Spiritual Quote of the Day (Fr. Jack Welch, on ‘The Catholic Imagination’)

“The Catholic imagination is a thesaurus of metaphors and symbols. The mystery of God requires a kaleidoscope of imagery. God is like a rock, a fortress, a shield, a place of refuge. God is like a mother, a shepherd, a dark night. The psyche finds images for what cannot be fully expressed.” —John Welch, O. Carm. (1939-2025), “Catholic Imagination,” Carmelite Review, Fall 2013-Winter 2014 issue

Spiritual Quote of the Day (David Brooks, on the Pagan Ethos and ‘The Callous Tolerance of Cruelty’)

“The callous tolerance of cruelty is a river that runs through human history. It was dammed up, somewhat, only by millenniums of hard civilizational work. The pagan ethos — ancient or modern — always threatens to unleash brutality once again. The pagan ethos does not believe that every human was made in the image of God, does not believe in human equality, is not concerned about preserving the dignity of the poor. It does not care much about the universal feelings of benevolence, empathy and faithfulness toward one another, which, it turns out, are absolutely required for a democracy to function.”—Columnist David Brooks, “How to Survive the Trump Years With Your Spirit Intact,” The New York Times, May 2, 2025

Even without David Brooks naming Donald Trump within the first few paragraphs of this article, one would have guessed that the attributes that the columnist lists for “the pagan ethos”—"power, manliness, conquest, ego, fame, competitiveness and prowess”—have been projected by the President. All of these are the exact antithesis of the humility and charity that Pope Francis practiced daily.

All the more infuriating, then, that Trump posted to Truth Social an AI-generated meme of himself depicted as the pope. The act was so outrageous, even for him, that many social media users, even those who loathe him, refused to credit it at first, demanding proof.

By now, it’s hopeless to expect the President to recognize that this image has needlessly offended thousands of people, let alone apologize for it. As former GOP National Committee chairman Michael Steele has noted, the post just demonstrates “how unserious and incapable [Trump] is”—a 78-year-old acting like a 10-year-old.

No, my disappointment is with fellow Catholics, like Vice President J.D. Vance, who pass this episode off as a joke, handing Trump a moral get-out-of-jail-card they never would have provided Barack Obama and Joe Biden if they had pulled a similar stunt.

To its credit, the New York State Catholic Conference swiftly and correctly condemned the post, disputing that there could be anything “clever or funny about this image.”

“We just buried our beloved Pope Francis,” the statement continued, “and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.”

I would not be surprised, however, if Cardinal Timothy Dolan stays silent, preferring to hide behind this institutional statement and the need to prepare for the upcoming conclave. As I noted in this prior post, he never came to the defense of The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde when Trump tweeted that she was “nasty” for urging him in January to display compassion for undocumented immigrants and the LGBTQ community.

My guess is that, like prominent lawyers and universities that have knuckled under to Trump’s legal threats, Cardinal Dolan will fear the President’s “retribution”—as un-Christian a behavior as one can imagine.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Ernest Hemingway, on Visiting Pamplona Cathedral)

“At the end of the street I saw the cathedral and walked up toward it. The first time I ever saw it I thought the façade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think how I would make it, and thinking of making money reminded me of the count, and I started wondering about where he was, and regretting I hadn’t seen him since that night in Montmartre, and about something funny Brett told me about him, and as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time.”—American Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, short-story writer, and memoirist Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), on Pamplona Cathedral, Spain, in The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Ann Patchett, on Religion and Storytelling)

“I suppose my ability to tell a story came from my good nature and a desire to keep everyone [in the family] together. Catholicism also was the perfect prep. Religion, in general, is story-based and teaches you to believe in what you can't see, and I did.”—American novelist and bookstore owner Ann Patchett, quoted by Marc Myers, “House Call: Ann Patchett—A Late Reader, She Made Up Stories,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 25, 2023

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Eamon Duffy, on Saints)

“The saints are also, importantly, beyond us, visible signs of a call to transcend the ordinariness of our lives, and evidence of the possibility of heroism and wonder.” —Irish church historian Eamon Duffy, Faith of Our Fathers: Reflections on Catholic Tradition (2004)

The photo of Eamon Duffy accompanying this post was taken Apr. 24, 2010, by Fr. James Bradley from Southampton, UK.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Fr. John Welch, on the Catholic Imagination and the ‘Stuff’ of Life)

“To speak of the Catholic imagination is to talk about an ability to use the ‘stuff’ of life to express matters of the spirit. For example, the praise of God becomes palpable when incense rises in liturgy. Belief that Mary, Mother of God, accompanies us on our pilgrimages is anchored by a scapular around the neck. We ask angels to watch over us because they speak of God’s presence and power. Calling on particular saints for help in personal matters says God cares about the details of our lives.”—Fr. John Welch, O.Carm, “Catholic Imagination,” Carmelite Review, Fall 2013-Winter 2014 issue

The image accompanying this post is an example of the “Catholic imagination”—Madonna of the Book, painted in 1480 by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445-1510).

