Category Archives: Perspectives

Sept 6, 2025: George MacDonald on Forgiveness (2)

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There are various kinds and degrees of wrong-doing, which need varying kinds and degrees of forgiveness. An outburst of anger in a child, for instance, scarcely wants forgiveness. The wrong in it may be so small, that the parent has only to influence the child for self-restraint, and the rousing of the will against the wrong. The father will not feel that such a fault has built up any wall between him and his child. 

But suppose that he discovered in him a habit of sly cruelty towards his younger brothers, or the animals of the house, how differently would he feel! Could his forgiveness be the same as in the former case? Would not the different evil require a different form of forgiveness? | mean, would not the forgiveness have to take the form of that kind of punishment fittest for restraining, in the hope of finally rooting out, the wickedness? Could there be true love in any other kind of forgiveness than this? A passing-by of the offense might spring from a [frail] human kindness, but never from divine love. It would not be remission. Forgiveness can never be indifference. Forgiveness is love towards the unlovely.

—From Creation in Christ by George MacDonald

For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

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Carl Trueman (FT): Do Christians Even Care About the Ten Commandments Anymore?

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Predictably, the recent proposed Texas and Louisiana laws that would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments generated rhetorical legal controversies, driven by the selectively vigilant left—vigilant, that is, with regard to anything that smacks of traditional morality (you know, the morality that works because it reflects what human beings are). Democratic state senator James Talarico argued that the Texas law would threaten democracy. Daniel Darling, a Baptist seminary professor, refutes Talarico’s claim in the pages of WORLD, arguing that the Decalogue has general historical significance for the U.S. and for the development of the common law tradition. Thus, the display is not of specific Christian significance, but of wider cultural importance.

At the National Catholic Register, Andrea M. Picciotti-Bayer exposes some of the trivial objections (including that the ordering of the Commandments is a specifically Protestant one) and makes a fine case that the mere presence of such a text does not constitute a violation of the Constitution. Liberals are fond of accusing conservatives of engaging in censorship—for instance, when attempts are made to ensure school libraries have age-appropriate reading material. Yet it would appear that they themselves are in favor of censoring morality. Good to know.

However, those who oppose the legislation need not panic. In a nation ruled by a pro-gay president, it is unlikely that a major, top-down imposition of Christianity on the public square will occur anytime soon. More significantly, very few Christians themselves take the Ten Commandments seriously these days. In the past, when similar controversies arose, I often told my students that I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “Most Christians only believe in a maximum of eight of them anyway. Why not post the Eight Commandments?” 

Take, for example, the ban on images. This is routinely disregarded. Now, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Lutheranism have sophisticated arguments for this change. John of Damascus set the gold standard for a favorable approach to images, and his arguments proved influential, in the East and the West. Likewise Martin Luther, with his acute sensitivity to the revelation of God making himself small and frail in his grace toward sinners, saw depictions, especially of the crucifixion, as pedagogically and, indeed, theologically important. There are, then, serious and substantial arguments that the Incarnation changes the nature of the Torah’s ban on making images.  

But most evangelical Christians have embraced images not because they read John of Damascus or grasped Luther’s theology of the Incarnation. That would imply a depth of principled reflection that typically isn’t there. Rather, other motivations are at play, shaped less by theological tradition and more by cultural trends. This is the world of The Chosen: If it gives the audience warm feelings about Jesus or leads to conversations with non-Christian neighbors, it is good. A form of religious utilitarianism rules the day.

Then there is the Sabbath. As with images, the role of the Sabbath in the Church has been highly contested over the years. Early Reformers, such as Luther and William Tyndale, rejected it. Later Puritans made its observance a hallmark of fidelity. But few, if any, were seventh-day people. They shifted it to Sunday. And again, with perhaps the sole exception of the most conservative Presbyterians and Reformed, few today observe even Sunday as a day devoted to worship. Witness the rise of Saturday night services—not due to theological conviction, but to keep Sunday free for beach trips and other forms of fun. So, intellectual laziness and casual cultural conformity have rendered two of the Commandments redundant. Why display all ten in the classroom?

Christian delinquency does not stop with these obvious examples. The cult of youth and the tendency in some circles to constantly disparage the previous generation of Christians raise questions about what it means to honor one’s father and mother. Lax attitudes to marriage and sexual conduct force us to consider whether the ban on adultery is really heeded in our churches. And then, perhaps above all, we must consider whether Christians today do not bear false witness. Anyone familiar with the loudest “Christian” voices on X will be aware of their need to casually slander others—typically other Christians. 

The movement to display the Ten Commandments in public spaces is no doubt driven by a desire to promote character. What sane person, after all, would want to live in a society where dismantling families, disrespecting others, killing people, committing adultery, and telling lies are regarded as normative? Then again, plenty of evidence suggests that we are already living in such a society—in which case, these laws are instrumental in setting forth aspirational goals for our children. 

But how can Christians champion the Ten Commandments as a moral standard if they themselves do not obey them?

