News

By Kevin Wells, Crisis Magazine - This October, my uncle Msgr. Thomas Wells has been resurfacing like a ghost of warm memory from the past. At a golf tournament held in his honor, through invitations to speak at his former parishes, and in chance encounters with his old friends, I’ve been told stories of how he impacted lives. After arriving early for an event at one of his former parishes, I sat on a bench beneath an ancient oak tree, just a few feet from where my uncle’s body rests—high on the hill in the old Sacred Heart Cemetery in Bowie, Maryland. ...

By Derek Rotty, Catholic Exchange - God speaks to human beings through beauty. That is, Our Lord uses sensible realities to reach the human psyche, to touch our souls and captivate our hearts. Relying on the classical definition of beauty, made clearest in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, a thing is beautiful if it coheres and will not fall apart; if it is balanced and fits well together; if it shines forth a proverbial light that transcends itself. Beautiful things include sunsets, gardens, waterfalls, Gothic architecture, libraries, diligent scientific experiments, and the human person rightly understood, all of which can open a deeper conversation with the divine.