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We often hear our Protestant friends decry evolution as an assault on the divine inspiration of Scripture. After all, Genesis says that God made everything in six days. Not really enough time for dinosaurs to become birds or apes to become men!

Catholics don’t have to reject every aspect of evolution, but there are some precautions to heed.

Here are six things every Catholic needs to keep in mind when it comes to evolution.

1. Faith and reason are harmonious
Truth is one because reality is one. Legitimate scientific facts will always line up with theological truths. There is no such thing as a “double truth” that’s true in science, but untrue in theology.

2. Catholics must firmly reject scientism
The problem with many evolutionists today is that they embrace scientism — the belief that science can explain all of reality. This is, of course, false. Spiritual realities such as grace or transubstantiation are outside the boundaries of science.

3. God created everything
Whether He chose to create everything directly or through evolution, God is the author of all things and continues to hold them in existence. If evolution is true, it is part of God’s providential unfolding of all creation in love.

4. It’s permissible to believe in material evolution
Belief in material evolution is not contrary to belief in either God or the inerrancy of Scriptures. As the Church has long taught, Scriptural inerrancy does not mean that God willed to describe the universe in a scientifically exact way. Many of the Church Fathers actually believed that the “seven days” are symbolic for longer stretches of time.

5. The human soul is specially created by God
Our bodies may have evolved, but our souls did not. That’s because they are immaterial and immortal. Matter alone cannot produce spiritual effects.

6. We all come from one original pair
This point is necessary in order to affirm the solidarity of the human race, the transmission of Original Sin, and the universal nature of Christ’s sacrifice. However, these beliefs don’t preclude the existence of several human-like pairs from which God chose one pair to infuse with spiritual souls.

To be clear, all of this doesn’t mean a Catholic must accept evolution. The Church still permits belief in direct creation of each thing we see today.

And, of course, a Catholic can’t uncritically accept every aspect of modern evolutionary theories such as Darwinian evolution.

But you do have a LOT of freedom to follow the evidence where it leads. The important thing is to always adhere to God’s divine revelation and exercise charity toward other Catholics who may disagree with you on this issue.

 

Stoicism is an ancient philosophy popular in Greece and Rome that emphasized virtue and self-control, among other things.

While some Stoic teachings are at odds with Christianity, others offer great practical advice for those of us overwhelmed by our fast-paced world.

Here are four things you can learn from the Stoics to have a happier, more peaceful life.

1. Slow down.
Stoics resisted the urge to go with the flow. They recognized the importance of slowing down and using their reason to judge what actions were most prudent in a given situation.

Too often we let ourselves get caught up in the hustle and bustle of modern life. We quickly justify immoral actions for the sake of getting ahead.

For example, maybe your boss is pressuring you to take part in a shady financial transaction. It’s easy to let that pressure make you rationalize the action. But if you slow down and think about the negative consequences to follow, you’ll find more strength to say no.

As Christians, we go beyond the Stoics. We don’t slow down merely to focus on ourselves, but more so to reorient ourselves to spiritual things.

2. Do a nighttime reflection.
The ancient Stoic Seneca recommended this practice. It’s similar to the Christian examination of conscience.

Seneca reflected on everything he had done during the day, including his thoughts, words, and deeds. He didn’t shy away from discovering his vices.

This practice is a great way to grow in holiness. Take time before bed to do an examination of your day. Have the guts to call yourself out for your failing, but also humbly recognize your accomplishments and thank God for them.

3. Do a morning reflection.
The revered Stoic Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, instructs us to prepare ourselves in the morning for whatever we will encounter that day. This includes the busybodies and rude and ungrateful folks we’re liable to meet.

Creating realistic expectations for your day is not meant to foster pessimism. Marcus Aurelius says that we are all put on this earth to learn to cooperate with each other. See these unsavory figures as a way to practice charity and humility.

4. Don’t rush to judge someone.
Marcus Aurelius reminds us that those who annoy us often see their actions as sensible. In other words, most of them aren’t intentionally trying to hurt us.

Recognizing this point prevents you from losing your cool and doing something you’ll later regret. Be patient with people. You usually don’t know what they’re going through. Try to get them to see the light. If that fails, continue on with your day in peace.

You’ve probably noticed that many of these practices resemble Christian ones. Yet, many Christians today don’t incorporate them into their lives.

The benefits, though, are enormous, so why not give them a try?