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Sept 5, 2025: George MacDonald on Forgiveness (1)

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I wrote about this in a different context awhile back, but here the old Scottish preacher waxes much more eloquently. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

“Every sin and blasphemy,” the Lord said, ‘will be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” God speaks, as it were, in this manner: “I forgive you everything. Not a word more shall be said about your sins—only come out of them; come out of the darkness of your exile; come into the light of your home, of your birthright, and do evil no more. Lie no more; cheat no more; oppress no more; slander no more; envy no more; be neither greedy nor vain; love your neighbor as I love you; be my good child; trust in your Father. I am light; come to me, and you shall see things as I see them, and hate the evil thing. I will make you love the thing which now you call good and love not. I forgive all the past.”

“I thank you, Lord, for forgiving me, but I prefer staying in the darkness: forgive me that too.”

“No; that cannot be. The one thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin of choosing to be evil, of refusing deliverance, It is impossible to forgive that sin. It would be to take part in it. To side with wrong against right, with murder against life, cannot be forgiven. The thing that is past I pass, but he who goes on doing the same, annihilates this my forgiveness, makes it of no effect.”

“Let a man have committed any sin whatever, I forgive him; but to choose to go on sinning—how can I forgive that? It would be to nourish and cherish evil! It would be to let my creation go to ruin. Shall I keep you alive to do things hateful in the sight of all true men? If a man refuse to come out of his sin, he must suffer the vengeance of a love that would be no love if it left him there. Shall I allow my creature to be the thing my soul hates?”

There is no excuse for this refusal. If we were punished for every fault, there would be no end, no respite; we should have no quiet wherein to repent; but God passes by all he can. He passes by and forgets a thousand sins, yea, tens of thousands, forgiving them all—only we must begin to be good, begin to do evil no more.

—From Creation in Christ by George MacDonald

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Carl Trueman (FT): Christianity Is Nothing Without Dogma

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Amen, professor. Amen. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand—especially would-be leaders of the Church who masquerade as bishops. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Even as I was writing my column on the irrelevance of mainline Christianity two weeks ago, the Church in Wales was providing yet more evidence of the self-inflicted nature of this problem. It announced that the new archbishop would be Cherry Vann, the first woman, indeed the first woman in a same-sex relationship, to hold the position. No doubt her appointment will be seen as making the church more inclusive. The irony is that the more inclusive the church is in theory, the less people it includes in real life. Vann stated just a year ago that congregations of the Church in Wales “have few if any members under 60: the life of the Church doesn’t look sustainable beyond a decade or so.” The idea that churches can attract congregants by conforming its life and message to the political tastes of the day has not succeeded. And yet church leaders press on with the dissolution of Christian distinctives in the apparent hope that capitulating to just one more aspect of cultural taste will reverse the decline. There is no cure for stupid, as the saying has it.

By contrast, a week after the Vann announcement, the Church Times published a refreshing and clarifying excerpt from a lecture delivered by Sarah Coakley, former Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Addressing the Littlemore Group—an association of priest-theologians and religious committed to the integration of prayer, worship, and theology at the parish level—Coakley urged parishes to return to serious theology. Pushing back against theology diluted by identity politics, Coakley called for a recovery of dogmatic faith, which finds expression in the best liturgies and directs the congregants’ imaginations toward the transcendent questions of human existence. As she expressed it:

Such theology must compel us both intellectually and affectively; it must draw the many dimensions of our fragmentated and threatened lives into a whole; it must give us true joy and realistic hope. It must be preached, and it must be taught, with equal verve and focus (and there is so much work, and necessary improvement, to be done here in the preaching area). And it must make demands on us, because here we are poised between “life and death contending”: what else would we expect, we must insist, if this is indeed the life-changing affair of Christian commitment, “costing nothing less than everything”?

Serious theology and serious worship for ordinary people wrestling with life in this fallen world: what a simple, yet profound, proposal.

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Father David Roseberry: ACNA at the Crossroads: A Gentle Critique and a Hopeful Restart

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A good piece on what is becoming the increasingly chaotic situation in the ACNA. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

The College of Bishops bears the responsibility to fix this situation. They have to. They are the only ones who can.

Usually, Anglican polity balances power and decision-making with voices and votes from clergy and laypeople. There is no such counter-balance in the ACNA. Yes, the Province meets in session with delegates, but that gathering is not a venue for robust debate or problem-solving. It seems to me that the Province has yet another item stamped “TBD”: how to share power and authority.

Because there is no College of Clergy or Laity, the ownership of fixing these broader important issues—all of them—rests squarely on the bishops. There is no other group with the authority to act.

And to all the congregations and clergy who believe their activism, petitions, and conventions can sway the direction of the Province, I offer my own version of memento mori: “As you were, I once was; as I am, you will be.” Back in the TEC days, I too organized conferences, gathered petition signatures, and led resistance movements. It was to no avail. These are not rector-level issues. The bishops own these problems, and they need our prayers, God’s timing, and our patience to address them.

I remember years ago a phone call with the late Peter Toon, who told me I was being foolish. As the Rector of one of the largest churches in TEC, I felt it a duty to host seminars, conferences, summits, and write articles about “the issues.” And I did.

But he thought I was being over-responsible and, as he said more than once, foolish. “Bishops,” he said, “are like generals—they love to send their lieutenants (Rectors) into battle to draw fire and test the sentiments of the church.” It’s their problem and only they can fix it. They need to own it.

He wasn’t wrong.

