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“Surely,” says St. Bernard, “the Mother of God could not have a name more appropriate, nor one more impressive of her high dignity. Mary is, in fact, the beautiful and brilliant star which shines upon the vast and stormy sea of the world.” It was a stormy sea, all right, that was calmed by Mary and gave reason for her universal feast. In 1683, people were celebrating the feast of the Holy Name of Mary in Spain, where it originated and where people had been observing it since 1513 with the approval of the Holy See. But elsewhere in Europe, things were not rosy. The outlook was gloomy. The situation was dire. It was 112 years after the Battle of Lepanto was decisively won — a victory that led to the institution of the Feast of the Holy Rosary. This time, Turkish invaders from the Ottoman Emp...

Goldenmouth, remember his name, and no winning Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to Ed read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Happy Friday friends, And a very happy feast of St. John Chrysostom (that’s Goldenmouth, to us non-Greek speakers). St. John is one of those saints whose feast day is a reminder to me about how vast our history is, and how much of it I barely know or understand.  Sure, I have read some of his most famous works, especially when they come up in the Office of Readings. And I can tell you that as Patriarch of Constantinople his famous eloquence as a preacher got him exiled twice from his city and see, dying in Armenia. And I could even tell you, mostly thanks to a famous painting, that he tangled particularly with the Empress Aelia Eudoxia, who wa...

“You are dust,” says Genesis 3:19, “and to dust you shall return.” Every Ash Wednesday, we hear this scriptural reminder of our mortality. While the soul is immortal, the body naturally decays after death. Naturally — but not always. On Aug. 28, the Diocese of Ávila in Spain reported, “Today the tomb of St. Teresa was opened and we have verified that it is in the same condition as when it was last opened in 1914.” St. Teresa of Ávila died more than four centuries ago on Oct. 4, 1582. The week before, on Aug. 22, Bishop James Johnston in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, released a report on Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster — the foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles monastery in Gower, Missouri — who died in 2019 and was buried with no embalming or artificial p...

There is a video circulating on social media of an octogenarian woman offering her best advice. She is clad in large, chic glasses and chunky jewelry. To live her best life, she explains, a woman needs to be as independent as possible: no men, no children, lots of money, and lots of friends. As I watched, I was amazed at how compelling she was. And clearly, I’m not the only one — with thousands of comments affirming that this woman is a living sage. I recall hearing similar advice as a teenager. It was shiny and seductively simple. The belief that I, too, could become this idealized independent woman welled up in my adolescent heart. “I don’t need anyone,” I told myself as I looked brightly toward the future and all the important things I imagined I would do. The problem, of course, i...

There is nothing like parenting, or teaching, or any real formation of the young to help us to see and focus on what really matters. If we have come to the insight that living well—or living virtuously—is at the center of the human vocation, then the enormity of a question begins to dawn on us: what makes people actually want to live that way? We are all familiar with the phenomenon of those—often but not only the young—conforming to good conduct for a time only to abandon it later for something that, clearly, they find more desirable. And while such a happening does not necessarily impugn the formation received—for with human freedom no formation is a sure fire—it does move us to look more closely at how best to form people in virtue. The wise always have and always will give great attent...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Sep 09, 2024 I suppose the name of Planned Parenthood should be changed to Parenthood Denial since the bulk of the organization’s work consists not only of preventing pregnancy but of terminating pregnancy, that is, of preventing birth. The organization’s traffic in embryonic tissue has also been well-documented. There is, of course, a great deal of money involved in its operations, and even if many Planned Parenthood employees and promoters are sincere in their misguided convictions, the organization has to be one of the most cynical on the planet. However, the flight from parenthood in the West is nearly as strong a trend as the desire for “sexual experiences”, and so the organization continues to prosper. For these reasons, I th...

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Quito, a whale spy, and ‘sensory Masses’ Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Hey everybody, Greetings from Quito, Ecuador, where I arrived last night to cover the International Eucharistic Congress, a week-long global pilgrimage event organized under the aegis of the creatively named Pontifical Committee for Eucharistic Congresses at the Vatican.  I got to Quito well after midnight, and I really haven’t seen or done anything yet, save for taking a Tylenol PM and hitting the hay.  But I will. Just as soon as I press send on this newsletter. I came to see what the Church’s International Eucharistic Congress looks like, and to report back to you about how it lines up relative to the National Eucharistic Congress in Ind...

Why did the CCHD amp up spending while contributions were dropping? Skip to content The USCCB has released its audited financial statements for 2023, potentially shedding additional light on the recent administration of the CCHD, an anti-poverty program administered by the bishops conference which has at times attracted controversy. The headquarters of the USCCB in Washington, DC. Credit: Fr. Gaurov Shroff via Flickr. CC BY SA 2.0 Subscribe now Founded in 1969, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is a program based on an annual national collection administered by the U.S. bishops. Of the money collected, 25% is retained by the dioceses where it is collected, and dispersed to fund local poverty alleviation projects. The remaining 75% is distributed through grants – typi...

America has had no shortage of pessimistic critiques in recent years. And with titles like Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics and The Decadent Society: How We Became Victims of Our Own Success to his name, Ross Douthat has become something of a master of the genre. But at a Sept. 6 talk at the University of Notre Dame, the conservative Catholic commentator and New York Times columnist sounded an uncharacteristically optimistic note regarding the United States’ prospects. “There’s no better place to be for the rest of the 21st century than right here in America,” Douthat said to a full auditorium in Geddes Hall, answering in the affirmative the question posed by his talk’s title, “Is There Hope for America’s Future?” However, there’s a catch: According to Douthat’s presentatio...

“On the Role of Literature in Formation” is perhaps Pope Francis’s best document of his pontificate. Short, sweet, and full of good lines quoted and written. And yet he remains a “second friend” to many of his flock because they see their own world in some fundamentally different ways than he does. Pope Francis’s pontificate has been, to put it mildly, controversial. His judgments—theological, administrative, and otherwise—have generally cheered those who seem to want the Catholic Church to resemble the liberal Protestant groups that are evaporating before our eyes. The ambiguity with which Francis has expressed many of these judgments has unleashed before us a small army of “popesplainers,” those who feel a bounden duty to tell anyone worried about statements, appointments, or any other p...