This is a transcript, slightly touched up but rather unpolished, of my Sunday Homily on August 18th. The livestream replay can be viewed here. + + + Let me jump into the bread of life discourse. First of all, just to affirm in a very straightforward theological way, the Church takes the words of Jesus ..read more

For many reasons I have wanted to start a discussion about Humanae Vitae. That 1968 document from Pope Paul VI, to me, gets at the core of everything that has gone wrong with sexual mores – rather sexual immorality, sexual confusion, and now 21st century sexual Gnosticism – in the past 60 years. What follows takes the approach of a historical survey, through the review of the Church’s moral teaching on contraception, leading to an array of moral exhortations. Part I: Church Teaching on Contraception prior to 1968 The Catholic Church has always held fast to a clear teaching that sexually-contra ..read more

This Essay has been co-authored by Fr. Timothy Naples and Joseph P. Blanchette The book Male, Female, Other? A Catholic Guide to Understanding Gender, by Jason Evert, is becoming the topic of Catholic book groups in Vermont. Catholics are recognizing the devastating effects Transgenderism is having among our youth, completely distorting God’s beautiful gifts of human sexuality and marriage. Recent studies about the mental health of our children, teens, and emerging adults uniformly document an alarming spike in the levels of mental illness, depression, and anxiety disorders that our youth ..read more

A completed series of Scriptural lessons is posted on a playlist in my YouTube Channel. They are Eucharistic Reflections on the Acts of the Apostles. The final one has been finished, here in Lent 2024. The entire playlist covers the following: Basic Scriptures in Luke and Acts about the Eucharist The Ascension and the Eucharist Apostolic Succession The Sacramental Economy The Protomartyr St. Steven and the Eucharist The Conversion of St. Paul and the Eucharist The Council of Jerusalem and the Eucharist ..read more

Link to Page 49 of the latest Vermont Catholic Magazine As promised… brief follow up article on “what does the word ‘Mass” means ..read more

Hello all, My article here was published in the May 2022 issue of the Vermont Catholic Magazine. I am re-posting it here and now, because I have a “part II” in the next Vermont Catholic Magazine, fall edition. Please read on. It is not very long. https://www.vermontcatholic.org/uncategorized/why-do-we-call-the-mass-the-mass/ I will share the upcoming article (same topic) when it is posted online. We all ought to know and appreciate more of the theology and history behind this most extraordinary, nearly-unbelievable way that Christ is present and at work in our world! In Christ, Fr. Tim Naples ..read more

This morning I was reading The City of God by venerable Mary of Agreda. I would say forthrightly the chapter I read was more engaging and more thought-provoking than the TV series The Chosen. That’s my context for the question. Are you a fan of The Chosen? The first clarification is that I like The Chosen. I would even call it great TV, in the sense that it stands out as an enjoyably crafted product, from real believers, where entertainment and media have flooded our culture while being themselves flooded with secularism. But here are my critiques. The very thing that is making The Chosen so p ..read more

This Mass for Holy Thursday captures historically three themes of our salvation.  The first one is the presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.  This is something that could be emphasized in any particular Mass;  but, Holy Thursday IS when Jesus first gave the Eucharist to us, as a gift of love, the sacrament of charity.  The second great theme, with Jesus’ 12 apostles, is the theme of Holy Orders in the Church;  it is the way in which he chose to give his sacraments to the world.  The deep symbolic significance for Holy Orders is embedded throughout this Gospel ..read more

Blessed memorial of Saint Athanasius. John 1 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Back in the 4th century A.D., the heretic Arius used Biblical references to Sophia/Wisdom to say that the Word/Logos was an angelic creature: not God. The Logos, said Arius, was a demi-god. Saint Athanasius opposed Arius. His work explained the references to Sophia/Wisdom so as to affirm that the Word/Logos IS God, that the Word can be called Wisdom (although here Sophia, a feminine name, means neither masculine nor feminine); and the Word/Logos/Wisdom “becoming f ..read more

The Church’s tradition sees the word “man” as an appropriate word to indicate the fullness of human nature, i.e. the nature in every man and woman. The Church does oppose all theorizing – mainly coming from the ancient pagan writings much more than from Christian tradition – which claims that a woman is an imperfect instance of human nature. Here is a quick word about how this works in the language of theology and the Bible. The message of Christianity has never-ever been “woman is imperfect and man is perfect.” The message of Bible is consistently, everywhere and always, “man is sinful and ne ..read more