The bishops need to act, and in time they will. They know there is no other group that can address these matters.

In the meantime, the rest of us have work to do.

The mission of the ACNA—though oddly absent from our current website—has long been stated as to reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. I’ll admit, I’ve never had a deep love for the wording. I wish it said more.

But the most important part of that sentence, the single greatest word in it, is the first: Reach. That is our calling. And the world is ripe for it right now.

We could quibble over the phrase “transforming love” or how best to describe “the love of Jesus,” but we can all agree that we are in a moment when we must reach people.

Whatever stream your parish swims in, whatever lifeboat you once climbed into, how is your congregation reaching North America?

That is our job—the job of every parish, priest, and layperson. The bishops must clean up the mess we’re in. And they can. And I trust they will.

But our job is to reach.

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Saint Gregory of Nyssa Waxes Eloquent on Being Christian

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Since, by the goodness of God, we who are called “Christians” have been granted the honor of sharing this name, the greatest, the highest, the most sublime of all names, it follows that each of the titles that express its meaning should be clearly reflected in us. If we are not to lie when we call ourselves “Christians,” we must bear witness to it by our way of living.

—Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Treatise on Christian Perfection

This stands in stark contrast to the British MP who brazenly claimed recently that, “My private religion will continue to have zero direct relevance to my work as an MP representing all my constituents without fear or favour.” I wonder which of these two men flourished more as humans /end sarcasm?? For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

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George Weigel (FT): The Ascension vs. Human Composting

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A stark and appalling contrast between the beauty and goodness of the Divine versus the folly and perversity of unredeemed humanity. Lord have mercy. More precisely, as we become less and less a Christian nation, this is a glimpse of our future, only the future will be ten times worse. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Appreciating the significance of the Ascension means clearing our mind on what it means that Christ was “carried up into Heaven” (Luke 24:51). Skeptics question, even mock, the Ascension because they think of it in spatial terms: as if Jesus in his Ascension anticipated Tom Cruise’s hypersonic flight at the beginning of Top Gun: Maverick, where Chief Warrant Officer “Hondo” Coleman marvels, “He’s the fastest man alive.” No, the Ascension can only be understood as a transhistorical reality: an event in history that transcends history by opening a window into humanity’s true destiny, which is life beyond history in that eternity Jesus called the Kingdom of God. The Ascension completes the sequence of appearances in which the Risen Lord “presented himself alive [to the apostles] after his Passion . . . appearing to them over forty days and speaking of the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). And in this last appearance, he, the Lord of history and the cosmos, points beyond this world to the glorious future of a Creation brought to fulfillment in the “new Jerusalem” where “death shall be no more . . . for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:2, 4).

The Ascension is thus crucial in the Church’s response to the crisis of our time, which is the crisis in the very idea of the human person. 

That crisis comes into sharpest focus when we consider the loathsome practice that goes by the Orwellian moniker “natural organic reduction,” in which thermophile microbes reduce the mortal remains of men and women to compost, which can then be used like the compost you buy at Home Depot. Green proponents of this barbarism claim that human composting has ecological value because it turns dead bodies into nutrients of the soil—which is probably not how the gardeners among relatives of the 72,000 British Empire soldiers killed during World War I’s Battle of the Somme imagined the fate of their loved ones whose remains were never found. Extremist greens thus demonstrate once again that they worship a false god, Gaia.

Human composting is legal in thirteen states (Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, California, New York, Nevada, Arizona, Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, Maine, and Georgia). In every instance, the local Church has opposed the legalization of turning the bodies of the dead into fertilizer. Predictably, however, some in the Permission-Slip Subdivision of the Catholic bioethics guild have defended the practice, whose grisly precursors include some of the most grotesque practices of Nazi Germany’s extermination camps, where human remains were turned into bars of soap.

Human composting does not, as some of its Catholic proponents suggest, reflect the biblical teaching that we are dust and to dust we shall return (Gen. 3:19). On the contrary: It reflects the warped, degraded anthropology that regards humanity as the accidental result of cosmic biochemical forces that, over billions of years, just happened to produce us. The Ascension, and indeed the entire arc of biblical anthropology from Genesis to Revelation, teaches a diametrically different view of our humanity: We are not congealed stardust, but rather creatures of a loving Creator whose destiny, made manifest in Christ risen and ascended, is neither oblivion nor fertilizer, but glory.     

Which is the more humane view, from which we learn to respect others? Which is the view that can underwrite personal happiness and social solidarity? 

It’s not the view that we’re compost-in-waiting.

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Bethel McGrew (FT): The Fallacy of Private Religion

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A spot on piece. It is an oxymoron for a so-called “Christian” to think his or her faith has no impact on how he or she lives daily life! Lord have mercy. It is also lamentable because living the Christian life faithfully (not flawlessly) offers the best path for human flourishing, something that God the Father desires for each one of us–that’s why he became human to save us from ourselves, the world, and the Devil! For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Catholic Twitter recently enjoyed a rare moment of unity when Labour MP Chris Coghlan used the platform to announce his own excommunication. The politician had been warned by his priest, Fr. Ian Vane, that a vote in favor of the U.K.’s assisted suicide bill would remove him from a state of grace in the eyes of the Church. Coghlan ignored the warning, and Fr. Vane accordingly denied him the sacraments. The priest rebuked Coghlan by name before his congregation, which provoked this much more public counter-announcement. At the top of Coghlan’s mind (apparently much higher than any thoughts of self-examination or repentance) was the fear that Fr. Vane would no longer sign off on his children’s Catholic education. But he wished to assure everyone that “My private religion will continue to have zero direct relevance to my work as an MP representing all my constituents without fear or favour.” 

