Back in the day, before the parish repertoire was expanded to accommodate the hymn sandwich (the “opening hymn” and “closing hymn”), the “offertory hymn,” and the almost-never-sung-by-parishioners “Communion hymn,” Catholics in the U.S. didn’t know a lot of hymns. Everyone knew “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name” disfigured by those baroque trills (”In-fih-ih-neh-ett thy vast […]

You know it is time to leave the Catholic Church when…
“Mass doesn’t inspire you.”  Over the course of the past few years I’ve become keenly aware of friends and family who have opted to leave the Catholic Church on the grounds that the Mass wasn’t “inspiring.”  Upon hearing this, again, just a few days ago […]

Approximately 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are thought to be infected with the HIV virus. Unlike the West, from the start, HIV/AIDS in Africa has ravaged the non-drug-using heterosexual population. Let me put it this way: People whose Western counterparts are not at risk for HIV/AIDS have been the epidemic’s principal victims in Africa. […]

John 1:12
But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.
In the early 1980s, Cary Grant was in his 80s and was still healthy as a horse.  A reporter asked him the secret of his longevity and he replied: “First, you have to pick your parents […]

You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed — Jeremiah 20:7.
While reflecting on this passage from Jeremiah, I looked up the meaning of the word “duped.” According to Dictionary.com, it means “to be tricked or deceived.” That doesn’t sound very good, does it? None […]

Psalm 100:3
Know that the LORD is God!
It is he that made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Being city folk we tend to hear biblical references to “God our shepherd” or to us as his “sheep” in terms of sentimental greeting cards.  All those blue-eyed, blonde Jesuses from […]

Last week, 40 million TV viewers watched Barack Obama become the first African-American nominee of a major political party.
And 24 hours later, Republican candidate John McCain set the political world on its ear by selecting a little-known woman governor from Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his running mate.
Either way the election turns out, history will be […]

Luke 14:21
Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.
The happy and contented burghers in Luke’s Parable of the Wedding Feast are the exact opposite of the great saint whose feast we celebrate today: St. Gregory the Great.  They excused themselves from […]

When Christians write about science, they are imposing their religion on the free pursuit of TRUTH. When scientists pontificate about religion, they are just innocently writing about science with no agenda at all. Nope. None whatsoever. Really.
Case in point: This little bulletin from the Ministry of Truth in the Dictatorship of Relativism called “Are Scientists […]

There is a fascinating website called “Long Bets.” There, people-usually experts-make specific predictions that will come true by a specific date. If somebody disagrees, the parties make a bet, with the proceeds going to charity. Current bets include “routine” commercial flights in “pilotless planes” by the year 2030 and that someone alive today will still […]

2 Corinthians 4:7
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.
One man has remarked, “The good news about the Catholic Church is: it’s like a big family.  The bad news about the Catholic Church is: it’s like a big family.”  St. Paul knew […]

If you saw the movie The Passion of The Christ, you no doubt remember the film’s powerful and overwhelming depiction of Jesus’ scourging and crucifixion. But the film does contain one humorous moment, which hints at the high value God places on work.
The scene, you may remember, shows Jesus at work as a carpenter, finishing […]

“So, how’s your girlfriend?” I ask my son out of the blue. “Which one?” he says with a devious smile.
“The new one,” I say.
“Oh, her.” He shrugs. We both smile.
And that’s the end of our update on Jimmy’s dating life.
It’s all a joke, of course. Jimmy doesn’t have a dating life. The “girlfriend thing” remains […]

Matthew 5:4
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
A few years ago, a proud and wealthy man remarked publicly that Christianity was a “religion for losers”.  The sad and comic thing about this was that the man seemed to be utterly unaware that we are all—even proud and rich men—destined to lose: if […]

James 1:5
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him.
In his wonderful little story The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis takes us on a bus ride from Hell to Heaven where damned souls are offered the opportunity, if they will […]

Acts 3:6-7
But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I have; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. 
A wise man once said, “You can never get […]

