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The Biblical Roots of the Assumption of Mary Msgr. Charles Pope • August 14, 2017 • While the actual event of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven is not recorded in the Scriptures, there is a biblical basis for the teaching that, considered as a whole, confirms Catholic teaching as both fitting and in keeping with biblical principles. Let’s ponder this feast in stages:The Assumption Explained – To be “assumed” means to be taken up by God bodily into Heaven. As far back as the Church can remember we have celebrated the fact that Mary was taken up into...

Clearing up Confusion with Today’s Gospel on the Temple Tax Msgr. Charles Pope • August 13, 2017 • The Gospel for today’s Mass (Monday of the 19th Week) is likely confusing to anyone who hears it proclaimed in the United States because the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), used for the lectionary in this country, makes what I would argue is an inaccurate translation of the Greek text. Here is the passage in question (the crucial section is presented in bold italics):When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter and said, “Doesn’t your...

Fix Your Focus – A Homily for the 19th Sunday of the Year Msgr. Charles Pope • August 12, 2017 • The Gospel today is about faith and about focus. It teaches that although storms and struggles inevitably arise, we have a choice as to whether we focus on them or on Jesus. The message is clear: “Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on!”Let’s look at this Gospel in three stages: Perceived Distance, Produced Distress, and Point of Decision. I have also included a fourth section for more in-depth study: Process of Development.I. Perceived Distance – The text...

Epic Imagaery Question: I was in a conversation with several unbelieving college friends who dismissed the Bible as unreliable and merely mythical because it presumes the existence of monsters like Leviathan and fiery dragons. I wasn’t sure how to answer them. — Name withheld, Massachusetts Answer: Leviathan is a name of a large beast in the Old Testament. The term seems to be used both symbolically and also literally to refer to actual beasts in the sea. For example, in Psalm 104 we read, “There is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small...

Summary The Council of Nicea is often misrepresented by cults and other religious movements. The actual concern of the council was clearly and unambiguously the relationship between the Father and the Son. Is Christ a creature, or true God? The council said He was true God. Yet, the opponents of the deity of Christ did not simply give up after the council’s decision. In fact, they almost succeeded in overturning the Nicene affirmation of Christ’s deity. But faithful Christians like Athanasius continued to defend the truth, and in the end, truth triumphed over error. The conversation intensified quickly. “You can’t...

On May 17, I published an article in the Italian newspaper La Verità about pope Benedict’s abdication. A few days before, in a renowned Italian geopolitical magazine called Limes, Professor Germano Dottori had argued that Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013 abdication, and the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation in 2011, after a financial storm sold to public opinion as a “public debt” crisis, were the result of pressures on the part of Obama administration in the United States. According to Dottori, Obama was eager to dethrone Benedict XVI for two reasons. On the one hand, his presidency was close to...

If You Truly Want to Have Something, Lose It – A Mediation on the Economics of the Kingdom Msgr. Charles Pope • August 10, 2017 • St. Lawrence Distributing Alms, Fra AngelicoThe Feast of St. Lawrence, deacon and martyr, contains an important teaching on the economics of the Kingdom of God. As you might guess, they are quite paradoxical. The teachings come to us both through St. Lawrence’s life and the particular readings selected for his feast.When a persecution broke out in Rome in 257 A.D. (under Valerian), the Prefect of Rome suspected that the Church had a great...

One shouldn’t speak of a “cult of personality” when describing the papal devotional items that are offered to the hordes of pilgrims and tourists round about Saint Peter’s in Rome: postcards and calendars, coffee cups and silk cloths, plates and plastic gadgets of every kind, always with the picture of the currently happily reigning Holy Father—and next to them also those of Popes John Paul II, John XXIII, and even Paul VI. There is only one pope you will not find in any of the souvenir shops—and I mean not any, as if there were a conspiracy here. To dig...

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, paid tribute to his predecessor, Patriarch Sergius I, who governed the Church from 1925 to 1944. Ninety years ago, Patriarch Sergius controversially declared his “absolute loyalty” to the Communist regime in an attempt to ensure the Church’s survival. “Metropolitan Sergius took that step without violating by any means either the dogmata or canons,” his current successor said. “His did it to create prerequisites for possible development of relations with the state and for consolidating the situation of the Church in the then Soviet Union.” Nonetheless, the Church entered “an...

A Warning About Sloth in a Story from the Old Testament Msgr. Charles Pope • August 9, 2017 • This week in daily Mass we are presented with a vivid portrait of the sin of sloth and its effects:A critical moment has arrived for the people of Israel. Having seen the Egyptian army defeated at the Red Sea, they have now crossed the desert in a short period of time, perhaps a matter of months. It is now time to enter the Promised Land and savor its “milk and honey.” This is the Land that God had promised them...