If Coghlan was expecting sympathy from the public, he was sorely disappointed, though it appears his bishop has gone into damage control mode. Not much has changed since 2014, when the English and Welsh bishops’ conference scrambled to reassure parliamentarians that there were no plans to deny the Eucharist to any MP voting in favor of same-sex “marriage.” In an ideal Britain where the Church had its house in order, Fr. Vane’s decision wouldn’t have made news. 

What does “private religion” consists of in Coghlan’s mind? Clearly it does not extend to the defense of such complex doctrines as “Don’t poison the terminally ill.” Coghlan also chose to abstain from voting altogether on a bill legalizing abortion up to birth, which was apparently just too knotty for him to work out a firm position either way. “Religion,” for Coghlan, appears to be little more than aesthetic window dressing around his true identity: a politician who tells people exactly what they want to hear.

But this is perfectly consistent with liberal individualism, which, as Conservative MP Danny Kruger has observed, is now England’s de facto “governing faith.” Kruger provides an apt contrasting case study with Coghlan, as an adult convert to evangelical Christianity whose “private religion” very much has “direct relevance” to his work. From the beginning of his career, which began only after years spent running a charity for ex-prisoners, Kruger accepted matter-of-factly that he would be “unfashionable.” He has even faced public ridicule for being at odds with his own mother, Great British Baking Show judge Dame Prue Leith, on assisted suicide. Such is the price of carrying a fully integrated faith into the public square.

Coghlan’s hackneyed relegation of religion to the “private” sphere implies that religion is fundamentally irrational, its moral strictures purely arbitrary. If a Christian MP like Kruger takes a stand against abortion or assisted suicide, it is presumed that he has allowed his faith to blind his reason. Politicians like him are thus placed under pressure to “come out” and admit this, as if it constitutes a damning conflict of interest. But as Kruger wrote in an eloquent short reflection for the Spectator, the reasons for his pro-life stance are, as it were, open-access. It’s not difficult to form a natural law argument against euthanasia, and Christians shouldn’t make it so by causing the good sort of atheist humanist to second-guess himself. And indeed, some atheists have ironically seen the argument with clearer eyes even than some faithless clerics.

But what is epistemically open to the atheist may still depend on theism for its ontological grounding. And when that religious foundation is removed from under a society, abandoned even by its men of the cloth, the house collapses. Hence, Kruger’s warning about what is being irrevocably lost as England wanders ever further from its Christian mooring posts. It is possible for someone of no faith to swim against the current and choose life, but it requires levels of toughness and intellectual integrity that are in scant supply, as Coghlan’s case illustrates. When liberal individualism becomes the state religion, few people will be motivated to defect unless they can link arms with a large body of fellow defectors. This was why Michel Houellebecq found himself almost exclusively in the company of Christians when he made his own iconoclastic case against euthanasia. There is only one Michel Houellebecq, but there are many Christians.

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Father Clodovis M Boff, OSM (FT): An Open Letter to the Bishops of Latin America

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While addressed to a specific group of clergy within the Roman Catholic Church, this letter applies to almost all Christian denominations in the West, a sad state of affairs if ever there was one. A spot-on and much needed rebuke for Western Christendom. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Fr. Clodovis M. Boff, OSM, was a leading figure in the development of liberation theology before emerging as one of its sharpest critics. In the letter that follows, he warns that the Latin American Church has been drifting in the last fifty years, leading to the worst crisis in its history.

Dear Brother Bishops,

I read the message you sent at the conclusion of your Fortieth Assembly held in Rio de Janeiro at the end of May. What good news did I find there? Forgive my frankness, but none at all. You, Catholic bishops of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM), keep repeating the same old refrain: social issues, social issues, social issues—and you’ve been doing this for over fifty years. Dear brothers, don’t you see that this tune has grown tiresome? When will you bring us the good news about God, Christ, and his Spirit? About grace and salvation? About conversion of the heart and meditation on the Word? About prayer, adoration, and devotion to the Mother of our Lord? In short, when will you finally deliver a truly religious and spiritual message?

This is precisely what we most urgently need today and what we’ve been waiting for all these years. Christ’s words come to mind: The children ask for bread, and you are giving them a stone (Matt. 7:9). Even the secular world has grown weary of secularity and now seeks spirituality. Yet you keep offering them the social, always more of the social—and mere crumbs of the spiritual. To think that you are the guardians of the greatest treasure, exactly what the world needs most, and yet, somehow, you hold it back. Souls long for the supernatural, yet you persist in giving them the merely natural. This paradox is evident even in the parishes: While laypeople joyfully display symbols of their Catholic identity (crosses, medals, veils, religious-themed T-shirts), priests and nuns move in the opposite direction, often appearing without any visible sign of their vocation at all.

