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LONDON — “I thought I would like her to know about the Church not just because I’m a Catholic but also because it is part of our culture,” says Piers Paul Pead, speaking to the Register. The “her” he is referring to is his non-Catholic granddaughter, currently a student at Oxford University. She is, he says, “clever” but freely admits that she knows nothing about the Catholic faith. She was the catalyst — and first, intended audience — for Read’s latest book, A History of the Catholic Church (Meid Books), begun during the 2020 lockdowns and published in September 2023. Described by one reviewer as “a tour de force,” Read’s History has 127 short chapters, from the Church’s roots in Jewish history to the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. The narrative describes how a small community of belie...

Dignitas Infinita, the new declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), affirms that “every human person possesses an infinite dignity” and enumerates assaults on that dignity, with particular attention to new developments in “gender theory.”  While the sections dealing with abortion, surrogacy and gender ideology contain nothing new, the April 8 text has received “widespread praise” from many Catholic commentators who were apprehensive after last year’s declaration, Fiducia Supplicans (on blessings for “irregular same-sex couples”), proved disastrous.  The language on gender theory was unambiguous: “Therefore, all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected” (58). Not only would that preclude p...

By Jay Nies SCROLL THE ARROWS to see more photos.  Nate Pfenenger took his chances, rolled the dice and came out a winner. Specifically, he turned 20,400 black dice into an intricate, larger-than-life-size mosaic portrait of Venerable Father Augustus Tolton. “I didn’t think it was going to be a big thing,” said Nate, a senior at Fr. Tolton Regional Catholic High School in Columbia. “I just thought it would be a really fun and memorable art project.” Never one to settle for the ordinary, Nate says all of his art projects are “out of the box,” or beyond the scope of everyday thinking. “I’ve used Rubik’s Cubes to make a mosaic of my dog,” he said. “I’ve made a bonsai tree out of twisted wire. I’ve painted cartoon characters on a pair of shoes. And now, I’ve made a mosaic out of dice.” In...

A new study has revealed that Gen Z is the first generation where more women are leaving religion than men. This shocking flip in the gender divide is another mile marker that women are on the wrong path.  I recently published the book The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us to navigate and understand contemporary trends among women. I argued that feminism from the beginning has promoted an ideology that undermines faith and family. Several critiques have voiced disappointment that the book did not include a robust endorsement of Mary Wollstonecraft as a model for today’s women.  The most recent, by Nathan Schlueter, a Catholic father and professor at Hillsdale College, explains why I ought: “Wollstonecraft was pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro-motherhood and...

Readings:Acts 3:13–15, 17–19Psalm 4:2, 4, 7–91 John 2:1–5Luke 24:35–48 Jesus in today’s Gospel teaches His apostles how to interpret the Scriptures. He tells them that all the Scriptures of what we now call the Old Testament refer to Him. He says that all the promises found in the Old Testament have been fulfilled in His Passion, death, and Resurrection. And He tells them that these Scriptures foretell the mission of the Church—to preach forgiveness of sins to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. In today’s First Reading and Epistle, we see the beginnings of that mission. And we see the apostles interpreting the Scriptures as Jesus taught them to. God has brought to fulfillment what He announced beforehand in all the prophets, Peter preaches. His sermon is shot through with Old Testame...

I was shocked to learn that my cousins in a suburban community were fined by their homeowners association (HOA) for having clover in their lawn. Doing a little research I discovered this is not unusual; in fact many HOA’s have rules that forbid a wide array of beneficial species including native grasses and wildflowers. Allow me to be direct: I think the contemporary approach to lawns as instantiated in the dominant practices of our ‘lawncare’ constitutes a crisis. Why? At issue here is much more than lawns—as important as they are. What we call ‘lawns’ can and should be an important part of most homes, and how we treat them is a key expression of how we understand our home and our relation to the natural world. Home is the place to relate meaningfully to the natural world. Home is where l...

“This is the beginning. This is the day. You are watching the unfolding of one of history’s great adventures.” Those dramatic words began the 1965 sci-fi series, “Lost in Space.” They are even more fitting for the Annunciation, history’s greatest adventure. Using our liturgical calendar, let’s put ourselves at the end of March in northern Israel more than 2,000 years ago. Living in Nazareth is a young man named Mary. She was an observant Jewish girl raised by her parents, Joachim and Anne. She was perhaps in her teens (remember the lifespan of the times) and probably very poor. As regards the latter, so was Joseph, the man to whom she was engaged, even though — somewhere long ago — his family was part of the line of the great King David.  On that day — a day that likely began like man...

Divine Mercy SundayBy Fr. Victor Feltes On Easter Sunday evening, all of the apostles (besides Judas and Thomas) were gathered behind locked doors in the Upper Room. Yet the Risen Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” St. Luke records that they “were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.” So to reassure them, Jesus asked, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” And Jesus showed them the enduring wounds in his hands and feet and side. Jesus’ first order of business on Easter Sunday was to demonstrate to his disciples the fact of his bodily resurrection, and “the apostles bore w...

“You can’t fire me because I quit.” —From Nirvana’s “Scentless Apprentice” The teenagers, many girls especially, went crazy for Frank Sinatra. A little while after that the teenagers, again girls in particular, all went crazy for Elvis. After that the teenagers got themselves caught up in Beatlemania. And then, not too long after that, the teenagers got really into …  To read such a list, arriving at Taylor Swift today and leaving plenty of space for those future iconic musicians, would feel much like reading an Old Testament listing of kings. Each of us, depending on our age, would get our turn to say “I got really caught up in that one.” And as dry as any such reading may be, the point of it would be that adolescents have been making idols of popular musicians for quite some time.&n...

Save the date, parlor games, and the art of the meal Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Happy Friday friends,  And a very happy Easter to you all.  The octave is one of my favorite liturgical expressions of reality as the Church understands it.  As most of you know, I am somewhat obsessed with the idea of time — how we conceive of the idea, how we measure it, and how we relate to a God who came “in time,” exists “out of time” and is waiting for us at the end of time. What we express in the Easter octave is the reality that the power of a single moment explodes the bounds of time so fully that a day cannot contain its feast.  For eight days, every day is Easter, encompassing not just the Sunday itself, but the rest of...