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The exorcists I consult occasionally for articles have personally seen a lot of the devil’s theatrics: levitation, room temperature suddenly and drastically dropping, people knowing foreign languages they never studied, foul odors, objects flying and other antics intended to intimidate the exorcist. Yet, we are told not to fear evil. The exorcists do, however, strongly warn us to stay away from it and use the protection God gives us. I put together advice on how to guard against evil taken from two recent interviews with Msgr. John Esseff, a priest in the diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania for 64 years and an exorcist for over 40 years, and also Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois. 1. Hate sin. “The usual work of the devil is sin. Sin leads to the death of souls,”...

The processions, the news, and the papal apology Skip to content Hey everybody, If you’re American, I hope you were able to celebrate Memorial Day yesterday with some time off from work or school, and looking forward to a good summer. Some of you, I suspect, went to a cemetery to pray for America’s war dead. Some of you went down the shore.  I spent the day with my family — we barbecued with friends, and then I coached my son Davey’s first Little League practice.  Davey is six, so he still thinks I have something to teach him about baseball. I hope that will last at least through his summer season. Some of you likely participated in the Eucharistic pilgrimages making their way across the U.S. — thousands of people turned up this weekend in New York and in the Twin Cities for majo...

By Clement Harrold May 24, 2024 St. Paul famously describes the Old Testament patriarch Abraham as our father in faith (see Rom 4:16; Gal 3:7), yet this doesn’t seem to square well with Abraham’s treatment of his wife Sarah on not one but two separate occasions. On the first occasion, in Genesis 12, we’ve only just been introduced to the figure of Abram and his wife Sarai when the biblical narrator announces to us that due to a famine afflicting his native country, “Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land” (Gen 12:10). Upon his arrival, however, Abram is worried that the Egyptians will kill him in order to take custody of his beautiful wife Sarai. To avoid this, Abram declares that Sarai is merely his sister, even though he knows this means Pharaoh ...

Augustine is accessible and applicable because he is one of us. He suffers from the same temptations and succumbs to those temptations. He falls and does not always get up again, preferring to wallow in the gutter with his lusts and his illicit appetites. And yet, like us, he is restless until he rests in the truth, which can only be found in Christ. If any single book can claim to be the quintessential Christian classic it must be St. Augustine’s Confessions. There are other claimants to the accolade, to be sure. One thinks perhaps of Augustine’s other masterpiece, The City of God, or the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, or possibly, if one is seeking lighter fare, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis or St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life. And if ...

Spanish nun: schismatic monastery has become ‘a cult’ Skip to content A Poor Clare nun who left her monastery of Belorado, in Burgos, Spain, says she had to leave to avoid becoming part of a cult, after her community declared it was leaving the Catholic Church and placed itself under the jurisdiction of a sedevacantist self-proclaimed bishop.  Poor Clare sisters at the monastery of Belorado, together with Pablo de Rojas Sánchez-Franco. Image: Christifideles Tau via YouTube. Sister María Amparo, 81, has been in religious life for over 60 years, 20 of which spent in Belorado. She left the community three days after her superior Sister Isabel de la Trinidad made public the community’s declaration of schism.  Sister María Amparo was taken in at another convent, and has avoided speaki...

Is Vatican’s Arlington Carmel decree a win for due process? Skip to content As the latest chapter of a saga that began one year ago, the Vatican made a ruling last month in the case of the Arlington, Texas, Carmelites locked in a dispute with Bishop Michael Olson over allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of Mother Theresa Gerlach, who has been replaced by the Vatican as the community’s superior, even while the nuns at the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity continue to recognize her as their superior. Left: Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach. Right: Bishop Michael Olson. Of course, anyone who has followed the twists of this story knows it’s not just about sexual misconduct — the saga has included allegations of drug use, lawsuits and restraining orders, and periodic statements from Ar...

Johannes Vermeer, The Art of Painting, c. 1666–1668. Bertrand Russel, a philosopher of the twentieth century, wrote that envy is one of the most powerful causes of unhappiness. If we want to live well, we need to know the paths to follow and the paths to avoid. Envy can become a prison we create for ourselves. Why do we feel envy? And how can we break free from it? Or, better yet, escape it in the first place? I know from my experience that envy can steal my peace. It often arises from comparisons where we see ourselves falling short of others, especially when we think we are just as “worthy” as the people to whom we compare ourselves. Envy is one of the most powerful causes of unhappiness. The Ancients on Envy: Sorrow Over Another’s Good Aristotle writes that envy is sorrow over the good ...

The power of the Mass is the Eucharist. Sometimes the efforts to elevate the beauty of the mass can actually detract from magnifying Christ. There are a few implementations that you as a priest can instill that enhances rather than detracts from the elevation of the Mass. Today Pat is joined with Chris Stefanick and Fr. Sean Conroy from the Archdiocese of Denver to discuss this topic. Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews Entertainment blogs & Forums

The interview Pope Francis granted to Norah O’Donnell of CBS for 60 Minutes, recorded in April and aired this week, was noteworthy for four clear “Noes,” one implied “No” and one “Yes.” The clear Noes were regarding: women in holy orders — including deacons, surrogacy, blessings of same-sex couples, and papal abdication.  The implied No was regarding synodality. The Yes was on welcoming migrants, though with important nuances. Any interview with the Pope must be interpreted carefully, as he prefers a looser and more informal style, a style which does resonate widely and sympathetically. Matthew Bunson explained that well in these pages. It is important to catch what the Holy Father means, rather than attend only to what he says. For example, while praising women in this interview, Pop...