 

The Catholic Church gives a healthy dose of freedom to Catholics concerning which spirituality they want to follow, what rite they want to belong to, and even what they want to believe about theological questions left open to discussion.

But then there are those who go to extremes. Here are two opposite extremes many Catholics embrace today that are actually harmful to their spiritual lives and to the mission of the Church.

1. Being overly accommodating to the world and embracing things contrary to God’s will and the teaching of the Church.
We recently saw an example of this in the infamous Chicago “bubble Mass” that is still making rounds on the internet. The church was full of giant bubbles as people sang and danced. Earlier this year at the same parish, the priest gave the final blessing by using a guitar to make the sign of the cross.

When we give up our identity as Catholics and overly accommodate ourselves to a worldly spirit devoid of the sacred, we surrender the fear of God to the fear of man.

We can’t accommodate ourselves to modern culture because there are so many things within it that are directly contrary to God and His plan: radical moral subjectivism, sexual immorality, etc.

Also, cultural fads come and go. Once the Church hangs on too much to a certain fad, it risks dying with that fad. Just look at many “modern Masses” today — many are still stuck on the same 70s hymns that have not aged well.

2. Becoming so rigid and inflexible that they don’t care if anyone’s listening to our message or can understand it.
This is the opposite extreme of what was explained above. Yes, we need to hold onto the beliefs and practices handed down to us. But we need to find ways to enunciate these beliefs in a way that will be understood by the people of today.

Pope St. John XXIII said it best at the opening of Vatican II: “The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another.”

Yet some people — such as the more extreme types of Traditionalists — are strangely resistant to this principle. They fail to see that the Church has often in the past adapted its language to the needs of the time. One prominent example is its adoption of Thomistic language and thought shortly after the Angelic Doctor’s death. Some clergy at the time thought this was radical and dangerous!

 

So how do we avoid these two extremes? It’s tough. It feels like walking on a knife’s edge. We have to both see the signs of the times and respond to them in a prophetic way that transcends them.

At the end of the day, the best thing to do is follow the magisterium — the ENTIRE magisterium — from the earliest centuries of the Church to the present day.

We won’t always do it perfectly. We are, after all, sinners.

But we at least have to try.

To tattoo or not to tattoo. That is the question and one that Catholics vehemently disagree on.

Some Catholics say, “Absolutely not! It’s immoral.” Others say that there’s nothing wrong with it and you should go ahead and get one without a second thought.

The right answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Whether you get one isn’t a huge issue and it’s not a question that carries the same moral weight as lying, stealing or adultery. Tattoos are not good or evil in themselves but can become good or evil depending on what the tattoo represents and why you’re getting it.

So if you’re reading this and have a tattoo of, say, the Sacred Heart, don’t worry. We’re not saying you did anything morally wrong.

Still, there are several reasons why Catholics should think twice before getting a tattoo. Consider these reasons as points to ponder, not commandments forbidding you from something you want to do.

1. You may be defining yourself in ways you’ll later regret.
It’s natural for us to want to define ourselves — to encapsulate or summarize our lives in a few words or pictures. This is because our lives often feel like a mess that’s impossible to make sense of.

Highlighting what’s important to you by having it forever stamped on your body seems to give your life clarity and purpose.

But here’s the thing: What’s important to us in life often changes as we go through childhood, the teenage years, college, family life, and old age. So while you may love a certain band now, it’s possible you’ll lose your taste for them later on and then your tattoo loses meaning.

Because most tattoos are permanent, don’t rush to stamp on yourself things you may lose interest in later. Give yourself and your tastes permission and space to evolve.

2. Tattoos don’t always say what you intend to say.
Maybe your tattoo communicates something really deep and meaningful to you. You see the tattoo and are reminded of everything in your heart connected with it.

But that doesn’t mean the message is clear to other people. For example, there are lots of people with tattoos of the One Ring from Lord of the Rings. Most fans probably got this tattoo because they genuinely love Middle Earth and the One Ring is a powerful symbol of these beautiful stories.

Yet, the One Ring is a symbol of evil in Tolkien’s worldbuilding, so you may have some people wondering why you chose that to express your love of Middle Earth rather than, say, Bilbo’s sword, Sting, or an elven brooch.

Think hard about the message you may be sending with your tattoo.

3. There are better ways to communicate what’s important to us.
It’s incredibly moving when someone gets a tattoo to commemorate someone dear to them, especially if that person is deceased.

