Category: Theology & Dogmatics
Sin: Seeking God in the Wrong Place
The words “I have sinned” have acquired in our modern speech a bitter, almost poisonous aftertaste. For most people, these words are simply equivalent to the destructive conviction: I am bad. Yet this is a tragic, life-threatening misunderstanding of what consciousness of sin truly is. The true Christian, and specifically Catholic, sense of sin is,…
In the Depth of Sin Burns the Fire of the Holy
Leonard Cohen sang it with the voice of a man who had spent a hundred years in a monastery and a hundred years in a brothel and had found the same truth in both houses. We are obsessed with perfection, with the unblemished, with the spotless escutcheon. But it is the crack that lets the…
The Tollgate in the Garden of Eden: On the Metaphysical Theft of Creation
Somewhere in a laboratory – perhaps in Leiden, Missouri, or Basel – a technician bends over a microscope, examining the cellular structure of a crop. A few kilometers away, in a tower of steel and glass, a lawyer types a new clause into a patent application. Elsewhere again, deep in the servers of a data…
The Ordering of the Will: The True Answer to Satan
In spiritual direction and in popular Christian culture, the fight against addiction — particularly to pornography — is often framed in the language of war. We must “do battle,” “resist the devil,” and “win the victory.” This metaphor, however well-meant, is not only theologically imprecise; for many it is a recipe for exhaustion and despair.
Truth: A Catholic Perspective on a Forgotten Concept
In an age beset by “fake news,” propaganda, and a pervasive sense of disorientation, the question “what is truth?” is no longer an abstract philosophical exercise. It has become an existential cry for help. We live in a world that is technologically and organizationally more advanced than ever, yet morally adrift — even anarchic.
The Cosmic Order and the Restlessness of the Modern Soul
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” With these words opens not only the book of Genesis but also the Catholic Creed. It is a foundational truth of our faith: all that exists, the visible and the invisible, has been created by God out of nothing. This creation is no chaotic explosion,…
Sin: The Crime Against God
These words of King David — *”Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in thy sight”* — touch the core of a truth often misunderstood. In our secularized culture we tend to reduce sin to an interpersonal matter, set right by an apology. But David’s cry, echoing through Scripture…
