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What are the parables of Christ? It’s a deceptively simple question, in part because the two dozen or so parables found in the Synoptic Gospels — the Fourth Gospel contains none — are deceptively simple. They are so apparently simple it is easy to think anyone could have produced them. But as Father George William Rutler notes in “Hints of Heaven: The Parables of Christ and What They Mean for You,” an exquisite collection of reflections, “The only proof I have of their literary superiority is that no one has ever been able to match them.” He compares them...

Pope Francis elevates the Eucharist during Mass outside the Basilica of St. John Lateran in observance of the feast of Corpus Christi in Rome June 4. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) Readings: • Ex 24:3-8 • Psa 116:12-13, 15-16, 17-18 • Heb 9:11-15 • Mk 14:12-16, 22-26 I’ve written several times about the centrality of the Eucharist in the decision made by my wife and I when we decided to become Catholic. Our recognition, by God’s grace, of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament was not sudden; I would be hard pressed to think of an...

"Trinity" (Троица) by Andrei Rublev (c. 1410) [WikiArt.org] Readings: • Dt 4:32-34, 39-40 • Psa 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19, 20, 22 • Rom 8:14-17 • Mt 28:16-20 The popular television show “Unsolved Mysteries,” was a documentary-styled program pursuing answers to crimes and strange events that had yet to be solved and explained. As the saying goes, everyone loves a good mystery, as evidenced by the success of that show and the popularity of so many movies, books, and television programs about solving mysteries and crimes. The Trinity is also a mystery, but not the sort that needs to be...

Cardinal Raymond Burke at the extraordinary Synod on the Family in Rome in October 2014 (CNS photo) Kaya Oakes, a revert to Catholicism after spending time as a self-described pro-choice liberal, has penned a little screed—a veritable bundle of befuddlement!—aimed at the recent New Emangelization interview with Cardinal Raymond Burke (which I posted about on Monday). I've not read Oakes' book about her spiritual, uh, arc, which is titled, Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church, but my impression is that she has some—nay, numerous—issues with orthodoxy, or what she apparently calls "Catholic conservatism", which is in...

Cardinal Raymond L. Burke leaves the concluding session of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican Oct. 18, 2014. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) Matthew James Christoff of the New Emangelization Project has just posted an outstanding interview with Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke that focuses on a number of interrelated issues: the state of men in the Church, the "man crisis", evangelization, marriage, the Mass, and the sacrament of Confession. Here are a few excerpts: On the role played by radical feminism in undermining a needed focus on men: Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke:  I think there has...

Funny stuff, right? It is, I suppose, except that some people have apparently taken this December 5, 2013, "story" quite seriously, even though the first few lines should have set off the spoof alarms: For the last six months, Catholic cardinals, bishops and theologians have been deliberating in Vatican City, discussing the future of the church and redefining long-held Catholic doctrines and dogmas. The Third Vatican Council, is undoubtedly the largest and most important since the Second Vatican Council was concluded in 1962. Pope Francis convened the new council to “finally finish the work of the Second Vatican Council.” While some traditionalists...