Start here.
I have written here since 2010 on evangelization, parish life, Scripture, apologetics, and the moral life. These six are the best place to begin.
Go Home and Live as Missionary Disciples
If your faith feels humdrum, you may not have entered the mission yet. A talk to men on what that asks of you.
Formed By Distraction
Eliot described minds pulled from one distraction to the next. We now carry that in our pockets. What is it forming in us?
What Is a Catholic?
A plain answer: who belongs to the Church Christ founded on the Apostles, and what holds that Church together.
Why You Need Your Men’s Group
Before asking whether men’s groups work, ask what problem they are meant to solve.
Why Protestants Are Becoming Catholic at My Parish
What draws evangelicals and mainline Protestants into the Catholic Church, as they told me in class.
How God Speaks in Human Words
The first of four articles on how the Bible is at once a human book and the Word of God.
The Son Reveals the Father and the Spirit
In revealing to us the face of the Father, Jesus breaks open eternity for mankind, making a relationship with the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit a real possibility for each and every one of us. The Trinity is as much the main message of the Good News as is the cross and Resurrection.
This self-giving, life-giving love is the heart of the Blessed Trinity and therefore, it is the heart of our Christian faith and morality.
The Still-Point of the Turning World
The Still-Point of the Turning World
The Incarnation of the Son of God changes everything, especially the way we speak about morality. Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, is the divine presence in the world. He is the center, the constant, upon which all activity, both divine and human, turn.
Because God became man in Jesus Christ, he has become for humanity both the Source of moral goodness and the exemplar of that goodness. He is life's Source and Definition. There is nothing possible to add when fullness is already present.
What is Christian morality, then? It is the imitation of the virtues of Christ.
Fears, Challenges, and the Grace of Being Ticked Off
Me. Yesterday.
I hate being fat. I've been fat for most of my life, pretty much since the third grade when I found out that I had aesthma. I let that little factoid become an evolving excuse why I couldn't, just couldn't! do this or that active thing.
The lazier and fatter I got, the more I relied on my own excuses why I should not have to do active, fun things with active, fun people.
Excuses only last for so long. Sometimes they do not work at all. And when that happens, now completely out of shape, I would be forced into situations where I had to be active, fun, and athletic. And of course I was just embarrassed by my inability and failure. No one wants to be embarrassed like that, so I withdrew further.
Embarrassment turned into fears, all sorts of fears, especially that common fear of failure.
And I liked those fears, because they kept me from those things that I thought were demanding far too much from me. I was not running from God, I just was running from... running. I feared demanding things because I did not know if I truly had what it takes.
Vatican on the death of Osama bin Laden
This comes from the Catholic News Service on May 2, the day after President Obama announced the execution of Osama bin Laden.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, released a brief written statement reacting to the news.
"Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions to this end," Father Lombardi said.
"In the face of a man's death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for the further growth of peace and not of hatred," the spokesman said.