NCR: Here is the Key to LIving the Marian Option
How can Christians best deal with post-Christian America?
Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option is a book-long answer to that question. Dreher’s take is that St. Benedict offers a model that Christians can adopt to preserve their faith and culture in a world vastly hostile to it.
Out of the Ashes by Anthony Esolen and Strangers in a Strange Land by Archbishop Charles Chaput propose other answers to the question of Christian living today. My own take The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis, comes out in mid-May.
NCR: The Hidden Connection Between Mary and Divine Mercy
For many years I’ve marveled about the “coincidence” of three highly influential saints living in Krakow at roughly the same moment in history: St. Faustina Kowalska, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and Pope St. John Paul II. While working on my book, The Marian Option, it occurred to me that there does seem to be a missing link, however, between Sts. Faustina and Maximilian. What is the connection between Divine Mercy and Mary? I was intrigued by this seemingly missing piece and thought there might be something worth investigating. I had a hunch that there had to be a deeper link between Mercy and Mary somewhere in the mix.
ALETEIA: 5 timeless truths about the heart you’ll find in ‘Moana’
I had heard good things about Moana, I wasn’t quite sure what we would find wading into it. I was, however, very pleasantly surprised. An island chief-in-training, Moana is aware of a sense of mission. She is tasked with saving her civilization by returning a stolen “heart” to the goddess of life. Although a tale based upon the ancient myths of Polynesia, Moana does not stray far from timeless truths of the human heart that make for great storytelling and Catholic wisdom.
NCR: The Beauty of Women Will Save the World
Lovingly pouring ourselves out for others may not always be glamorous, but it is always beautiful.
There is a well-known Dostoevsky trope that says, “beauty will save the world.” The famous Russian is usually taken to mean the beauty found in the material arts. Music, architecture, and sculpture are rightfully being plumbed for their world-saving abilities, particularly how they lead a soul back to God. But there is one stone that has yet to be unturned when considering the role beauty plays in saving the world: women.
The desire to be beautiful is deeply embedded in a woman’s soul. Each year, American women spend roughly $11 billion on cosmetic surgery, $24 billion on skin care, $18 billion on makeup, $38 billion on hair care, $15 billion on perfume, and somewhere between $20-45 billion on weight loss. The average woman spends 17 years of her life on a diet. While we can scoff at all of this with Qoheleth and say, “Vanity of vanities!” (Ecc 1:2), perhaps there is something to this that goes deeper than vanity. What if God has put that desire into our hearts for a reason? For even the smallest girl will tell you she wants to be as beautiful as a princess. This isn’t just cultural conditioning, but something universal that sits squarely in the feminine heart.
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