This question, asked by the future Pope Benedict XVI, is purely rhetorical. The answer is that the Church cannot continue to transform and humanize the world if she dispenses with the beauty of the liturgy. “Without this,” Cardinal Ratzinger continued, “the world will become the first circle of hell.” Restoring the beauty of the liturgy is, therefore, saving the world from Hell itself.

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Everyone knows the grim reality. According to the Congressional Budget Office, America’s top 1 percent owns 30.5 percent of the country’s wealth, and the bottom 50 percent owns 3.5 percent. In other words, the top 1 percent owns around 10 times the wealth of the bottom half. And it doesn’t get much better after that. The top 20 percent owns 86 percent of the wealth; or conversely…

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The word “prudent” gets thrown around a lot, and it is often misused. Recently, a friend posed a question to me about the prudence of the forthcoming SSPX consecrations, and it was not the first time I had been asked. There are, of course, many people who are sympathetic to the Society of St. Pius X to varying degrees. The consecration of bishops without papal approval, however…

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I recently watched an interview with actor Shia LaBeouf that a friend tipped me off to. For the record, I didn’t make it very far into the interview, which was recorded the day after LaBeouf was released from jail on bail for a drunken physical altercation at a bar in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. The actor appeared to be somewhat inebriated, was dropping f-bombs left and right…

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It is not easy to write a successful novel about a parish that operates under the aegis of Summorum Pontificum—but all the time is expected, by the chancery, to fail. There is the temptation to write too much on the liturgy instead of focusing on the normal folks who love that liturgy yet don’t particularly want to fight about it. Pope Ratzinger did that for us, in Summorum, elegantly…

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The recent election in Hungary which unseated longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has rung alarms throughout European and American conservative circles. As Prime Minister since 2010, Orbán had made his country a seeming refuge of decency in a continent whose national (in most countries) and EU leadership appear bound and determined to replace their native populations, impose perversion…

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I confess that I sometimes allow myself to be deceived. When things are going well professionally, when election results go the way I hoped, when I seem to be getting along with everyone I know—I can be disarmed into thinking that I am at peace with the world. Then, like a thunderclap, I’m jolted back to the truth of the matter: the world is not my friend. I presume most of you have had a…

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You may have heard the rumors recently that, should the Society of St. Pius X go through with consecrating new bishops in July, the Vatican plans to excommunicate not only the bishops involved, but every single priest of that society as well. You may also know that the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X have appealed to a state of emergency in the Church to justify the consecrations in defiance…

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Our Catholic moral tradition has always recognized a hierarchy of moral gravity. Not all wrongs are the same. We know this instinctively. Some are the result of human weakness and flawed speech; others are embedded in law and social structures. The latter serves to shape the moral landscape of entire societies. When those distinctions collapse, confusion takes root. This tradition has never…

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Last week, in his meeting with the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, Pope Leo XIV said: Ever since the Church began engaging in ecumenical dialogue with “separated brethren” during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), we as a Church have refused to address the doctrinal disputes that actually divide us. Instead, greater emphasis is placed on matters that are beyond…

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