxieties and raising the political temperature. But as the political drama continues, 50,000 Catholics in Indianapolis and thousands more following the National Eucharistic Congress (NEC) from afar seem unphased, their attention decidedly not on partisan politics, but on the source and summit of their faith. “I doubt there is any place in the nation so untroubled by our tumultuous politics right now as the attendees at the Eucharistic Congress,” Stephen White, the director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America, told the Register from Indianapolis. “Not because people here are indifferent to polit...

Editor’s Note: The caption was updated to explain the background of the misspelling on the uniform jacket shown in the photo. The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump Saturday has far-reaching personal and political consequences. Many commentators took it as a worrying indicator of the state of U.S. culture, or at least political culture.  Yet beyond the personal, political and cultural, there were also notable Christian dimensions to that terrible evening in Butler, Pennsylvania. Four are worth noting. Reading Providence It is not unusual for any near brush with death to prompt reflections on why a life was spared, often considered to be “miraculously” spared. When prominent people are involved, that reflection is more widespread. And so, after President Trump sur...

Q. We are a Catholic couple married for more than 10 years, practicing natural family planning for health reasons without using contraception. My husband’s frustration with our abstinence periods has led to marital tension and his occasional use of porn, and he has grown resentful of the “Catholic rules” about sexual pleasure and marital intercourse. Though he still agrees with avoiding contraception, he believes mutual manual stimulation during abstinence is legitimate if the purpose of the acts is to foster intimacy between us and make the whole home and family more harmonious. I struggle to find clear guidance in the Catechism on this issue and feel compelled to comply to preserve our marriage and reduce his temptation, despite concerns about its morality. — Anonymous Catholic Woman A. ...