This Day in Church History (St. Francis Xavier Starts Missionary Work)

Apr. 7, 1541—On his 35^th birthday, Francis Xavier departed Lisbon, Portugal with two Jesuit colleagues for Goa, India—on what would begin 11 years of missionary work halfway around the world, with the Spanish native never returning home.

I’ve come to think of Xavier as the St. Paul of the Far East. In fact, in certain ways, his adventures and achievements may surpass those of the Apostle to the Gentiles. Xavier never wrote texts that defined the nature of Christianity, or even, like mentor Ignatius Loyola, guidelines for what became a global religious order.

But Paul, for all his hardships (shipwreck, imprisonment, martyrdom), journeyed in lands largely under an established order that he knew well: the Roman Empire. Xavier went to lands that had only recently been opened to European traders—or worse yet, lands that feared and retaliated against Westerners. 

Xavier could never have undertaken an activity with such uncertainty and risk had he not mentally prepared himself on multiple fronts. A brilliant scholar at the University of Paris, he had challenged his fellow Basque and roommate Loyola on theological matters before his skepticism melted at last, joining him and six others in 1534 in taking vows as the first members of the Society of Jesus.

Although he had to resolve his intellectual doubts before joining what came to be known as the Jesuits, a far more intense trial awaited Xavier in the first year following his ordination, when he arrived in Venice to serve in a hospital for incurable patients. The charisma that drew others to him at the university was not enough here. 

Now, he had to develop an all-encompassing zeal for serving others that would help him surmount an instinctive revulsion at the stench and ugliness of the hospital, all while maintaining faith that God would see him and those to whom he ministered through their trials.

All the toughness he had learned could only go so far in preparing Xavier after he answered a request by King John III of Portugal to evangelize the East Indies. The voyage, entailing rounding the Cape of Good Hope, lasted 13 months, in an era when a ship’s inhabitants could fall victim as easily to scurvy and dysentery as to pirates. The destination, Goa, provided scant comfort—a slave port marked by the physical abasement of the conquered and the moral debasement of the conquerors.

But Xavier never forgot his objective. As he wrote once he reached India: “I looked or desired for nothing here but to wear myself out with work and sacrifice my life itself in bringing about the salvation of souls.”

His first task was one he was familiar with from Venice: ministering to the sick in hospitals. He began to make his mark outside after several months by walking the streets of Goa, ringing a bell that attracted children whom he would then catechize. Later, he turned his attention to the pearl fishermen on the eastern coast of Cape Comorin, using basic Christian prayers translated into Tamil. Over three years he traveled tirelessly, even reaching as far as Ceylon.

Frustrated by the obstacles represented by Portuguese political and military officials, he struck out for Malacca in 1545, then for the Molucca Islands. All the while he had to deal with work just as necessary but sometimes not as pleasing as preaching: supervising the men inspired by his example who were now flocking to missionary work from Ormuz to Indonesia—an activity that could mean recruiting native converts into the priesthood, but could also mean reproving or even removing Europeans he did not believe measured up to the tasks ahead of them.

While bringing Christianity to the Far East—or rekindling it among faithful not ministered to in years—Xavier was also lighting the way for future missionaries through his letters back home. Though modern readers may read this vast correspondence from an anthropological point of view—as a record of how a Westerner reacted to the customs and living conditions of exotic people—his contemporaries took spiritual sustenance from his reflections on how he survived adverse conditions:

“The day we encountered these disasters and all that night, God our Lord was pleased to grant me the great grace of wishing to make me feel and know through experience many things with respect to the cruel and dreadful fears which the enemy causes when God permits him (…) The best of the remedies at such times is to show very great courage against the enemy, having no trust whatever in oneself but great confidence in God.”

In 1549, with a couple of Japanese converts, Xavier took up the last great missionary work of his life: evangelizing Japan—first by taking a year to learn the language and customs, then another two in evangelizing and setting up communities that would carry on his work afterward. In 1552, he turned his attention to China. He was on the Island of Sancian off the coast of that country when he fell ill and died in December 1552.

Within weeks of his death, astounding accounts—including the incorruptibility of his body after his passing and miracles attributed to him—began to circulate. In 1622, he was canonized along with his beloved mentor Loyola. Credited with as many as 30,000 converts in his lifetime, he richly earned his posthumous distinction as the patron saint of Catholic missionaries.

