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 (as I mentioned in a previous column) has been underway 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.

Put not your trust in princes →

While the politicization of every aspect of human life is more advanced in the United States than in many other countries, the increasing expansion of politics well beyond the narrow sphere that it occupied in the Christian centuries has been one of the primary marks of the modern world since the early Renaissance. From the French Revolution through the Russian Revolution through Nazism, the attempt to replace religion — and especially Catholicism — with politics, or at least to subjugate religion to politics, has been unrelenting.

Here in the United States, this revolutionary elevation of politics over religion has been more subtle, but in many ways that has made it more effective.