Blog of the Archdiocese of Washington
Some engage in the wishful thinking that humans can suddenly and dramatically become converted and wholly different. To be sure, there are what are sometimes called “sudden conversions” of individuals. But what this usually means is that the person’s disposition against God and/or the faith is transformed into an openness to the truth and grace …
There was a movie that came out in 1999 called Blast from The Past. The movie begins in the early 1960s at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. An eccentric man and his pregnant wife have built an elaborate fallout shelter underground in their backyard. It is no ordinary bomb shelter, but a large, …
Continue reading “On the Coarsening of Culture and What We Have Lost – As Seen In a Movie”
Many of you know that I write the Question and Answer Column for Our Sunday Visitor on both their newspaper side and in their magazine, The Catholic Answer. Every now and then a question comes in that seems like a good topic for the blog. The following question comes up frequently whenever I teach moral …
In this series of two posts, I ponder the glory of something we call order. I do this more in the form of a meditation than a treatise on the glory of order. In the first part (yesterday’s post) I set forth how the appreciation and understanding of order has suffered in the modern age. …
Continue reading “Order – A Meditation on one of God’s Great Gifts”
One of the greatest (but most painful) of mysteries is that of suffering and evil in the world. I was meditating with my Sunday school parents this past weekend on the Old Testament patriarch Joseph. His story is rich with lessons about family struggles, envy, jealousy, pride, mercy, and forgiveness. But it also has a …
Continue reading “What We Can Learn About Suffering in the Story of Joseph the Patriarch”
In Sunday’s Feast of the Holy Family, the reading from the Letter to the Colossians sets forth values that ought to be cultivated by Christians, especially in the family setting. The third chapter of the Letter to the Colossians, while speaking in a general way about vices to be avoided and virtues to be cultivated, …
Continue reading “A List of Biblical Family Values to Cultivate”
In his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas discusses the virtue of religion within his treatise on justice. This surprises some, who expect it to be treated under the theological virtue of faith. But Thomas clearly states that religion is not a theological virtue. Theological virtues have God Himself for their object, whereas religion has as …
Words can change meaning over time—sometimes dramatically. For example, “manufactured” originally meant “handmade” (manu (hand) + facere (make)). The word “decimate” used to mean “to reduce by a tenth” (decem = ten); now people usually use it mean “to wipe out completely.” The list of examples could go on and on. Yes, words do change …
Continue reading “The Not-so-Nice Origins and Meanings of the Word “Nice””