Book Reviews – November 2022

Faith of Our Fathers: A History of True England. By Joseph Pearce. Reviewed by K.E. Colombini. (skip to review) The WillPower Advantage: Building Habits For Lasting Happiness. By Tom Peterson and Ryan Hanning. Reviewed by Mary R. … [Read more...]

Book Reviews – February 2020

Habits for a Healthy Marriage: A Handbook for Catholic Couples By Richard P. Fitzgibbons. Reviewed by Christopher Siuzdak. (skip to review) Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination By John Corvino, Ryan Anderson, and Sherif … [Read more...]

Questions Answered – February 2020

Purgatory and Filthy Lucre Question: I teach RCIA and a catechumen in my class said he was taught that Catholics dreamed up Purgatory as a way to get money from people. I know Purgatory is referred to in Maccabees and responded that … [Read more...]

The New Acceptance of Sodomy

Why? And What Now?

How could a Catholic priest ever come to think that it was morally acceptable for him to engage in sodomy? In the light of more than a dozen events or factors affecting one’s thinking since 1960, a priest with a same-sex orientation might a … [Read more...]

Book Reviews for Late Autumn 2018

The First Society: The Sacrament of Matrimony and the Restoration of the Social Order By Scott Hahn. Reviewed by Matthew Rose. (skip to review) In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk’s Memoir By Paul Quenon. Reviewed by Matthew K. M … [Read more...]

The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the New Evangelization

Is the New Evangelization still relevant? The assured answer is a resounding Yes! However, it has fallen out of favor as a pastoral movement, fallen under the weight of its own branding. Given its origins as the overarching thesis of the … [Read more...]

Giving Nature Its Due—Even in Sacramental Matrimony

One of the “hot” debates in Catholic circles this past decade has been the so-called “pure nature” debate. The basic question underlying the whole topic is: “How should we parse the interactions, so to speak, between nature and grace, the na … [Read more...]

Early Summer Reading

I Burned for Your Peace. Augustine's Confessions Unpacked by Peter Kreeft. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016). Reviewed by Matthew K. Minerd, Ph.L. Desiring a Better Country: Forays in Political Theology by Douglas Farrow. (Montreal &a … [Read more...]

What is Christianity?

An Evangelical Catholic and Reformed View of Faith and Culture

The only strength with which Christianity can make its influence felt publicly is ultimately the strength of its intrinsic truth. This strength, though, is as indispensable today as it ever was, because man cannot survive without truth. … [Read more...]

Parents as Primary Educators

Hardly a month goes by now without an email arriving in my inbox asking me to sign an online petition against some proposal in the EU or UK concerning sex education in schools. Perhaps, it is a matter of protesting a resolution calling for … [Read more...]

The Gift of Law and the Law of Gift

“I can’t understand why your Church makes you live that way,” a friend of mine once said to me, “it’s just not natural!” I fear that many, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, have a similar misunderstanding about nature, law, and the foundati … [Read more...]

John Paul II Brightens the Earth with His Holiness and Truth

Engaged so deeply in earthly human affairs and believing in each persons’ goodness, John Paul seems to be calling us from heaven with a special request for solidarity of those who live on earth, and those living, though yet unborn. … [Read more...]

Benedict XVI on Freedom in Obedience to the Truth: A Key for the New Evangelization

... the more fundamental task ... is to form human hearts, beginning with those who have already been evangelized and need to be “newly evangelized,” those who know something already, but are not living it; those who are showing up in the pe … [Read more...]

Questions Answered

May 2014

Is the Old Testament an allegory, and if so, how far does that extend? Is it true that there is no good argument against gay marriage, and if this is true, why does the Church oppose it? Question: I recently heard a Catholic news … [Read more...]