It is simply impossible to agree on ethics, on how to act, on what is good and what is not, if you disagree about metaphysics or anthropology. And since ethics is unavoidable, so is anthropology.
"It is better to give than to receive," says the Lord, as Saint Paul reports to us.
I am convinced that our most significant response to the challenges of our age will be in the most ordinary practices. I do not say the obvious but the ordinary.
We are consistently told that bodily presence is optional and expendable.
A friend of mine was a bit put off recently by a highly credentialed Catholic layman who declared that there were only two vocations open to Catholics: marriage or some form of religious life.
One of the most striking passages in all of Scripture is Job's prayer just after he has learned of the destruction not only of his sources of wealth (his beasts of burden and his servants) but also of his ten sons and daughters.
"No one can be relieved of the duty of forming his conscience," said my interlocutor, who was a bit surprised when I said that no one can do that on his own, and no one should attempt it, since man's capacity for self-deception is boundless.
A longstanding men's group brings community, stability to Poughkeepsie, New York parish.
"In the beginning was the Word ... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Divine revelation, I tell my students, is not simply the revelation of information; it is the revelation of a person.
Hilaire Belloc described a handful of activities which modern industrial and urban life has all too often endangered or made extinct, but should be recovered by today's Catholic men.