Quote of the Day (Flannery O’Connor, With a Scene in a Southern Barn)

“It was a large two-story barn, cool and dark inside. The boy pointed up the ladder that led into the loft and said, ‘It’s too bad we can’t go up there.’

“ ‘Why can’t we?’ she asked.

“ ‘Yer leg,’ he said reverently.

“The girl gave him a contemptuous look and putting both hands on the ladder, she climbed it while he stood below, apparently awestruck. She pulled herself expertly through the opening and then looked down at him and said, ‘Well, come on if you’re coming,’ and he began to climb the ladder, awkwardly bringing the suitcase with him.

“ ‘We won’t need the Bible,’ she observed.

“ ‘You never can tell,’ he said, panting. After he had got into the loft, he was a few seconds catching his breath. She had sat down in a pile of straw. A wide sheath of sunlight, filled with dust particles, slanted over her. She lay back against a bale, her face turned away, looking out the front opening of the barn where hay was thrown from a wagon into the loft. The two pink-speckled hillsides lay back against a dark ridge of woods. The sky was cloudless and cold blue.”—American short-story writer and novelist Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), “Good Country People,” originally published in Harper’s Bazaar, June 1955, republished in her short-story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories (1955)

As last week’s PBS documentary Flannery made clear, stories such as “Good Country People” were inspired in part by O’Connor’s life on her family’s 550-acre dairy farm in Milledgeville, GA, where she also raised peacocks and chickens.

I have not had the chance to visit that farm, but on the two occasions when I was in Savannah, I made it a point to see her birthplace on Lafayette Square. This childhood home was just across from the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. That building was not just a weekly but daily presence in her life, as the young girl could view its steeple and hear the tolling of its bells from her room. Anyone trying to understand the strong feelings about God expressed with oblique but unusual force in her fiction and more conventionally if pungently in her letters would do well to go to this neighborhood.

For any writer, O’Connor’s life is an inspiration, proof of the power of forsaking self-pity, even in the face of overwhelming obstacles (in her case, the lupus that hobbled and eventually killed her at age 39), through iron commitment to work.

Quote of the Day (Fulton J. Sheen, on Religion Without Demands)

"Most people today want a religion which suits the way they live, rather than one which makes demands upon them. The result is that, in order to make religion popular, too many prophets have watered down religion until it is hardly distinguishable from sentimental secularism. Religion thus becomes a luxury, like an opera, not a responsibility, like life." —Venerable Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979), The Seven Virtues (1956)

Essay: Notre Dame de Paris and Roman Catholicism: Rebuilding Structures of Faith

“Of all the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the gothic Cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards of the flying buttress,— the visible effort to throw off a visible strain,— never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. The equilibrium is visibly delicate beyond the line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril of the heavy tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; the uncertainty of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, the irregularities of the mental mirror,— all these haunting nightmares of the Church are expressed as strongly by the gothic Cathedral as though it had been the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion had ever been expressed before or is likely to find expression again. The delight of its aspirations is flung up to the sky. The pathos of its self-distrust and anguish of doubt, is buried in the earth as its last secret. You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youth and confidence; to me, this is all.”—American historian Henry Adams (1838-1918), Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

The fragile force in the above quote from Henry Adams—faith—lies at the heart of both Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the institution that built it, the Roman Catholic Church. After the news broke on Monday of the fire that destroyed the spire and most of the roof of the 12th-century French cathedral, a co-worker remarked to me: “Sort of like the Catholic Church right now, isn’t it? Collapsing of its own weight.”

I could not support such a bald assertion said aloud, but it wasn’t as if a similar notion hadn’t occurred to me in somewhat different form.

In both cases, a structure had been built on religious conviction and sustained, improbably, over centuries. Now, in a time of testing, both Notre Dame and the Catholic Church face an uncertain future that calls for a long-term, fundamental recommitment.

It escaped few people’s notice (especially those who are already positing terrorism as the cause of the blaze) that the fire occurred during Holy Week. But the Catholic Church as a whole has been undergoing an agonizing reminder of the most holy seven days on its calendar, through the sex-abuse scandal that has assumed global dimensions, even as it shows no signs of abating 17 years after bursting out in earnest in the Archdiocese of Boston.

Nearly two millennia after the followers of Christ were engulfed in a round of embarrassment, guilt, and shame, the Church He founded has been plunged into its own intense crisis. It is impossible to convey adequately the disgust and anger—and, in all too many cases, disillusionment and desertion—that have followed in the wake of these revelations.