Psalm 20:7
Some boast of chariots, and some of horses;
but we boast of the name of the LORD our God.
With the exception of a few salad days during the Davidic dynasty, Israel was never great shakes in the Political Clout department.  They went from being nomads, to slaves, to farmers, to a kingdom which was the […]

Isaiah 61:1
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.
If you are afflicted, brokenhearted, or captive […]

My mother was recently clearing out her collection of books. She passed on to me a few that she thought I might find interesting. Among them was Understanding Marriage by Charles and Audrey Riker. Published in 1963, this was apparently a book my mom read when she was preparing for her own marriage. My first […]

Glenn Reynolds (aka “Instapundit”) is the blogosphere’s resident libertarian transhumanist. We owe him a debt for leading the charge in making the blogosphere an important counterweight to the Usual Stuff from the mainstream media. And he has lived that belief personally by becoming the single most influential member of the New Media, simply by setting […]

Deuteronomy 6:4-7
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your […]

Pink now is the wardrobe essential for an entire generation of tween and teen girls, so it didn’t surprise me when a mom I know mentioned taking her daughters to the new Pink retail store at the mall.
What took me aback was when she said: “I absolutely hate the Pink store and I can’t stand […]

John 14:6
I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.
It is very easy for us to fall prey to the notion that life is primarily about mastering some technique or arcane body of knowledge.  Lots and lots of religions and philosophies have at their core […]

“More Catholic than the Pope.”  There is nothing more quintessentially Catholic than the Papacy.  When we think “Catholic,” we think Rome, the Vatican, the dome of St. Peter’s.
But the roots of the papacy actually go back to Jerusalem and the messiah-kings who ruled there.
Like most heads of state, David and his descendants, the anointed kings […]

You may have seen ads for an insurance company touting its commitment to responsibility. They feature people doing the right thing, such as returning lost property and helping strangers, simply because it is the right thing to do.
The ads have struck a nerve with the public-probably because personal responsibility is not one of the defining […]

Isaiah 53:5
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed.
If there is any passage in Old Testament Scripture that mysteriously sums up the gospel, this is it.  Jesus Christ has borne on his back the […]

Jonah 2:1
Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish.
Poor Jonah.  He played the game we’ve all played since Adam and Eve hid from God in the Garden.  He got the silly notion in his head that God couldn’t see what he was up to if he ran off and […]

Isaiah 55:8-9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
This is a verse we believe on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Other days of the week, […]

On the surface, with its period settings and costumes, the new film Brideshead Revisited looks like a faithful adaptation of the classic novel by Evelyn Waugh. Underneath, it is anything but faithful. On the contrary, it presents a deeply flawed and inaccurate picture of the Christian faith that Waugh embraced.
Brideshead Revisited tells the story of […]

Abraham instructed his servant to leave Canaan, return to Abraham’s homeland and find a wife for Isaac.  Abraham was far too old to make the journey himself and trusted in God to make the procurement of a daughter-in-law a successful one.  Abraham’s servant, likewise, trusted in this same God.  The servant set out to Abraham’s […]

Note: This commentary was delivered by PFM President Mark Earley.
In the July/August edition of the Atlantic Monthly, there is a fascinating feature story by Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains.”
There is no question about it, Google is a marvelous tool. The entire planet uses it, and […]

Micah 6:8
He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Periodically, somebody comes up with a brand new religion or philosophy or theory of ethics they claim is “ground-breaking” or “revolutionary”.  But trying to come up […]

If you have been watching the Olympics, you cannot help but be awed by the strength, speed, and skill of Olympic athletes. Take Michael Phelps, the phenomenal American swimmer who took gold in event after event. Or Dara Torres, a 41-year-old American swimmer who bested much younger athletes, winning a silver medal.
These men and women […]

John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”
In Greek mythology, there was a dangerous place in the sea near the world’s end with two terrible rocks called Scylla and Charybdis.  In avoiding the one, sailors usually smashed into the […]

