Whether they know it or not, all people who seek the good seek the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church is the bride of him who is all good, all true, and all beautiful. In fact he IS goodness, truth, and beauty. The only way to rightfully relate to Christ is to be part of his bride: to be Catholic. She calls to all people of goodwill to be joined to her ranks, because she is the bride of the spouse of humanity and will be united to him at the end of time. ...

Let us take seriously St. Thérèse’s plea to be made known everywhere. Her Little Way is more and more the antidote to the trajectory of the world. On us who have known her patronage and learned the story of her life, there rests a special duty to fulfill this plea and to never cease to lead others to Jesus through her. For those who don’t know her: St. Thérèse of Lisieux is a 19th-century Carmelite nun, who died at age 24. In her short life, she advanced to a rare height of union with our Lord, practicing what she called the Little Way. Through prayer, she realized the centrality of love in the Church, how it “sets off the bounds of all vocations” and drives every member of the Church to action. The mission of those who follow the Little Way is “to become love in the heart of the Church” to keep all her members aflame, so that the love in the heart of the Bride of Christ is never extinguished. ...

Too often, in setting our priorities, we resort to casuistry and complication. It is as though we think that by adding nuance and gradation we can sideline the mandates of God’s law or bend them to our own ends. “God. First. Always.” is a simple antidote to this approach. God is the beginning and end of all things. He, along with his law and his Church, come first. And he comes first in every consideration all the time. ...

Christian marriage is by its nature an adventure. When a man and a woman say to each other, “I will die to myself, and love you every day until I die, come what may,” they consent to an adventure, for only the Lord can know what’s coming for them. When they introduce birth control into their marriage, however, they begin to say No to adventure and replace it with predictability and control. They close themselves off from the wildness of God’s will. ...

This message features a new twist on a common phrase. When times are desperate, it is essential that we not become desperate with them. Common sense and common decency during desperate times show that we are not slaves to circumstances, that it is not circumstances but rather our values that define us, the code by which we have chosen to live. The true test of our commitment to our values is whether we can live by them during desperate times, rather than allowing the times to make us desperate. To live as we ought to live, despite the desperate times we live in, is the only way to maintain our humanity. ...

This twist on the popular phrase gets at the true nature of the life of man on earth. Throughout the course of his life, there is no point at which a man simply coasts to the finish line—no point at which he may say that the struggle is over. He must strive every day against his baser nature and his predominant faults; not until he closes his eyes in death is he finished climbing, for Christ is at the top, and we must never stop advancing toward him. ...

This message features a Chestertonian twist on the popular phrase “Out with the old, in with the new.” It is a reminder that, while it may at times be necessary to do away with old things and bring in new things, it is also necessary—perhaps more so—to examine the new in light of the old and to chuck those new things and new ideas that are incompatible with old ones, especially those new things and new ideas that claim to exist in opposition to what came before them. ...

For all those who dissent from the demotion of the ninth planet—and from the inane fiats of this or that self-important scientist. This message is part of The Trad Store’s For Fun series.

This message is both an homage to Homer Simpson—so often the buffoon father, but here at his sagest—as well as a stand against the latent, lingering influences of Jansenism and Manichaeism, heresies condemned long ago but still insidiously rife today. Why do we so readily accept the malignity leveled against fat and salt? Why are we so ready to cut back on both? It is because of Jansenism and Manichaeism, which still whisper to us the lie that we do not deserve good things. That, though God lavishes, we must scruple. That these two of his greatest gifts to man, as well as many of his other gifts, are actually bad for us, or at least need to be taken one at a time. ...

We don’t know either.