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We must get it into our heads that sin is real just as diseases of the body are real. I walked about for nearly a month with a blood clot in my leg, not wanting to believe it was really there. But the clot was under no obligation to respect my wishes.

Just as the same Chesterton spoke of the five resurrections of the Church, in his memorable The Everlasting Man, we are on the cusp of a sixth. Or, to borrow from the First Letter of the first-century Pope Clement, the Church is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. Look carefully, and you will see it. And it’s happening today. Before our very eyes. With the headwinds of crisis still whipping against our faces, many might miss it. Moreover, its beginnings are small, like all great things. But it possesses remarkable strength. It is showing itself on every continent—but, surprisingly, strongest in America.

Full article here: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/10/the-way-forward-after-dobbs Two data points illustrate the real economic factor. Consider who gets aborted and who gets an abortion: Four percent of babies conceived in marriage will be aborted, compared to 40 percent of children conceived outside of marriage. Meanwhile, 13 percent of women who have abortions are married, and 87 percent are unmarried. Nonmarital sex is the main cause of abortion. Marriage is the best protector of unborn human life. It wasn’t just the pedagogical impact of Roe in teaching about abortion that corrupted our nation; Roe exacerbated multiple generations of a sexual culture that incentivizes abortion.

But as in so much that our atheist reader finds unfair and a personal animus towards Francis, for a Catholic, dubia arise when words don’t match up. And since Rome won’t resolve them in ways that seem coherent, whether we want to or not, we’re forced to try doing it ourselves.

Western culture is experiencing a void because we lack conviction. The Void is waiting to be filled. The answer should be that Christianity will once more seek to lead people to Christ, but too many of us lack conviction. Our leadership has abandoned us for their own lack of conviction. Any member of the clergy who refuses to rock the boat and call us to do the same has misunderstood the calling of the Gospel and has chosen a counterfeit. Christianity without conviction and sacrifice is not Christianity. It is a counterfeit, a fraud.

Winters leads by example, and he leads – at the front of the battle, not eating in the frozen woods of Bastogne, so that his men can. And critically, he defends his men from weak and incompetent superiors. Dick Winters exhibited the two key attributes of what is needed in a good shepherd in the Church, as in a good officer. In the first place, he was willing to lay down his life for his men – or his sheep. The sheep are, in fact, his vocation. He does not run away at the approach of the wolf: that is the work of the hireling, military or episcopal.

We’re very good at the essentially negative project of tracing our social woes to false philosophies of self-interest and personal autonomy. But merely freeing ourselves from these, if that were possible on its own, from Chesterton’s point of view, would be gravely insufficient, since so far we would lack the primordial loyalty which we need in order to be good.

The dearth of sound teaching and the trivialization of worship at St. Typical’s will not ready anyone for the brutality of red martyrdom or for the long, slow, disciplined agony of white martyrdom. Grace builds on nature. The bodies, minds, and hearts of the Typicalians are, humanly speaking, unprepared to receive the graces necessary for any form of costly fidelity—whether the cost of fidelity is paid all at once in blood or paid over decades of hidden yet heroic daily duty. Fr. Cheerful has made clear that he will not offer the necessary preparation; the Typicalians have made clear that they will not receive it.

The critical point is that the leftist attack on the Church isn’t from the outside. It is waged daily in nearly every church and Catholic school by women in the pews and in the school pick-up line, however unwittingly. The Marxist ideal of women prioritizing career over family has won. Friedan and Sanger have won. Women have come to truly believe that living their best life means using birth control and abortion to make way for career opportunities.

The ribald – and often insightful – 1960s comedian Lenny Bruce once quipped: “Everybody knows which church you’re talking about when you talk about The Church.” The Catholic Church reveals God, and God alone is our Judge. But the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, is The Bogeyman for many people.

Catholics love to talk about virtue and “flourishing.” But holiness is different and can sometimes demand or accompany the crushing of what might seem to be the way of “flourishing.” Jesus did not tell us to take up the Cross and flourish. To be crucified is not to flourish. Where holiness is forgotten family life must be bourgeois at best.

Man is never cut free from obedience, heeding his own will alone; that is only to say that man does not create himself. The question is whether he will worship God, the Creator who made him to be free as an obedient son is free, raising himself by obedience into greater responsibility and greater capacity for action; or a false god, one that promises freedom but claps the manacles on his mind and heart, and often enough on his hands as well.

In Indianapolis, in the midst of tens of thousands of faithful sinners, the Lord was present – as He is in every Mass, and in every tabernacle across the land. I have no doubt that the Eucharistic Congress will prove a singular moment of grace for the Church in the United States. What fruits will come of it, I could not possibly guess, but they will come and come in abundance. The triumph, as always, is His alone.

Along the way, together, we have sought to show the Church’s true nature as a “pilgrim Church on earth,” as the Eucharistic Jesus continues to summon us to come to Him, to follow Him, and to go out and proclaim the Gospel, conscious that, by means of His earth-shaking self-gift in the Holy Eucharist, He is with us always until the end of time.

“I began to see the Sisters of Mary’s work as woven into the priest’s call — my own call — to suffer and offer sacrifice with no fanfare. Their ministry of sacrifice and relentless work for souls is the same as the High Priest of Jesus Christ. … As a bishop, I, too, am called to enter into that type of sacrifice and suffering. Otherwise, my priesthood isn’t authentic.”

In this, the progressives failed, though they did so while causing considerable harm to immigrant groups as well as to religious freedom. Since the 1960s, however, the progressives have continued to assault Catholics at nearly every level, especially against Catholic schools and hospitals. Still, in all of this, we Catholics have hope. No matter how alien Catholics might have been on the eve of the American Revolution, the philosophical principles and theological beliefs of Catholics fit with—not to mention uphold and defend—the natural law and natural rights traditions of the American Founding.

Speaking of that defeated old snake, C.S. Lewis wasn't the first to note that Satan hates being the butt of a joke. Thomas Moore once wrote: "The devil ... the prowde spirite ... cannot endure to be mocked." Martin Luther likewise wrote, "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn."

Catholic institutions should not be timid about proclaiming their devotion to both faith and reason. Their faith that they are examining the handiwork of their Creator would lead them to conclude that they must never fudge the data of science to gratify their own egos and desire for prestige, because to do so would be like fudging the letter of Scripture. They would be “bearing false witness” about God. Catholics studying the handiwork of God should be more devoted to their craft, not less.

Freedom of religion, thus, is far more than being able to go to one’s house of worship once a week. Because faith makes a claim on the totality of our lives, it permeates every dimension of a believer’s existence and all the institutions with which he is involved.

Lent is an annual invitation to reflect on how well the Church today is living the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. Thus, a suggestion for a different kind of Lenten fast: Give up Catholic bad news-mongering. The Holy Spirit is animating good things among us. They should be celebrated and supported.