Church Life Journal | Articles

Sometimes people complain about beautiful churches, saying, “That money could have been used to feed the poor!” They have a point. When the multitude was hungry, Jesus gave them bread. When people were physically sick, he healed their bodies. He addressed immediate, material needs, and instructed his followers to do the same. But Jesus made clear, too, that besides physical n...

In Rome, each time I have visited, I pay to walk among the ruins of the Forum. There is not much to it, and in the summer it is too hot and there are too many people. Yet I go anyway; it is my favorite place in that city. Strange, I understand, for, as I said, there is not much to it. Visiting the eternal city, if you skipped it, you would survive. But me, I always go; it fas...

It is an unbending law of the universe—as necessary as gravity, and as obdurate as diamond—that, the more real a thing becomes, the more it reflects a light not its own. Call it the Law of the Mirror. A mirror works to the effect that it captures light; a broken, clouded mirror produces a poor reflection. Thus the paradox: the more perfect the mirror, the better it signifies ...

Neuroscientists often claim to have privileged access to the reality of the human person, but they also tend to reduce that reality to material terms.[1] For example, one states that “self is ‘what [the brain] does.’”[2] Another argues, “So, who ar...

Is Scripture one Book or a collection of many books? If the Bible is one Book, then it has to have one subject, one unifying center. According to the New Testament, that one subject is Christ, who is foreseen, spoken of, and even active, in the many books of the Old Testament. Such is the argument offered by Olivier-Thomas Venard in a chapter titled “