2019

We often hear expressions like “the post-Christian era” to describe the time in which we live. It is not a bad phrase provided we realize that every step in rejecting a Christian teaching keeps that very teaching before our eyes. Just as Christianity preserved many pagan practices, a “post-Christian era” will retain many Christian customs and ideas without acknowledging their Christian origins. They will usually be disguised under different names or explanations.

Most pop-culture celebrities are not only post-Christian but their lives are often what philosophers call “narrative wrecks.” The narrative or story of their life contains so many twists and contradictions that their personal integrity has been shattered. They often employ an entourage of “minders,” including life coaches, to advise them on how to conduct their professional and private affairs.

The point of revelation in the Catholic sense is that the world itself exists as an arena in which individual persons, each with a proper name, in their dealings with one another, in whatever time or place, work out their salvation. Salvation does not mean the preservation of at least some men down the ages in this world. Sooner or later, the race of men on this planet will cease.

There’s no one who’s more familiar with our great resources than the guys who work with them every day—our Emmaus Road warehouse staff. They’re always coming up with great ideas to help you hear about our best books.

In our post-Christian culture, the gospel is no longer compelling, even in supposedly religious rural areas. The capitalistic media culture in which we live—in which everything from what’s supposed to be hard news to hard-core pornography is packaged as entertainment for the sake of profit—affects Manhattan, NYC, as well as Medora, ND, thanks to the technology of the Internet, accessed through devices that fit in farm kids’ pockets.

Whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we acknowledge God’s name as “[h]allowed” (Matt 6:9)—that is, as holy or sanctified. But what do we mean by this? Do we mean what Jesus meant?

The Lord’s Prayer is like a marathon course whose last mile winds up a steep hill. Or it’s like a Himalayan mountain whose ultimate peak crowns a sheer, vertical rock face. We approach the end of the Our Father, and still we face the petition that has proven a stumbling block to many great minds in Christian history.

By becoming man, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was able to teach us perfect virtue not only through a law but also through the example of His human words and actions, especially in His Paschal mystery.

Our culture is at a very unfortunate impasse between the Left and the Right, between Liberals and Conservatives, and it affects Catholics. To boil it down, the Left focuses primarily on ecology, and the Right focuses primarily on morality. This is not a division of labor, but an ongoing battle of misunderstanding, suspicion, and hostility.