Ask almost any Catholic you meet what the season of Advent is all about and you’re likely to get the response, “preparing for Christmas,” or “preparing for the birth of Christ.” Advent ends with the Feast of the Nativity or our Lord, after all, which is the first feast of the Christmas season. But, in fact, the primary purpose of Advent is to prepare for Christ’s “second coming” or Parousia. Does Advent have anything to
Controversy arose recently, when Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, S.J., the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, declared that the devil is only a symbol of evil, not an actual personal entity. This reading of Fr. Sosa’s comments isn’t a matter of interpretation. He was explicit: “He [that is, the devil,] exists as the personification of evil in different structures, but not in persons, because he is not a person; he is a manner of
In our time, most Catholic Schools in the United States, from the lowest to the highest levels of education, seek accreditation from secular, regional accrediting agencies. These agencies require schools to undertake extensive self-studies in which they examine virtually everything they do. Basically, they have to think about and be ready to explain, everything they possess, everything they spend, every course they teach, and every major and minor in which students can study. In virtually
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about women in the diaconate. This is a difficult issue that extends well beyond the question of Church discipline and “small-t tradition.” It touches on dogma, and if we get it wrong, we’ll have a theological disaster to clean up. What would that disaster involve? The diaconate is seen in Church teaching as a major order. Ancient tradition associates it with the Levitical priesthood, now recognized as an anticipation
At Pentecost, we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and the Virgin Mary in the Upper Room, fifty days after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This great feast marks the end of the Church’s most joyful and longest season: Easter. Whatever else we may say about this great mystery, one thing is certain: The Church, constituted by Christ, is enlivened by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, the Holy
In the contemporary West, we’ve become used to a rather perverse and un-Scriptural idea: that real virtue depends on seeing ourselves democratically. People of good-will, it’s thought, eschew the idea of privilege or advantage as something inherently unfair—an injustice to be rectified. When we adopt this perspective, however, we end in denying that our un-earned, undeserved Covenant with God really gives us anything unique. It’s offensive to modern sensibilities to think that Christians have been