Fr. Don Miller, OFM Image: The Glory of Saint John Francis Regis | Church of Our Lady of Andance, Ardèche, France | Camillo RusconiSaint John Francis Regis Saint of the Day for June 16 (January 31, 1597 – December 30, 1640)  Saint John Francis Regis’ Story Born into a family of some wealth, John Francis was so impressed by his Jesuit educators that he himself wished to enter the Society of Jesus. He did so at age 18. Despite his rigorous academic schedule, he spent many hours in chapel, often to the dismay of fellow seminarians who were concerned...

Beware the Sins of the Pious - A Reflection on the Ways Satan Uses Even Good Things to Entrap Us Msgr. Charles Pope • August 8, 2017 • What is temptation? It is the work of Satan to drag you to Hell. He can read you like a book, play you like piano. Do not exaggerate his power—but do not underestimate it either.Some of Satan’s subtlest work is done in the area of religious observance. There, he can cloak himself in the lamb’s clothing of piety, but, wolf that he is, distort it through excess or defect, thereby destroying...

Conqueror of Dacia. Subduer of Parthia. The Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Traianus — or Trajan as he is known to history — died on August 8 in the year AD 117. By most measures, Trajan was a superior emperor. In his satirical work The Caesars, written in AD 361, the emperor Julian the Apostate puts these words into the mouth of Trajan in defense of his reign and exploits before the gods: "O Zeus and ye other gods, when I took over the empire it was in a sort of lethargy and much disordered by the tyranny that had long...

Which Do You Prefer: Melons and Leeks, or the Bread of Heaven? Msgr. Charles Pope • August 7, 2017 • The first reading for daily Mass on Monday (18th week of the year) was taken from the Book of Numbers. It features the Israelites grumbling about the manna in the wilderness:Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna (Numbers 11:4-5).While it is easy...

Getting Unbound: A Reflection on Deliverance Ministry Msgr. Charles Pope • August 6, 2017 • There is wide interest today in the topic of exorcism. The publication in 2010 of Matt Baglio’s The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist and the subsequent movie and interviews with Fr. Gary Thomas have sparked some of this interest. Prior to this, books such as An Exorcist Tells His Story, by Fr. Gabriele Amorth, had paved the way.Frankly, another reason for the interest is that as our world becomes more secular, families disintegrate; the outright celebration of sinful practices spreads and there...

Learning to See - A Homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration Msgr. Charles Pope • August 5, 2017 • The Transfiguration, Raphael (1520)The Feast of the Transfiguration is ultimately about vision. The Lord brought Peter, James, and John up a high mountain in order that they might come to see. Even the word that describes this day bespeaks vision. It is from the Latin transfiguratione. Trans means “across,” and by extension, “change.” Figura means “shape” or “form.” The suffix -ation creates a noun from the underlying verb. Putting it all together, transfiguration was the process by which Christ...

Doctors of the Church Monsignor Charles PopeQ. What is the process for determining how someone is declared a Doctor of the Church? Sam, via social mediaA. The Doctors of the Church are teachers of the faith who have demonstrated exemplary holiness and have deepened the whole Church’s understanding of the Catholic faith. They must be officially declared doctors by a papal proclamation. Such men and women also are known particularly for the depth of understanding and the orthodoxy of their theological teachings. Though their teachings are not infallible, being a “doctor” means that they contributed significantly to the formulation of...

What Is It That Most Distracts Us? Msgr. Charles Pope • August 3, 2017 • credit: dydcheung, FlickrWe think of distractions as coming mostly from the world around us, but is that really true? Consider the following, drawn from the stories of the early desert Fathers and monastic experience:Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the silence of the monastery would be shattered. This would upset the disciples; not the Abbot, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the silence. To his protesting disciples he said one day, “Silence is not the absence...

A talk with Fr. Job (Gumerov) on the new martyrs of the Russian ChurchFather Job, an experienced confessor of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery, speaks about the factors preventing some faithful from recognizing Nicholas II as a saint, the relationship between the Tsar’s abdication and the Russian people’s renunciation of the Church, how mass unbelief impedes the comprehension of the podvig [spiritual exploit] of the new martyrs, and the proper understanding of the people’s repentance for the sins of their ancestors.The Russian Revolution, with its “Red Terror” that ruined the lives of millions of families, is still an uninteresting event of...

The recently opened House of European History in Brussels offers an account of Europe described by one writer as “both typically modern and emphatically French and socialist.”Looking at things from this side of the Atlantic, it is easy to think of Europe as a single, united entity. Seen up close it’s not so clear. National identity keeps getting in the way. French, German, Italian, Polish, and so on—those ancient identities still matter to many people. As arguably they should. National identity bestows a sense of rootedness and continuity that the new European institutions apparently haven’t been able to supply up...