Given that background, the wave of sentiment surrounding Notre Dame Cathedral surprised me. One Facebook friend of mine, whose comments on Catholicism have been so critical as to verge on hostility and even outright prejudice, expressed intense sorrow over the fire. Others, with somewhat more lukewarm feelings about the Church, responded in a similar way to the sad news.

Some of this might simply stem from a site that has accrued cultural and patriotic associations along with its original spiritual purpose. Numerous observers recalled, for instance, how it became a center of thanksgiving and celebration after the liberation of Paris from the Nazis in 1944. Others have remembered Victor Hugo’s 18931 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame and its various film adaptations. Musicologists have pointed to the medieval hymns heard there that became the bedrock of Western harmony. And, of course, Adams—not only an agnostic but a descendant of New England Congregationalists actively hostile to “papist” sentiment in the new republic they founded—fell under the spell of its architecture.

But some dared to go further. The other night, while listening to Chris Matthews’ Hardball, I heard Jean-Bernard Cadier, U.S. correspondent for BFM-TV, state bluntly: “We are a catholic country.”  

I almost blinked in disbelief when I heard this because—perhaps more so in France than anywhere else—the Roman Catholic Church has periodically damaged its credibility and reputation with the faithful: 

*Under the ancient regime, it possessed extensive properties and privileges, making it a prime target when the French Revolution burst out. 

*At the start of the 20^th century, the church hierarchy maintaining a careful silence during the Dreyfus Affair, even as many of its most reactionary adherents in the media engaged in the most savage anti-Semitism against the French captain unjustly convicted of treason. The fallout from the firestorm resulted in legislation dedicating the nation to the principle of laicite, or the absence of religion in public life. (See, for instance, Rachel Donado's piece on The Atlantic Web site this week.)

*During the nation’s Nazi occupation in WWII, the Church hierarchy again remained silent, this time about the collaborationist Vichy regime, leading to a formal request for forgiveness to the nation’s Jews during a 1997 visit by Pope John Paul II.

*At the end of the century, the sex-abuse crisis further signaled the Roman Catholic Church at bay.

What does the outbreak of emotion surrounding the cathedral signify, then? In her Wall Street Journal column this weekend, Peggy Noonan proposed one short but elegantly stated idea: “Destroyed beauty is a spiritual event.” 

But I think the answer might be found in the structures lost during the fire: the spires. The architects of the 80 French cathedrals built from 1170 and 1270 knew that the sky was the source of greatest mystery and aspiration for churchgoers. 

 

There is another way of looking to this spot, though. In his opening chapter of Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, Adams explains that in the island abbey, the archangel Michael appears at the heights because this was “where the danger was greatest.” Balance is hardest to maintain here and the fall is the worst from this point. 

But God help us if we lose the tower we once assumed would always be there for us, come what may. That might explain why fundraising for the cathedral’s restoration had been lagging these last five years, but the Church has already been able to pull together in the last five days a similar sum what it took for the restoration. 

Rebuilding will be more protracted—and perhaps even more perilous—than the restoration effort. Similarly, the Roman Catholic Church itself will need a massive campaign to preserve even what it has right now, let alone the faith of those they wronged. But both efforts must begin in earnest now. Many will not want to find the extent of the loss when it becomes too late.

(The photo accompanying this post, taken by Nicolas von Kospoth—i.e., Triggerhappy—in December 2005, shows Notre Dame de Paris as seen from the rive gauche.)

Quote of the Day (Hans Kung, on Community Signs of the Spirit of God)

“The signs in the community of the Spirit of God which is identical with the Spirit of Jesus Christ are not clerical supervision and spiritual dictatorship, but consideration, recognition, behaviour in solidarity, collegial harmony, discussion, communication and dialogue in partnership.” —German Catholic theologian Hans Kung, Great Christian Thinkers: Paul, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher, Barth, translated by John Bowden (1994)

(Photo of Hans Kung from 2009.)

Quote of the Day (Pope John Paul II, on Mary, ‘Mother of Divine Grace’)

“Jesus gives his Mother to you so that she will comfort you with her tenderness. She will discharge her ministry as a mother and train you and mold you until Christ is fully formed in you. This is why I now wish to repeat the motto of my episcopal and pontifical service: ‘Totus tuus.’ (completely yours) Throughout my life I have experienced the loving and forceful presence of the Mother of Our Lord. Mary accompanies me every day in the fulfillment of my mission as successor of Peter. Mary is the Mother of divine grace, because she is the Mother of the Author of grace. Entrust yourselves to her with complete confidence!” —Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), "Message of the Holy Father John Paul II for the 18th World Youth Day," Apr. 13, 2003

 (Many of my readers will be familiar with this as the Statue of the Virgin Mary standing in front of my alma mater, St. Cecilia High School of Englewood NJ.)