Dear readers,
In September, we honor Our Lady of Sorrows, remembered particularly on September 15. We also observe her Nativity and her Holy Name, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Ember Week of fall, St. Matthew and St. Jerome. May these feasts and devotions strengthen us for the battle ahead, and may Our Lady always be our guide.
Read on for a variety of articles on Catholicism in the news, dangerous cultural attitudes, and the danger of imprecise, untheological idioms.
—The Editors
How Ingratitude Ruins Everything
G.K. Chesterton once commented, tongue in cheek, that were fairy tales properly understood we would need no Bibles or Dogmas. For a lesson on the importance gratitude, one can do little better than the tale of Cinderella. This lesson is too little understood today, and our world is the poorer and unhappier for it. Today, a sense of gratitude is too often replaced by a culture of ingratitude, resentment, and victimhood. And this simply makes happiness impossible. No wonder ours is such an unhappy world. Read more about how ingratitude ruins everything here.
The Conversion of Famous Men: Shia LeBeouf and Augustine’s Confessions
A number of eyebrows were raised recently–some in joy, some in something else–at the news that Hollywood actor Shia LeBeouf had converted to the Catholic faith. More striking was the role the Traditional Latin Mass played in his conversion. Yet, not everyone seemed happy at the news. In his Confessions, St. Augustine tells us the story of the conversion of Victorinus, another famous man. His account offers a helpful way to look at Shia LeBeouf’s own conversion. Read how here.
The Rosary is a Weapon… Against Hell
Recently, The Atlantic published an absurd and much-mocked article called “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol.” While, much of the article is designed to attack both the rosary and those who pray it as devious threats to society, the author does get one thing right. The Rosary is a weapon, but not of the right against the left. Rather, it was given by Our Lady to St. Dominic as a weapon of humanity against hell. Read more here.
Man is Not the Brain
“My brain will not write anything today.”
We have all heard (and some of us say) things like this in our daily life. But is it really the kind of thing a Catholic should say? Is it really true that our brain is responsible for doing or not doing things for or with us? Read about the brain/body/soul relationship here.