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Open the pages above to reveal more options! Home  What is Love? Love is to will the good of the other. Ok, but what does that mean? “I love you.” Imagine sincerely saying this to someone for the first time, and getting the response, “what do you mean?” In that moment, the stakes would be too high to pause for a calm, honest exploration of this question. That’s why this site exists. God is love. 1 John 4:8 Maybe the answer is obvious, though. Think of the far-reaching impact of sayings like “love is love”, “love is all you need”, and “love conquers all”. They’re practically cliches at this point. Even the phrase “what is love” itself is notable for being the title of a 90’s dance anthem, which everyone reading this has probably heard more times than they can count. If that’s the case, eve...

It was an inspired choice for the Vatican to hold its World Meeting on Human Fraternity in the same week as the bicentennial of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a sublime anthem and prayer for universal brotherhood.  From the sublime to the … well, less sublime; Garth Brooks and Tom Brady will be on hand, too.  Brooks will sing at the closing concert in the atrium of St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday. It is possible that Pope Francis will give Standing Outside the Fire the same Holy Spirit gloss which Pope St. John Paul II gave to Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind at the 1997 Eucharistic Congress in Bologna.  It is unlikely that Vatican organizers, when asking Brady to participate in a sports roundtable entitled “Competing in Mutual Esteem,” knew that he would arrive less than a wee...

Skip to content We are not perfectly transformed in our minds. We are still slightly hypocritical. But Christ still calls us to speak of his mercies. Knowing our weakness, we can be gentle with others and reverent toward God, who knows our weakness and yet loves and uses us for his purposes even as he is healing us. “I have a question,” my student said ominously as he sat in the chair in my office. I braced internally and probably externally—my heart is worn on my whole demeanor. When he asked it, I was relieved: “How can I be a theology major and keep sinning?” You can’t go for long in Christian life without discovering what St. John Henry Newman meant when he said, “To know is one thing, to do is another; the two things are altogether distinct.” Knowing that something is a sin to be avoi...

We once had a pastor who often, almost in every homily, described the Christian life as a “journey.” The word’s a good go-to image for the Christian life, but it’s not the best one. The Christian life isn’t just a journey, though, it’s a particular type of journey. By itself, the image says that you’re moving but not where you’re going and why, or how well you’re getting there. Christianity has a more precise and specific word, a word with rich meaning that illuminates who we are better than “journey.” “Pilgrim” is the better word. As Christians, we live in the world as pilgrims, or should: people who are not at home anywhere, and who are always on the way to a far away city where we’ll settle for good, that we know as home even though we’ve never been there. The New Testament continually ...

The dropping of the atomic bomb was evil. For the average conservative commentator, this comment automatically causes a knee-jerk reaction with the same old platitudes. For decades, the American Right has been the defender of our usage of the atomic bomb, with either “it saved more American lives” or “it was the lesser of two evils” being some of the strongest candidates.  Phyllis Schlafly once declared, in a 1982 New York Times article, that “the atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God.” For many years, I would have championed Schlafly’s point, parroting all the appropriate conservative talking points on the subject. I believed that by defending America’s decision, I was somehow being patriotic and defending the nation. I now know I was wrong. ...

Someone in Germany was so confident in their artistic abilities, they went ahead and installed one of their paintings in a museum—without anyone else knowing. A man in Munich is accused of illicitly hanging a painting in the Pinakothek der Moderne, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. The 51-year-old was an employee of the museum, and he hung his work on the modern-art floor while assisting in the installation of an exhibit on philanthropy. “He was carrying tools, that’s why he went totally unnoticed,” Tine Nehler, a spokesperson for the museum, told the Times. “As a technician, he was able to move around all areas of the building outside of opening hours.” Little more is known about the man, as the museum declined to share his identity and his artistic background. It did say, however...

Midwesterners are used to being overlooked. After all, this is the part of the U.S. known as “flyover country” by coastal denizens. Even the region’s most prominent metropolis, Chicago, is known as “The Second City,” a nickname that originated as a put-down, made by a visiting journalist from the nation’s “first city,” New York. To put it in familial terms, the Midwest is the nation’s disregarded middle child, less elite than the elder East, not as cool as the younger West, and far more unassuming than the charming (though sometimes-rebellious) South.  But Catholics know that being overlooked in the eyes of the mighty often coincides with finding favor with God, who chooses “the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something”...

A holy medal tumbling from a ballot box as the voting papers are emptied out feels like a cry from the past. The quiet roar of a forgotten people.  By Carrie Gress A story out of Ireland two months ago got little attention here across the pond, but it offers a rare ray of hope in the culture war.  As The Guardian explained, back in March, on the International Day of Women, the Irish voted on a proposed referendum that would have changed language in the constitution, redefining the family, no longer founded on marriage, but based on “durable relationships.” It also proposed changing language about motherhood, removing reference to a “mother’s duties in the home” to more general language about care from family members. Voters shot the referendum dow...

‘Veritatis Splendor’ priests expected to leave Tyler diocese Skip to content A group of priests associated with a controversial residential project in the Diocese of Tyler, Texas is expected to leave the diocese, as their efforts to reach a stable canonical status have faltered, according to sources close to the diocese. Fr. André Metrejean, priest of the Diocese of Lafayette and leader of the Pious House community in Tyler. Image via Veritatis Splendor/YouTube. Bishop Joe Vásquez, apostolic administrator of the Tyler diocese, met Monday morning with the board of Veritatis Splendor, a planned Catholic residential community in the diocese which has faced controversy involving its leadership’s financial administration and personal conduct. According to sources close to the diocese, Vásquez t...

For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops. Sooner or later, one day, this pounding action will cease of its own accord, and the blood will begin to run towards the body’s lowest point, where it will collect in a small pool, visible from the outside as a dark, soft patch on ever whitening skin, as the temperature sinks, the limbs stiffen and the intestines drain. These changes in the first hours occur so slowly and take place with such inexorability that there is something almost ritualistic about them, as though life capitulates according to specific rules, a kind of gentleman’s agreement to which the representatives of death also adhere, inasmuch as they always wait until life has retreated before they launch their invasion of the new landscape.—Karl Ove...

[embedded content] Discover the untold story of Catholic Priests in Nicaragua, facing adversities and government opposition in their efforts to bring the Gospel to their people. Despite Nicaragua’s deep-rooted Catholicism, priests and bishops find themselves targets of persecution and religious constraints. Through this interview, you can step into their world with Fr. Robert Havens from the CANELA Foundation as he unveils the struggles they face… Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews Entertainment blogs & Forums