Author name: Molly Hostetler

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.

There have been some partisans in the past who have claimed that theologians in the Middle Ages like Thomas Aquinas were not “biblical” or that they did not take the Bible seriously enough.

From January 7–10, 2019, we held our first West Coast Priest Conference in La Jolla, CA, at the beautiful Estancia La Jolla Hotel & Spa. Nearly one hundred and fifty priests joined renowned theologians Scott Hahn, John Bergsma, and Tim Gray for four days of deep spiritual renewal. They experienced the expert scholarship, opportunity for sacramental graces, and fellowship that priests have come to expect from a St. Paul Center Priest Conference.

St. Francis de Sales was born on August 21, 1567, in France, near the present-day Swiss border. He was the firstborn of thirteen children, five of whom died in infancy, and was named after Francis of Assisi. His father, also named Francis, at the age of forty-three married a young girl named Frances, who was fourteen years old at the time.

Mercy is at the heart of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. During Jesus’ time, it would have been scandalous for the son to squander his inheritance—let alone to request it while his father was still alive. For the father to take the first step toward his

There is a particular version of natural moral law theory known as “New Natural Law”: it understands morality as a matter of living in accord with basic human goods and not acting in such a way as to violate those goods. Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae defines and excludes as morally wrong “all acts that attempt to impede procreation, both those chosen as means to an end and those chosen as ends” (Humanae vitae 14).

Everything that exists is a gift from God. Yet oftentimes we look to the things and creatures created by God for a satisfaction and fulfillment that only God Himself can provide. When the soul wraps itself around the things and the people of this world, looking for a satisfaction or fulfillment that only God can give, it produces a distortion in itself, and in others as well.

When you hear the word “commandment,” what first comes to mind? I suspect many of us think of a list of rules or “thou shalt nots.” When you hear the word “morality,” you may think of a code of conduct that limits our freedom and, well, fun. When asked once why he was studying the Commandments, the late comic W. C. Fields replied that he was “looking for loopholes.”