Gaudete! Rejoice!

Gaudete! Rejoice!

Gaudete!—Rejoice!—is the name for the Third Sunday of Advent. The rubrics say the Advent penances and discipline are somewhat mitigated on this day. Gaudete Sunday is a respite, rather like one of those “film trailers” that give a tantalizing glimpse of what is to come. Even so, the sonorous hymns and rose colors of Gaudete…

Advent’s Four Themes: A fool-proof remedy for superficiality

Advent’s Four Themes: A fool-proof remedy for superficiality

Given the many theatres that are or have been within walking distance of our church on 34th Street, it is not possible to count the number of times stage curtains have come down on a final act. One block away from us is the theatre built by Oscar Hammerstein, to compete with the old Metropolitan…

Christ the King

Christ the King

If from time to time you have a sense that all things held dear in both Church and State seem to be collapsing, you might find a comrade in the Irish poet William Butler Yeats: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and…

Fascinating History: Our Founding Fathers and Catholics

Fascinating History: Our Founding Fathers and Catholics

Most of our Founding Fathers were not deeply informed about Catholicism, but they appreciated moral integrity when they saw it. When John Dubois, eventually the first resident Bishop of New York, fled the French Revolution, he lived for a while in the home of James Monroe. Patrick Henry taught him English, and Thomas Jefferson arranged for…

Jaw-dropping absurdity… and worse

Jaw-dropping absurdity… and worse

Life in New York City can be hard for anyone who has difficulty accommodating paradoxes. For instance, the same City Council that has just banned the sale of foie gras on the grounds that it involves cruelty to force-fed geese, previously made New York the first city to pay mothers from other states to come…

Things You Didn’t Know about St. John Henry Newman

Things You Didn’t Know about St. John Henry Newman

Last week’s canonization of Saint John Henry Newman will have universal influences that I trust will include our own parish. It should be remembered that his achievements, for the most part, hardly seemed successful at the time. He might even be called a patron saint of the disappointed. Newman was so nervous in his university…

Beautiful Reflections on Saint John Henry Newman

Beautiful Reflections on Saint John Henry Newman

More than forty years ago, I told a wise Protestant theologian that I had been reading the Apologia pro Vita Sua of John Henry Newman (1801-1890). He warned me that it is “a dangerous book.” That was just the sort of advice that makes a young thinker all the more eager to read it. And so I did,…

A Time for Boldness and Truth

A Time for Boldness and Truth

At the start of October, life in Manhattan recovers from those late September weeks when the opening of the United Nations General Assembly ties up traffic, even blocking many streets, and takes over many hotels and clubs for expensive receptions—some of the costliest, it seems, being those of some of the poorest countries. With so…

Surrounded by Angels, lest we forget

Surrounded by Angels, lest we forget

In thinking of angels, you need humility, for a couple of reasons. First of all, a cynical culture mocks anyone who believes that angels exist in any way that is real rather than sentimental. Secondly, since angels, who were created before humans, are intelligent beyond any material measurement, that means they are smarter than any…

Scandal or Refreshingly Bold Truth?

Scandal or Refreshingly Bold Truth?

As with quotations that are variously attributed, journalists including Charles Anderson Dana of the “New York Tribune” and John B. Bogart of the “New York Sun” are said to have coined the aphorism: “‘Dog bites man’ does not make the news, but ‘Man bites dog’ does.” Human nature is fascinated by what is exceptional and…

The beloved parish in Hell’s Kitchen NY

The beloved parish in Hell’s Kitchen NY

It is gratifying each week to hear from many friends of the parish across our country and abroad, bringing to mind the words of John Wesley: “The whole world is my parish.” That can be said ever more fervently by any pastor, for each parish is a microcosm of the ecclesiastical presence of the Body…

Male and Female He Created Them…

Male and Female He Created Them…

Toddlers try to get their way by throwing tantrums, but they are not the only ones. In “An Open Letter on Translating,” an heresiarch in 1530 justified altering the Letter of Saint James: “Dr. Martin Luther will have it so . . . Sic volo, sic jubeo.” (I want it; I command.) This solipsism was updated…

The Pursuit of Happiness

Among rare neurological disorders, the “pseudobulbar affect” is manifested by uncontrolled laughter or crying. It can be treated effectively in many cases with a combination of the drugs dextromethorphan and quinidine. But there is another malady for which the Food and Drug Administration has no cure, and that is the habit of affecting emotions insincerely…

Tolkien, Newman, Catholicism and Today’s “Airbrushing of Religion”

Tolkien, Newman, Catholicism and Today’s “Airbrushing of Religion”

In recent weeks, long lines streamed into the Morgan Library to see a display of J.R.R. Tolkien’s memorabilia and his art, mostly drawings and watercolors. Other authors like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor sketched as an avocation, but these pictures were very much an integral part of Tolkien’s symbolic world in The Lord of the Rings, The…

In Him all things hold together

In Him all things hold together

The English priest John Colet was influenced by his friends Erasmus and Saint Thomas More. As Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, he founded Saint Paul’s School for boys in 1509 on humanist principles. Graduates have included John Milton, Samuel Pepys, John Churchill, G.K. Chesterton, three recipients of the Victoria Cross and Field Marshal…

Heroic Courage

Heroic Courage

Every writer is familiar with the word “obelism,” which refers to an editor’s abbreviations in the margins indicating corrections to be made. An author in a passive-aggressive mood may counter by writing the Latin “stet,” which means to let the text remain as is. When the Temple authorities were scandalized that Pontius Pilate had ordered…

Our Christian lives in the present era: Ultimately God has the last word

Our Christian lives in the present era: Ultimately God has the last word

In the radiance of the Resurrection, the Church relates to the emotions of the first witnesses: grief, fear, bewilderment, and then exultation. In each generation, believers experience all of these in various ways. On Good Friday our local custom is to meditate on the Seven Last Words, using meditations written by Blessed John Henry Newman.…

Respect for Human Dignity found in Civility and Decent Behavior

Respect for Human Dignity found in Civility and Decent Behavior

As a schoolboy, George Washington copied out in elegant script the 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. Later on, our first President tried to figure out how a head of state who was not a monarch should conduct himself with his fellow citizens. His solution was to be a gentleman, obedient to…

Humility and Sanity can Change the World!

Humility and Sanity can Change the World!

Thirty-five years ago I admired the neo-Gothic buildings of a Catholic college in Westchester County. But I was surprised to find that the confessional in the beautiful chapel was being used as a broom closet. There had been some misunderstanding about aggiornamento, or bringing the practice of the Faith up to date. That was the College…

Mediocrity or Virtue: Our Choice Every Day

Mediocrity or Virtue: Our Choice Every Day

In the history of Christianity, few people spoke more gracefully and truthfully than John Henry Newman. In the nineteenth century, this English teacher and preacher embraced the Faith. And then, with the grace of his conversion, he explained how, throughout history, God’s grace and truth had been sensed, intimated and expressed, even by those who…

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