And yet, you declare without hesitation that you hear the “cries” of the people and are “aware of today’s challenges.” But does your listening reach deeply enough, or is it merely superficial? When I read your list of today’s “cries” and “challenges,” I see nothing beyond what even the most pedestrian journalists and sociologists already point out. Do you not hear, dear brothers, that from the depths of the world there rises today a formidable cry for God—a cry even many secular analysts hear? Doesn’t the Church and her ministers exist precisely to listen to this cry and respond with the true and full answer? For social cries, we have governments and NGOs. Certainly, the Church cannot remain absent in these areas, but she is not the protagonist there. Her specific and higher field of action is precisely responding to the cry for God.

I know that you bishops are continually pressured by public opinion to self-identify as either progressive or traditionalist, right-wing or left-wing. But are these appropriate categories for bishops? Aren’t you, rather, men of God and ministers of Christ? On this point, St. Paul is unequivocal: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). The Church is first and foremost the sacrament of salvation, not merely a social institution, progressive or otherwise. The Church exists to proclaim Christ and his grace. This is her central focus, her greatest and perennial mission. Everything else comes second. Forgive me, brothers, if I’m simply repeating what you already know. But if that’s the case, why is none of it evident in your message—or in CELAM’s documents in general? Reading them, one can’t help but conclude that the Church’s primary concern on our continent is not the cause of Christ and the salvation he has won for us, but rather social issues like justice, peace, and ecology—which you repeat in your message like a worn-out refrain.

The very telegram Pope Leo sent to CELAM’s president explicitly stresses the urgent “need to remember that it is the Risen One . . . who protects and heals the Church, restoring hope to her.” The Holy Father also reminded you that the Church’s proper mission is, in his own words, “to go out to meet so many brothers and sisters, to proclaim to them the message of salvation of Jesus Christ.” Yet how did you respond to the pope? In the letter you wrote back, there is no echo of these papal admonitions. You didn’t ask him to help you keep alive the memory of the Risen Lord or to proclaim salvation in Christ, but rather to support you in your fight to “promote justice and peace” and to “denounce all forms of injustice.” In short, what you conveyed to the pope was the same old refrain—“social issues, social issues, social issues”—as if someone who had worked among us for decades had never heard that before. 

You might say, “But we can take these truths for granted! We don’t need to keep repeating them.” No, dear brothers; we do need to repeat them daily with renewed fervor, or they will be lost. If constant repetition weren’t necessary, why would Pope Leo have reminded you of them? We all know what happens when a man takes his wife’s love for granted and fails to nurture it. This truth applies infinitely more to our faith and love for Christ.

It’s true that your message contains the vocabulary of faith—I see words like “God,” “Christ,” “evangelization,” “resurrection,” “Kingdom,” “mission,” and “hope.” But they appear only in a generic way, without any clear spiritual substance. Consider the first two words, fundamental to our faith: “God” and “Christ.” When it comes to “God,” you never mention him directly—only in stock expressions like “Son of God” or “People of God.” Isn’t that astonishing, brothers? And as for “Christ,” his name appears only twice, both times in passing. When recalling the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea, you speak of “our faith in Christ the Savior”—a grandiose statement that, unfortunately, carries no real weight in your message. From where I stand, I can’t help but wonder why you haven’t seized the opportunity of celebrating this profound dogmatic truth to powerfully reaffirm the primacy of Christ, our God—a primacy so feebly proclaimed these days in the preaching and life of our Church.

You rightly declare that you want the Church to be a “house and school of communion,” as well as “merciful, synodal, and [a Church] which goes forth.” And who wouldn’t want that? But where is Christ in this ideal image of the Church? Without Christ as her raison d’être, the Church is just a “charitable NGO,” as Pope Francis himself warned. And isn’t that precisely the path our Church is on? The one small consolation is that those leaving often become evangelicals rather than losing their faith entirely. In any case, though, our Church is bleeding. Empty churches, empty seminaries, empty convents—that’s what we see all around. In Latin America, seven or eight countries no longer have Catholic majorities. Brazil itself is becoming “the largest ex-Catholic country in the world,” in the prescient words of Brazilian writer Nelson Rodrigues back in 1970. Yet this continuous decline doesn’t seem to worry you, dear bishops. Amos’s warning against Israel’s leaders comes to mind: You “are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:6). It’s troubling that your message doesn’t even breathe a word about such an obvious collapse. Even more astonishing is that the secular world talks about this phenomenon more than bishops do. Bishops prefer to remain silent. How can we not recall the charge of “dumb dogs” that St. Gregory the Great leveled against silent shepherds and that St. Boniface repeated just the other day in the Office of Readings?

Of course, alongside this decline there is also growth. You yourselves say that our Church “still pulses with vitality” and contains “seeds of resurrection and hope.” But, dear bishops, where exactly are these “seeds”? They’re not in initiatives aimed at tackling social issues, as you might assume, but rather in the religious revival happening in parishes and in new ecclesial movements and communities, inspired by what Pope Francis called “a current of the grace of the Holy Spirit,” with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal as its most visible expression. And yet, even though these forms of spirituality and evangelization are the most vibrant part of our Church—filling both our churches and the hearts of the faithful—they didn’t even rate a brief mention in your message. But it’s precisely in this rich spiritual soil that the future of our Church lies. One clear sign of this is that, while our initiatives focused on social causes mostly draw “gray-haired” types, initiatives centered on spiritual life are seeing a massive influx of young people.

