On Dec. 7, 1965, Pope Paul solemnly promulgated the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, known by its Latin incipit (opening words) as “Dignitatis humanae.” The council thereby turbocharged the Catholic Church’s transformation into the world’s premier institutional defender of basic human rights.
As a Catholic missionary living in Williamsburg for four years, I often ask myself: What about the Church? Is the Church reaching these young people? If not, why not?
Being the president of the Jornada de Vida Cristiana youth movement in the Diocese of Brooklyn has been a huge part of my life.
The deterioration of our games is part and parcel of the deterioration of our culture. And as politics is downstream from culture, end-zone ridiculousness and similar self-aggrandizing debaucheries in other forms of entertainment have inevitably leaked into politics like a poison.
The All Saints’ Day proclamation of St. John Henry Newman as a Doctor of the Church was entirely welcome, if not without a certain irony.
Antisemitism is a malignancy in society. Throughout modern political history, rising antisemitism has been an unmistakable marker of cultural decay.
During the Rite of Ordination of Deacons, the newly vested deacon kneels before the bishop and receives the Book of the Gospels. With the Book of the Gospels in the hands of both, the bishop says to the deacon, “Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.”
The “Mother of Parliaments” — that’s the one in London — has been embroiled for months in a debate over “assisted dying,” which is euphemized elsewhere under other Orwellian monikers: “Medical Assistance in Dying,” “Physician Assisted Suicide,” “Physician Assisted Dying,” and so forth. The bill legalizing this odious practice narrowly passed the House of Commons on June 20 and has been subsequently debated in the House of Lords. Further parliamentary procedures may delay a final decision until next April or May; the parliamentary clock may even run out on the bill, which would be all to the good.
We are all sinners in constant need of the redeeming grace of Christ, as Pope Leo XIV forcefully reminds us. When we remember that, we will perhaps be less inclined to countenance delineating each other (and ourselves) by sexual desire, orientation, or practice.
Whatever pragmatic sense that might once have made, “The road from Rome to Constantinople runs through Moscow” is now theologically absurd, because the leadership of the Russian Church has abandoned Christian orthodoxy, as demonstrated by Kirill’s heretical and blasphemous statements over the past three-plus years.
