Winter Reading for January 2015

New Evangelization: Passing on the Catholic Faith Today. Cardinal Donald Wuerl.  (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 2013) 91 pages. (Reviewed by Dr. Edward Peters) ______ A Future Built on Faith: Religious Life and the Legacy o … [Read more...]

Scriptural Iconography Communicating Our Vision of God

Literature, whether in the form of narratives, plays, autobiographies, biographies, or histories, is a question-raising work of art for the inquisitive mind seeking understanding. As such, it presents what scholastic philosophy called “the s … [Read more...]

True, Virginal Wife of Joseph

Recently, a holy, married couple made the following claim regarding the central place of sexual intercourse in sacramental marriage, expressed as a personal insight, gained over the course of more than 50 years of sacramental … [Read more...]

The Glory of the Mass

Obviously, the Mass is a glorious thing. It is the way God continues to feed his people; it is the way Jesus Christ—God made flesh—keeps his promise never to leave us orphans. Those who attend daily Mass have been given an unmatchable gra … [Read more...]

Contemplation, Action, and the Good Life

Everyone is seeking knowledge, but is the knowledge they are seeking really worth the trade-off in terms of the life’s cost?      Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas Everyone familiar with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition will recognize … [Read more...]

Communion, Community, and Communication

The Gospel summons us to authentic human development in communion, community, and communication under the sovereignty of God’s love. Our Christian conversion is both an event and a lifelong process of ongoing response to the grace and call o … [Read more...]

Welcome, Holy Father Francis!

Like Francis of Assisi, our Holy Father is calling us back to the great saint who “rebuilt Christ's Church” by living a life of sheer simplicity and charity.    St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis: "Rebuild my House" Let us take this oppo … [Read more...]

Prayer as the Channel of Celestial Joy

We can accept, rather than trying to avoid, pain and trials in a spirit allowing us to offer this rarely-appreciated human gift back to God.  This is the cause of St. Francis of Assisi's perfect joy. St. Francis of Assisi by Jusepe de … [Read more...]

The Dark Side of Voluntary Poverty?

THE POVERTY OF RICHES: ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI RECONSIDERED. By Kenneth Baxter Wolf (Oxford University Press, 200 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016, 2003), 208 pp. HB $45.00.

The emergence of a commercial economy in the High Middle Ages created new spiritual challenges for many medieval Christians, who wondered how to reconcile Christ’s instructions to the rich man in the gospel with the emerging profit economy. … [Read more...]