Dear bishops, I can already hear your restrained yet indignant response: “So, with this supposedly ‘spiritual’ emphasis, are you suggesting that the Church must now turn her back on the poor, on urban violence, on ecological destruction, and on so many other social crises? Wouldn’t that be blind—even cynical?” We can agree on this: The Church must absolutely engage with these social issues. My point lies elsewhere: Is it in the name of Christ that the Church engages in these struggles? Is her social action, and that of her members, truly grounded in faith—not just any faith, but a distinctly Christian faith? If the Church enters social struggles without being guided and inspired by a Christ-centered faith, she will do nothing more than what any NGO would do. Worse still, over time she will offer a shallow social commitment that, without the leaven of a living faith, eventually becomes perverted—turning from liberating into merely ideological, and ultimately oppressive. This is precisely the lucid and serious warning that St. Paul VI gave in Evangelii Nuntiandi to the precursors of liberation theology back in 1975—a warning that, it seems, went largely unheeded.

Dear brothers, allow me to ask: Where, exactly, do you intend to lead our Church? You often speak of the Kingdom, but what is its concrete meaning for you? Given that you repeatedly emphasize the need to build a “just and fraternal society,” one might assume that this is the central vision you have of the Kingdom. I see where you are coming from. However, as for the true substance of the Kingdom—present already in hearts today and awaiting its final fulfillment tomorrow—you say nothing. In your discourse, there is hardly any eschatological horizon at all. You do mention “hope” a couple of times, but so vaguely that, given the social focus of your message, it’s hard to imagine anyone hearing that word from your lips and lifting their eyes toward heaven. Please don’t misunderstand me, dear brothers: I do not doubt that heaven is also your “great hope.” But then why this reluctance to speak clearly and aloud—like so many bishops before you—about the Kingdom of Heaven, as well as about hell, the resurrection of the dead, eternal life, and other eschatological truths that can illuminate and strengthen the struggles of the present, while also revealing the ultimate meaning of all things? Of course, the ideal of a “just and fraternal society” on earth is beautiful and important. But it cannot compare with the City of Heaven (Phil. 3:20; Heb. 11:10, 16), of which we are citizens and co-workers by our faith—and of which you, by your episcopal ministry, are chief architects. You will certainly make your contribution to the earthly city. However, that is not your primary expertise, but that of politicians and social activists.

I’d like to believe that the pastoral experience of many of you is richer and more diverse than what comes across in your message. Especially since bishops are not subject to CELAM—which is merely a body at your service—but only to the Holy See, and, of course, to God—and therefore have the freedom to shape the pastoral direction of their dioceses as they see fit. That, at times, naturally results in a legitimate divergence from the line promoted by CELAM. There’s also another kind of divergence worth noting: Some documents come from CELAM as a whole (the General Conferences), while others, usually narrower in scope, come from the standing Council itself. And I’d add a third divergence, even closer to home—the divergence that can, and often does, occur between the bishops and those theological assistants who draft their documents. Taken together, these three factors give us a much more nuanced understanding of the inner workings of our Church. Even so, your message still feels emblematic of the Church’s sorry state today—one that places the social dimension above the spiritual. You used the occasion of your Fortieth General Assembly to insist on this path. You went to great lengths to embrace this option explicitly and resolutely, as you made clear by repeating the words “renew” and “commitment” three times.

I believe, dear bishops, that by so often—and understandably—bringing social issues and their painful realities to the forefront, you have ended up leaving the religious dimension in the shadows, without ever explicitly denying its primacy. In truth, this troubling process began almost imperceptibly in Medellín (at the Second General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate in 1968), and it has continued to this day. Yet you all know from experience that unless the religious dimension is promptly brought out of the shadows and placed clearly in the light—both in words and in practice—its priority will gradually be lost. That is precisely what happened with Christ’s centrality in the Church: Little by little, he was pushed into the background. And though he is still acknowledged as Lord and Head of the Church and of the world, it is often only a perfunctory acknowledgment, if at all. The proof of this slow deterioration is plain to see in the decline of our Church. If we continue on this path, that decline will only deepen. And this is because, long before we began to shrink in numbers, we had already lost the true fervor of our faith in Christ, who is the dynamic center of the Church. Dear brothers, the numbers themselves are a challenge to all of us—especially to you—to reconsider the general direction of our Church. Let us renew our commitment to Christ with genuine passion, so that the Church may grow once again—both in quality and in numbers.

Read it all.

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July 2025: The Power of the Gospel

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We sat down to table and the officer began his story: “I have served in the army ever since I was quite young. I knew my duties and was a favorite of my superiors as a conscientious officer. But I was young, as were also my friends, and unhappily I started drinking. It went from bad to worse until drinking became an illness. When I did not drink, I was a good officer, but when I would start drinking, then I would have to go to bed for six weeks. My superiors were patient with me for a long time, but finally, for rudeness to the commanding officer while I was drunk, they reduced my rank to private and transferred me to a garrison for three years. They threatened me with more severe punishment if I would not improve and give up drinking. In this unfortunate condition all my efforts at self-control were of no avail and I could not stay sober for any length of time. Then I heard that I was to be sent to the guardhouse and I was beside myself with anguish.

