The coronavirus and a stark reminder that wellness was not always a given →

One of the most popular books for Lenten reading in the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches is “The Ladder of Divine Ascent” by St. John Climacus. St. John, a seventh-century monk and abbot of a monastery on Mount Sinai, wrote “The Ladder” for his fellow monks. Divided into 30 “steps,” the book uses the image of Jacob’s ladder (cf. Gn 28:10-19) as a metaphor for the monk’s advancement in the Christian life. . . .

I’ve read a chapter of “The Ladder of Divine Ascent” every day during Lent a few times over the past 25 or so years, each time finding deeper meaning in different steps, depending on my state in life. As I work my way through it again for the first time in probably seven years, I have been more aware than ever of St. John’s emphasis, step after step, on the need to keep our own mortality ever before our eyes.

The Amazon exhortation is a ‘Humanae Vitae’ moment for the Church →

In the weeks leading up to the release of Querida Amazonia (“The Beloved Amazon”), Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the October 2019 Amazon synod, all of the public voices in the entire Catholic Church seemed to be united on one point: Pope Francis was going to write something that would call into question the future of the celibate priesthood in the Roman rite of the Catholic Church.

Both those who supported a revision of the Church’s discipline on priestly celibacy and those who were opposed to it seemed to agree that the only question remaining was whether Pope Francis would suggest an exception to the ban on ordaining married men limited to the Amazon region, or whether he would open the door to much broader exceptions (or even a complete rethinking of the discipline) worldwide.

In the end, everyone got it wrong.

Understanding the ‘front porch of Lent’ →

The “front porch of Lent,” as Father Brian A.T. Bovee, our pastor at St. Mary Oratory in Rockford called the three weeks before Ash Wednesday, was meant to help ease Christians into the Lenten fast. It was a recognition that a change in heart rarely happens overnight, that we need time to set aside sinful habits so that we can embrace the spiritual discipline of Lent. And it was a reminder, too, that the fasting, abstinence, prayer and almsgiving of Lent should not be confined to those 40 days but should spill out into the rest of the liturgical year.

A teachable moment for Catholic leaders →

The politicization of every aspect of human life, a process that has been under way since the Renaissance, has had some unexpected consequences.

It’s not surprising to find governments and politicians encroaching on the rights of churches and attempting to redefine freedom of religion (which threatens the supremacy of politics) as freedom to worship (which keeps religion confined within church walls). What is surprising, though, is the extent to which Christian leaders voluntarily accept these limits and shy away from opportunities to reveal the transformative power of the Gospel.

Truths, half-truths and ‘The Two Popes’ →

A half-truth, the Catholic historian John Lukacs frequently warned his readers, is more dangerous than a lie. The element of truth gives the half-truth a veneer of credibility that the lie does not have, and it often leads those who should know better to doubt their own judgment.

A few minutes into the pre-release screener of Netflix’s “The Two Popes,” I began to wonder what Lukacs, who died last spring at the age of 95, would have thought of it. The producers of “The Two Popes” have been forthright in acknowledging that the film is a work of fiction, and Lukacs would have been the first to admit that fiction can often reveal deeper truths than a mere recitation of the facts ever could. But works of fiction involving historical figures too often fall more into the category of half-truths, and “The Two Popes” is no exception.