But are tattoos really the best way to do that?

Let’s take the example of deceased parents. Your biological parents are already “tattooed” on and in you in a far more profound, human way than can be accomplished by ink. You may have your mother’s kind eyes or your father’s infectious smile. You may have inherited a love of fishing from your dad or of writing from your mom.

The same goes with religious tattoos. The image of God is already stamped on us through our reason and heart. Baptism marks you with a seal. These are far more powerful witnesses to the faith than tattoos, which fade over time, begging the question of whether tattoos are really necessary or merely cheap substitutes for faith.

Again, all of this is not to say that tattoos are wrong. These are just some sketches of thoughts and the beginnings of debates. But whether you get a tattoo or not, you’re already marked by your baptism. This sacred mark is your seal of glory as you fight the forces of evil. But it’s also your mark of shame if you abandon the Lord’s army.

Ultimately, it’s what you do with this interior mark that will determine your eternal destiny.

It’s easy to look at the saints and think that holiness involves nothing less than literal poverty, persecution, and martyrdom.

Relax. You don’t have to become a Discalced Carmelite or be fed to lions to become a saint.

Few people are called to the level of heroic sanctity of St. Paul, St. Edith Stein, or St. Francis of Assisi. Yet, we’re all still called to be saints, but through little acts of love and sacrifice that slowly conform our hearts to Christ.

These opportunities for small sacrifices are all around you. You just need to start looking for them.

To help, here are three small ways you can start growing in holiness right now.

1. Choose small sacrifices
Maybe you feel that you’re being cheap by only doing small sacrifices rather than sleeping on a bed of spikes. But you’d be surprised at how tough some of these “small” sacrifices can be!

Here are a few to try:
When out at a restaurant, find out what you want most on the menu and then get your second or third choice instead. If you always crave the bacon burger, getting a veggie burger instead can be tough.
Occasionally skip the pepper and salt. Much easier said than done!
Wear a slightly uncomfortable sweater or shirt from time to time.

We don’t realize how attached we are to our own desires and preferences until we make these small sacrifices. When offered to God, these penances help us make steady progress in holiness.

2. Turn involuntary discomfort into prayer
We just talked about sacrifices you freely choose. But life loves to force us against our will into inconvenient or irritating situations.

Maybe it’s entering your favorite coffee shop and seeing that there’s a line of 10 people ahead of you and only one barista working. Maybe it’s waiting half an hour just to talk to a customer service representative on the phone.

Rather than using these uncomfortable moments as occasions to complain, turn them into moments of prayer. God doesn’t let anything happen to us without offering us a way to turn that occasion into a moment of grace.

So, next time you’re 12 cars behind the drive-thru window, simply say, “Thank you, Lord!”

Tough, right? But how’s complaining going to make your life better?

3. Fill your day with short, spontaneous prayers
Having a designated prayer time is a good way to become disciplined in our prayer lives. But it can also make us forget that God is present with us at all times.

God wants to have a relationship with us throughout our day. Of course, this doesn’t mean talking to Him 24/7 (which is impossible), but it does mean taking time throughout the day to say very simple, sincere prayers, such as “Thank you for this day, Lord,” or, “Jesus, help me.”

Go ahead and give these three tricks a try. Stick with them, and you’ll be surprised at how much progress you’ll make in your walk with the Lord.

Are you always forgetting where you placed your keys, when your next meeting is, even (on occasion) your kids’ names?

Many of us suffer from a bad memory. And it seems to be getting worse. (Remember back in the day when we memorized dozens of phone numbers? Yeah, those days are long gone.)

The good news is that there are techniques you can practice right now to boost your memory and construct an amazing mind palace!

They’re not new, but go back hundreds of years. St. Thomas Aquinas identified and used four of these ancient practices. Given how brilliant the man was, they must have worked.

Why not give these four memory techniques a try yourself?

1. Form Images in Your Mind
This applies even to memorizing spiritual things. All of our knowledge originates in sense knowledge, even our knowledge of spiritual things. As creatures with both a physical body and a spiritual soul, we need to use images to strengthen our memory.

St. Thomas suggests making these memories strange, or even funny (in a holy way, of course), because the startling strangeness further impresses the concept into your mind.

2. Arrange Your Memories Into a Particular Order
That way one memory easily leads to another. Choose your own fun way to arrange the memories. For example, you can picture your mind as a house or even a palace.