“One day I was sitting in the barracks deep in thought. A monk came in to beg alms for the church. Those who had money gave what they could. When he approached me he asked, ‘Why are you so downcast?’ We started talking and I told him the cause of my grief. The monk sympathized with my situation and said, ‘My brother was once in a similar position, and I will tell you how he was cured. His spiritual father gave him a copy of the Gospels and strongly urged him to read a chapter whenever he wanted to take a drink. If the desire for a drink did not leave him after he read one chapter he was encouraged to read another and if necessary still another. My brother followed this advice, and after some time he lost all desire for alcoholic beverages. It is now fifteen years since he has touched a drop of alcohol. Why don’t you do the same, and you will discover how beneficial the reading of the Gospels can be. I have a copy at home and will gladly bring it to you.’

“I wasn’t very open to this idea so I objected, ‘How can your Gospels help when neither my efforts at selfcontrol nor medical aid could keep me sober?’ I spoke in this way because I never read the Gospels.

“‘Give it a chance,’ continued the monk reassuringly, ‘and you will find it very helpful.’

“The next day he brought me this copy of the Gospels. I opened it, browsed through it, and said, ‘I will not take it, for I cannot understand it; I am not accustomed to reading Church Slavonic.’

“The monk did not give up but continued to encourage me and explained that God’s special power is present in the Gospel through his words. He went on, ‘At the beginning be concerned only with reading it diligently; understanding will come later. One holy man says that “even when you don’t understand the word of God, the demons do, and they tremble”; and the passion for drink is without a doubt their work. And St. John Chrysostom in speaking about the power of the word of God says that the very room where the Gospel is kept has the power to ward off the spirits of darkness and thwart their intrigues.’

“I do not recall what I gave the monk when I took the copy of the Gospels from him, but I placed the book in my trunk with my other belongings and forgot about it. Some time later a strong desire to have a drink took hold of me and I opened the trunk to get some money and run to the tavern. But I saw the copy of the Gospels before I got to the money and I remembered clearly what the monk had told me. I opened the book and read the first chapter of Matthew without understanding anything. Again I remembered the monk’s words, ‘At the beginning be concerned only with reading it diligently; understanding will come later.’ So I read another chapter and found it a bit more comprehensible. Shortly after I began reading the third chapter, the curfew bell rang and it was no longer possible for me to leave the barracks.

“In the morning my first thought was to get a drink, but then I decided to read another chapter to see what would happen. I read it and did not go. Again I wanted a drink, but I started reading and I felt better. This gave me courage, and with every temptation for a drink I began reading a chapter from the Gospels. The more I read, the easier it became, and when I finally finished reading all four Gospels the compulsion for drink had disappeared completely; I was repelled by the very thought of it. It is now twenty years since I stopped drinking alcoholic beverages.

“Everyone was surprised at the change that took place in me, and after three years I was reinstated as an officer and then climbed up the ranks until I was made a commanding officer. Later I married a fine woman; we have saved some money, which we now share with the poor. Now I have a grown son who is a fine lad and he also is an officer in the army.”

—The Way of a Pilgrim

What a wonderful story of the multifaceted ways in which Christ works in our lives! The issue here is alcoholism, but don’t restrict the lesson to that. Christ can heal any affliction if we let him. Notice first how Christ uses human agency (the monk) to introduce the young soldier to his Gospel. Notice how the monk abandoned his agenda (begging alms for the church), at least temporarily, to address a person’s needs that he perceived. We have to be ready to see others in pain if we ever hope to help them address it. Notice too the monk’s gentle persistence and the faith he has in the transformative power of the Gospel in people’s lives, a faith based, in part, on past experience.

Next, pay attention to how Christ used circumstance instead of understanding to stay the young soldier’s hand from drinking. He read the Gospel without understanding it, but was prevented from going on a drinking binge because he had lingered too long in his quarters to read it. Was it really coincidence that the soldier found the gospels before he got to his drinking money? This is how God typically works to control the circumstances of our lives in a wise and loving way, but we have to pay attention to realize it!

Finally, mark how understanding occurs—through persistent reading. Ask anyone who reads the Bible regularly and systematically and you will hear this same answer. God grants understanding to humble minds willing to submit to his word (as opposed to trying to make his word submit to their agendas, which sadly many try to do, especially today) through our persistent reading of his word. God doesn’t beat us over the head to make us learn (usually). Instead he uses ordinary people and circumstances along with our own efforts to speak to and transform us. Under normal circumstances it would have been best if the soldier had read the gospels with others and learned how to interpret them from the tradition we have, but that didn’t happen in this case. No problem, though. God can use even less than ideal circumstances to break through to us, as the young solder discovered. That may not be sexy enough for some of us but it is much more effective over the long haul.

If you are struggling with your faith, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this story and its lessons. Maybe you should even pick up the gospels and start to read them yourself. Here is indeed balm for your soul! For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

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Dave Robertson (CT): The Quiet Judgment on the UK

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Pastor Robertson is right and it makes the heart terribly sad. I fear our country is not far behind. This is not about politics. Something far greater and more ominous is going on. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

And so, it has happened. It came – not as a bolt of lightning. Not as a flash of thunder. Not with a mighty roar like an earthquake. It did not come in the form of war, plague and famine. It came as the pale horse whose rider was named Death (Revelation 6:8).

