One of the many reasons to follow the Lenten station church pilgrimage through Rome is that along that unique itinerary of sanctity, one discovers otherwise-hidden jewels of church architecture and design, created in honor of the early Roman martyrs.
For the better part of two centuries now, one of the standard tropes in western high culture has held that the-God-of-the-Bible-is-the-enemy-of-human-freedom.
We often think people in prison are different. The only difference is that they made different choices.
The “annual catechumenate” of Lent prepares us to be missionary disciples who can display the divine mercy because we have known it in our lives.
by Effie Caldarola For many parts of the Northern Hemisphere, this has been the winter of our discontent. Snowstorm upon snowstorm blanketed great swaths of the U.S. Ice brought cities in the Southern U.S. to a virtual standstill, while Canada and Alaska experienced disconcerting periods of warmth. The British Isles were hit by massive flooding. […]
by George Weigel In a conversation about Russian Orthodoxy some dozen years ago, that famous source who can only be quoted off-the-record, the senior Vatican official, said to me, “They only know how to be chaplain to the czar – whoever he is.” Such asperity reflected deep frustration over the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow’s […]
by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk Discrimination is often understood as acting out of prejudice against persons who differ from us and do not share our views, traits, values or lifestyles. The word “discrimination,” however, has an older meaning as well, namely, to draw a clear distinction between proper and improper, good and evil, to differentiate and […]
by George Weigel Every once in a while, a truly special book comes down the theological pike: a book both scholarly and well-written, a book that stretches the imagination, a book that changes the state of a discussion, if it’s taken with the seriousness it deserves. The late Servais Pinckaers’ “Sources of Christian Ethics” was […]
Half an hour before sunrise on Ash Wednesday, hundreds of English-speakers from all over Rome begin walking to the ancient basilica of St. Sabina on the Aventine Hill. For St. Sabina is the first “station” in the Roman station church pilgrimage of Lent, a tradition dating back to the middle centuries of the first Christian millennium.
by George Weigel The Catholic Church began compiling “martyrologies” – lists of saints, typically martyrs – during the first centuries after Constantine. In the pre-Vatican II breviary, a reading from the Roman Martyrology, or what we might call the Catholic Book of Witnesses, was an integral part of the Office of Prime, the “hour” recited after […]