A house comes with many parts, such as a front door, kitchen sink, patio, etc. Use these parts of the house and place your strange images on top of them. Once you associate a memory with the front door, you’ll more easily recall what’s associated with the front door mat.

Again, use an ordering mechanism that works for you, whether it’s a garden, city, or castle… the possibilities are endless!

3. Learn to Focus Your Mind
St. Thomas emphasizes the need to concentrate on what we’re trying to memorize. Plenty of tests confirm this and demonstrate that many people who have memory problems suddenly improve when they actually focus on what they’re learning.

Of course, there are many distractions in the modern world: smartphones, social media, limitless streaming services, etc. While St. Thomas didn’t know about the technologies to come, he’d probably tell you to silence that phone and close those internet tabs while you’re memorizing! If possible, find a quiet setting to concentrate better, or turn on some appropriate background music.

4. Repeat, Repeat, REPEAT
Unless you have a photographic memory, you’ll rarely understand a concept fully on first hearing or reading. You have to drill yourself.

How does this help? St. Thomas points out that multiple causes fortify effects. Every time you repeat an action, you’re setting up a cause (the act of memorization) to produce an effect (memory).

There’s a parallel to athletes’ physical training. Batters can’t just pick up a bat any old day and give a perfect swing. They have to practice by repeating the action of swinging over and over again.

Repetitive learning may be countercultural in our age of instant gratification, but it’s a discipline that will pay off many times in your life. If you find it difficult to go over things in your head while sitting, try it on a solitary walk or hike. There’s something about thinking while walking that gets our minds churning.

These four techniques will help your memory improve by leaps and bounds. But you have to put in the effort! So turn off those phone notifications, find a quiet location and start practicing now.

Good priests have had it rough over the past couple of decades. Not only do they suffer for the scandals of their brother priests, they know that the anti-Catholic media is ready to pin these scandals on them as well, even if they’re completely innocent.

It’s also tough on laypeople. Our faith in the priesthood is being tested. Sometimes we wonder whether a “good” priest exists anymore.

The good news is that there are still lots of exceptional men sacrificing themselves in the shadows to lead their flocks to heaven.

These men share these three characteristics.

1. They love the Church with a spousal love.
There’s a common misconception that saying “yes” to a priestly or religious vocation means completely sacrificing spousal love.

But that’s not true! The priesthood is fundamentally a spousal vocation. Remember that Jesus is the bridegroom and the Church is His bride. The priest, who acts in the person of Christ, also acts in the person of Christ the bridegroom, tenderly loving the Church and sacrificing himself so that she may flourish and be protected from the powers of darkness.

Many people forget that married love is much more than just sexual love. Even on the spiritual plane, men and women love differently. Priests love as men and they share this masculine love with the Church as a husband would a wife.

A great way to cultivate this love is to foster a devotion to the Blessed Mother. Few people ignite such a strong, chaste spiritual love in the heart as Mary. This is why seminarians should make devotion to Mary a centerpiece of their formation.

2. They refuse to be reduced to functionaries.
This is correlative to our first point. We see way too many priests (and bishops) today who act as mere functionaries, rather than as bridegrooms of the Church and warriors for souls.

There’s a greater risk for this in the diocesan priesthood. A pastor of a large parish has to deal with finances, council meetings, and other secular tasks that can make the priesthood feel like just another career.

A good priest counters this attitude by nurturing a deep prayer life, engaging in spiritual reading, and regularly seeking the sacrament of confession for himself. He also tries to approach his day-to-day “secular” tasks with a spiritual mindset.

3. They are realists.
It’s easy to become an idealist when pursuing the priesthood. Many young men answer the call because they want to become like the great saints they read about. They want to become spiritual warriors who bravely defend their flocks against the forces of evil.

That’s all well and good, but this otherwise good idealism can easily mask the fact that we all still suffer from an inclination to sin. A truly wise priest recognizes that he can easily hit rock bottom and he uses this knowledge to work harder on conquering his personal sins.

For if you ignore your weaknesses, you’re setting yourself up for a massive fall. We are all called to sanctity, so priests and laymen alike need to recognize our weakness and strive for holiness.

For the past year, the U.S. has seen a tsunami of angry parents descend upon school board meetings to air their grievances about their children’s leftist education.

Many of these grievances are totally legit. They complain of teachers promoting promiscuous sex ed, socialism, and many other crazy things that should disturb anybody who truly cares about the well-being of children.