The judgement of God has finally come upon the United Kingdom. Quietly. Silently. Like a thief in the night. It came in the form of an irrational, emotive and Godless parliament who this week voted to permit the killing of babies in the womb up until birth, and has now introduced the National Suicide Service, with its vote to permit assisted suicide. God has given us what we voted for.    

God’s anger against sin can be seen in different ways, and for different purposes. Sometimes he acts directly – to correct and rebuke. Sometimes he gives us our just desserts. But the worst kind of punishment is that inflicted on the UK this past week. His greatest punishment is to give us what we say we want – autonomy. He lets us have it our way. And in the name of choice, we limit life. In the name of freedom we bind the poor, the sick and the disabled. In the name of humanity, we kill humans. 

Paul told the Romans about this wrath of God. It “is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness”. It’s not as if we don’t know about God – he has made it plain to us. We have the glory of his creation – and for centuries we have had the teaching of his word. 

It was that teaching upon which our society was based – with its values of equality, diversity, freedom and justice for all. But now that has all gone. Words are used, but they have no more meaning.  Indeed, such is the perversity of our leaders that if the words have any meaning at all – they are the opposite of what was intended. Life has become death. Freedom has become slavery. And compassion has become cruelty. The truth of God has been exchanged for a lie. We have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity (Romans 1:18-32). 

When the vote for assisted suicide (falsely called ‘assisted dying’ – it is not assisted dying, it is assisted suicide and therefore State-sponsored killing), the pagans rejoiced. Has anyone noticed how the self-styled humanists seem to have such a love affair with death? They danced, chanted and shouted for joy as though they had just won an election. And maybe they had? Their death cult has become triumphant – it is now the official doctrine of the State.

Another evidence of this cult of death and its twin, the cheapness of life, is the growth of what are termed ‘direct cremations’. Twenty per cent of funerals last year in the UK were direct cremations – that is, the body is cremated cheaply with no ceremony and no attendees.  It’s much cheaper than a funeral and it’s a lot less bother.   

Psychologically it allows families to just move on without having to think of the physicality or reality of death. There is no closure. I cannot help but think that such a cheap death reflects a cheap view of life. We are becoming a shallow, sick and sinful society.  Dostoevsky argued those who wanted a truly great heart would experience suffering. We know better. We won’t permit suffering, so we will know nothing but superficiality – and ultimately even greater suffering.  

And do not think that this is the end. It won’t stop there. The humanists have other Christian doctrines – and more humans –  to kill.

Read and weep over it all.

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Veronica Roberts Ogle (PD): Pope Leo: Son of Augustine, Father to the Church

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This woman knows Augustine of Hippo better than most and offers a brilliant analysis of him and the new Pope. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

…I am struck by how Augustine’s episcopate offers a rich model for the Holy Father to follow. With access to a wide variety of letters and sermons, we have an excellent picture of how Augustine both taught and led as bishop. Of course, Augustine was a master homilist, effectively rewriting the rules of rhetoric to evangelize his flock. Yet, he was also a conscientious administrator; Augustine took great care to respond to the concerns of his interlocutors, tailoring these responses to the audience in question. This was not simply a matter of getting them on board with an agenda. Rather, it was a matter of pedagogy; Augustine knew that an ongoing witness to truth and love is necessary for shepherding well. For this reason, we often find him responding to hostile reactions by addressing them openly, calling his audience to the charity he strives to inhabit in the process.  

All told, Augustine was remarkably transparent about his decision-making process. Throughout his communications, he blends respect for his flock with the pastoral responsibility of guiding them to greater love. Spelling out the variety of concerns he struggled to reconcile, he teaches them the difficulty of leadership and shows how he understands their needs. He gives them reasons to trust him.  

Because of this transparency, we also have a good picture of what Augustine thought about what it means to be a bishop. As Pope Leo has echoed, Augustine described himself as “a Christian with [his flock], and a bishop for [them]” (Sermon 340). To be a bishop, then, is to serve as one of the faithful: as one still being remade by Christ. For this reason, Augustine’s watchword was always humility; he was convinced that a bishop could not pastor except as one forgiven, confessing his ongoing need for forgiveness.  

Perhaps most importantly for the Holy Father, Augustine modeled his idea of the bishop on the good paterfamilias. If we have a difficult time imagining what this looks like—authority, too often, appears authoritarian—Augustine reminds us that the good father is animated by charity, and that charity is borne out by its fruits. Writing in City of God that this paterfamilias leads out of a desire to serve and not to dominate, Augustine offers us a vivid portrait of the difference between a form of leadership rooted in the libido dominandi and one rooted in a spirit of service. The former takes every opportunity to rule by diktat while the latter takes every care to cultivate a community of love. Augustinian authority, then, is designed to draw out, nurture, and direct the love of persons, helping them to live together in charity. As Pope Leo well knows, Augustine thought deeply about how to do this in writing his rule for monastic communities. Needless to say, the father of any community must continually examine and purify his loves, begging God for the grace to lead with prudence and charity.  

Read it all.

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