Fair warning - this column is going to be a rant. But bear with me because it’s possible you also saw [last] Sunday’s USA Weekend featuring tween icon Miley Cyrus on the cover with the headline, “Why You Can’t Ignore This Face.”
The story wasn’t about Miley, per se.
No, the article inside was titled, “The Secret […]

Exodus 15:13
Thou hast led in thy steadfast love the people whom thou hast redeemed, thou hast guided them by thy strength to thy holy abode.
Ancient Israel was a people on the way.  The central and formative experience of their history was the Exodus from Egypt and conquest and settlement of Canaan, the promised land.  In […]

Here in Seattle, the Land at the End of History, all you have to do to induce complete credulity in the average Seattleite is preface whatever quack junk you are palming off on our highly sophisticated urban post-Christian crowd with “the Ancient Chinese art of” [insert quack junk]. After all, as we Seattleites all know, […]

Psalm 25:16-18
Turn thou to me, and be gracious to me; for I am lonely and afflicted.
Relieve the troubles of my heart,
and bring me out of my distresses.
Consider my affliction and my trouble,
and forgive all my sins.
Everybody has felt the way the psalmist in today’s verses feels.  As children, we all knew what it was to […]

Full disclosure, up front: Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver is an old friend; the Archdiocese of Denver syndicates this column to Catholic papers throughout the country; I played a (very) minor role in introducing Archbishop Chaput to my friends at Doubleday. So I’m not exactly a disinterested party in the matter of the archbishop’s new […]

Note: The following commentary contains information that may not be suitable for children.
CBS is nostalgic this summer for the good old days that never existed. The network’s summer series Swingtown examines the lives of three suburban couples in 1976 and their experiences with drugs and “swinging”-or, what was called then, “wife swapping.”
Before I go on, […]

Hebrews 11:1-2
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval.
We live in a skeptical age.  We also live in an incredibly credulous age.  That’s not surprising, for people tend to see-saw between extremes.  Those who refuse to believe in […]

The apostles thought she was a nuisance and asked Jesus to get rid of her.  Jesus had gone to the region of Tyre and Sidon, modern-day Lebanon, and a local woman approached him for a favor.  This was pagan country, home turf of the infamous Jezebel.  The inhabitants of these parts were fondly referred to […]

Lamentations 3:40
Let us test and examine our ways,
and return to the LORD!
One of the great modern myths is the notion that absolutely all judgment of any kind is wrong.  It is true that Jesus said, “Judge not” (Matthew 7:1).  It is absurd falsehood to say that by this he meant any and all judgments of […]

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for Al-Qaeda and was charged last week in New York City with attempting to kill American soldiers.
Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds. In […]

Romans 7:15-19
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within […]

I know President Bush to be a man of courage and of deep Christian faith. So several weeks ago, when I read press reports that he was going to the Beijing Olympics merely as a “sports fan,” I was dismayed. And I said so over the airwaves.
Echoing Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.), one of the most […]

I have one book that is always in my purse, in my car, or on my person.  It is Heidi Hess Saxton’s Behold Your Mother.  When I was recently editing Teresa Tomeo’s upcoming autobiography, Newsflash, there is a point where Teresa encourages her readers to make a habit of spending at least a few minutes […]

 I have to give my daughter credit. She’s persistent. Despite my repeated denials, emphatically delivered in my most characteristic “mom” voice, she pleads for a cell phone as if there is any chance on God’s green earth we will relent.
She’s tried every conceivable argument. “I’ll be safer,” she says. “Think of the convenience when you […]

1 Peter 2:10
Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.
Many people have the notion that mercy means pretending a nasty sin was “nothing”.  In a quirky way, this is what keeps some of us from accepting forgiveness from God.  “How […]

The faculty of Harvard University admired Alexandr Solzhenitsyn for his literary achievements, so they were thrilled that he agreed to deliver the university’s 1978 commencement address. But almost as soon as he began to speak, the professors changed their minds: too late. As I wrote this month in Christianity Today, they realized that Solzhenitsyn was […]