Of course, public schools have been promoting this stuff for a long time. They’ve just been doing it under the radar. But the pandemic forced many kids to take their classes online from home. Parents finally saw the monster they were feeding their children to.

This raises the question: is it time to fully abandon public schools and let them rot away? Honestly, with all the garbage public (and some Catholic) schools are force-feeding kids, it seems like homeschooling or faithful private schools are the best way to go.

Here are a few things to think about as you ponder this question.

1. Remember that your children’s immortal souls are your #1 priority
Honestly, nothing else matters as much as this. God gave you children to raise as saints that will hopefully spend eternity in heaven. Let this fact inform every decision you make.

Obviously, you can’t — nor should — protect your children from everything. They need to learn how to fight evil on the battlefield.

But, as in every battle, there comes a point when you have to decide whether the opposing forces are likely to overpower your child. This brings us to point number two.

2. Decide how bad it has to get before you act
You have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. As I said, you can’t protect your children from everything, but there must be a point where you decide that enough is enough.

Otherwise, you’ll be among the large crowd of people who just complain about things without doing anything to bring about change.

Now, I can’t tell you exactly where to draw the line. But I may suggest that wherever that line is, most public schools today have definitely crossed it. By miles.

3. Withdrawal is only part of the strategy
If I sound like I’m advocating taking your kids out of public schools — yeah, I sort of am. But I’m not saying we should abandon public schools entirely.

After all, if all the good people leave and are no longer engaged with the system, then only the bad ones remain to run things.

Find ways to fight to change public education, even if your children are no longer a part of it. Go to school board meetings. Vote in local elections. Maybe even run yourself for a position on a school board.

After all, many kids will continue to go to public schools, where they’ll be molded into minions of a Godless society.

Keep up the fight for them. They have immortal souls too.

The Lord commanded you to sit on the couch all day streaming movies and eating ice cream.

Just kidding. He told you to get up and go make disciples!

But how do you do this? Do you go out and start threatening hellfire on every non-Catholic you meet? Beat them over the head with a doctorate-level discussion of theology?

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to evangelization, there are certain steps to take that will increase your chances of reaching hearts (and it’s usually not the above).

Here are four effective ways to bring people into the fullness of the Catholic Faith.

1. Understand who you’re evangelizing
It’s an ancient principle of evangelization that you have to adapt your message to your audience (without watering down the truth, of course).

You wouldn’t go to a pop concert and start sharing the Gospel in Latin. Neither would you share the faith with a woman who just had an abortion by berating her. She may already feel a great deal of guilt for her action.

Learn about your listeners — their hopes, fears, pain points and level of knowledge. Yes, it sounds like marketing. And, of course, you don’t want to come off as sales-y. You’re not selling anything, but inviting people to a personal relationship with Christ.

Whatever hurt your listeners are experiencing, Christ can heal it.

2. Share the impact being Catholic has had on your life
There are times when pulling out your theological big guns can help. Again, this goes back to understanding who you’re evangelizing. You may very well convince an intellectual or non-Catholic preacher by having a rigorous theological debate.

But the vast majority of people will not be moved. They want to hear how being Catholic has impacted your life, not how many theological intricacies they’re violating.

Focus on relationship evangelization. This is usually always more effective than intellectual debate. Share concrete examples of how being Catholic has transformed your life for the better. You may awaken something in your listeners that makes them long for such a beautiful relationship with Christ!

3. Love them and be patient
This is probably the toughest part. It’s easy to become flustered when dealing with someone who doesn’t share — and may even hate — your Catholic faith.

But you have to start with loving them. Begin with love and let the intellectual part naturally flow out of this. If you start by criticizing them, they’ll shut down. Start with love, and you’ll be amazed by how many people open themselves up to the truth.

And you have to keep loving them. Conversion is rarely instantaneous; it’s usually a step-by-step process. You need to be there encouraging (but not rushing) them every step of the way

4. Above all, PRAY
This should be obvious, but it’s easy to forget that it’s ultimately the Holy Spirit who converts hearts. We merely plant the seeds. As soon as you try to take a person’s conversion fully into your own hands, you’ve set yourself up for failure.

Pray to the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Mother, and any patron saints you can think of who are relevant to your case. For example, if you’re dealing with someone living an immoral life, then St. Augustine is your man.

After you’ve done your part sharing your faith, loving, and praying, leave the rest up to God.

He is the world’s savior. You aren’t.