Essay
Christmas in the Cancer Ward
This past Christmas, Jesus did not come to me as a baby in a manger but as a man on a cross. It was Lent in Advent. On December 7, I checked into a hospital […]
Essay
Essay
A crisis of the human person: St John Paul II’s remedy
Yesterday, in the name of equality, many progressive voices demanded that women be permitted to act as men, regardless of how corruptly men might act. Today, in the name of equality, these voices say men […]
Books
Catholicism and Gnosticism in the Work of John Finlay
One of the more obscure chapters in American literary history is the role Catholicism played in the development of southern letters. Everyone knows of the Georgia fiction writer, Flannery O’Connor, who remains the best-known American […]
Essay
Fiducia supplicans: A chimerical hope
The document Fiducia supplicans (FS) of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) claims that priests may, in certain circumstances, give blessings to “couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples” (Víctor Manuel Cardinal […]
Essay
The Christmas Octave highlights death and points to everlasting life
Some things are just too good to let go of, so we prolong them. That’s the intuition that the Church concretizes in her observance of octaves—eight-day-long celebrations—a liturgical inheritance from our elder brethren in faith […]
Essay
The scandalous, glorious point of Christmas
“There has fallen on earth for a token A god too great for the sky. He has burst out of all things and broken The bounds of eternity: Into time and the terminal land…” In […]
Essay
Christmas and the unparalleled joys of motherhood
Earlier this year, my wife attended a baby shower for a woman having her first child. My wife, a mother of five children, was a bit of an outlier in a crowd of female professionals, […]
Essay
A Grammar of Gratitude: Chesterton’s St. Francis of Assisi at 100
As much as we owe modern Christmas traditions to German and English traditions, there is one to whom we owe special thanks. While the modern tradition of a Christmas crèche with figurines seems to have […]
Essay
Sacrosanctum Concilium at 60
Popes are wont to commemorate the anniversaries of significant documents with documents of their own. Quadragesimo Anno by Pope Pius XI honored the ground-breaking social encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum. St. John Paul […]
Essay
The Mass of Vatican II
Editor’s note: This essay appeared originally in the September/October 2000 issue of Catholic Dossier and is based on a lecture given by Father Fessio in May, 1999. It is reposted to mark the sixtieth anniversary […]