It is a serious mistake to assume that men and women think the same way. Henry Higgins’ lament in My Fair Lady, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man,” is not without foundation. His mistake, however, is his failure to recognize that when it comes to communicating, men and women are complementary and not identical. There is a biological basis for this lack of symmetry called the corpus callosum, a nerve bundle consisting of several hundred million fibers. It is the largest collection of white matter in the brain and serves as a bridge or pathway that connects the right and left hemispheres of ..read more

“Now I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did.” In these words, St. Peter speaks about the greatest act of ignorance in human history and its disastrous consequences, i.e. the people’s ignorance of Jesus Christ and the brutal murder of the God-man by His creatures. Despite Jesus’ powerful deeds, His life-giving words, and Pilate’s desire to release Him, His people did not recognize Him. Not only that, but they killed Him. St. Peter strongly connected this ignorance of Christ with grave sin: “You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be ..read more

A new Mass setting has ranked #1 in Billboard’s Traditional Classical Albums chart this month. After its release on March 15th, Frank La Rocca’s “Requiem for the Forgotten” immediately earned #2 in the chart during its first week of sales (the week of March 30). It re-entered the charts as #1 on the week of April 13, ranking above Bach renditions and even the “Beethoven for Three: Symphony” album featuring Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma! What is it about this Mass setting that has earned it such acclaim, and what does this say about the role of sacred music in the modern world? We ..read more

The period known as the Enlightenment (c. 1685-1815) was a critical moment in the history of Christendom, as it saw the emergence of a system of thought hostile to Christianity and the rise of systematic atheism. Many thinkers of the Enlightenment considered revealed religion offensive to reason, for revealed religion insisted that we give our assent on faith, which was considered antithetical to human reason. Consider the thought of Denis Diderot: Diderot (1713-1784) was a French writer and philosopher, best known as the editor of the monumental Encyclopédie, the world’s first general encycl ..read more

In general, the modern era neglects the practice of honoring excellent people. We idolize the famous and popular and leave the admirable, the truly excellent, to the teachers and textbooks. But we ought to honor the excellent. Why? Because it is part of the virtue of justice; honor is due to the honorable. Furthermore, holy people, i.e. saints, ought to be honored especially because holiness is the highest form of excellence—it is closeness to God. (And keep in mind “honor” does not mean “worship,” which is reserved for God alone.) St. Bonaventure’s biography of St. Francis records several in ..read more

From the time that Israel began its sojourn in Egypt until its liberation under Moses, although God’s Chosen People were not in the land that was their inheritance through Abraham, they seem to have experienced something of the blessing meant for man in the beginning, when God called Adam to be fruitful and multiply. Thanks to Joseph’s divine gifts and prudential judgment, Israel enjoyed special favor in Egypt, and they “multiplied and became so very numerous that the land was filled with them” (Ex 1:7). Indeed, during the time of Joseph’s ministry, it was the Egyptians who sold their land an ..read more

For 7 years, I have lived with a chronic medical condition called bile reflux disease. My gall bladder stopped working, and I had it removed in 2017. Unlike many people who have their gall bladder removed, my issues worsened rather than getting better. The medications I take aren’t working very well, and I haven’t always been strict enough with my diet, although diet doesn’t seem to fix it either. This has caused chronic, debilitatingly, painful gastritis, esophagitis, and a severe motility disorder. The bile is destroying the tissue of my esophagus, and I now have a pre-cancerous condition k ..read more

Love, suffering, and death have a uniquely interrelated relationship. To understand love, one must know sacrifice and therefore be acquainted with suffering. Jesus modeled this relationship by sacrificing Himself on the Cross for us. We all experience this in our human relationships as well. For example, spouses sacrifice for the good of one another, parents willingly lose sleep to care for their children, and our best friends will drop whatever they are doing to pick us up from the airport. This is meaningful love: the love of sacrifice.    To search for love is to search for God a ..read more

Out of necessity, humans have latched onto dating systems and chronologies as the means by which we keep track of ourselves in time. We keep track of where we are through our age, by the face of a clock, by naming generations, and by counting centuries and millennia. How often have you thought about this system by which we tell time? The one universal dating system upon which governments, business, travel, and education are based reigns supreme today, measuring years according to Common Era (CE) and Before Common Era (BCE) to provide a common reference for time. But did you know that there ha ..read more

I first learned of Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, from his former student, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, during lectures he gave at two Catholic conferences at the University of Notre Dame. I remember Father Fessio describing Cardinal Ratzinger as a brilliant yet humble man who was always kind, a great help to Pope Saint John Paul II, and resolutely dedicated to teaching the truth of the Catholic Faith. He explained and defended the Church’s teachings amidst confusion by leading the committee that wrote the Catechism of the Catholic Church and through his work as Prefect of the Congr ..read more