John Tuttle

Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, or “Magnificent Humanity,” addresses current issues that impact many people as well as important truths about the human condition, including the inherent dignity common to us all.

SPRINGFIELD—The Diocese of Rockford bus trip brought 79 pilgrims to the annual Illinois Pro-Life March in Springfield on March 19, the Solemnity of St. Joseph.
Father Kevin Butler, pastor of Sacred Heart-Marengo, was a pilgrim on one of the two buses coordinated by the diocesan Life and Family Evangelization (LiFE) Office, and shared his feeling that participation in the trip meant being a beacon of light amid the darkness. He and Fath...

Everything’s pointing to St. Joseph. My wife Ellen reminded me that she gifted me Father Calloway’s book, Consecration to St. Joseph, last Father’s Day, and that I should read it (sometime soon). My confessor recommended cultivating a deeper devotion to the head of the Holy Family. My social media feed informed me that all of March, not just a single day, is dedicated to the foster father of Jesus.
God’s trying to tell me something!
Whether we struggle with employment or purity or fear of dea...

The keynote given by Br. Consolmagno was stellar. For a man who analyzes asteroids and meteorites and the things of the heavens, he’s a pretty down-to-earth guy. His talk revolved around sci-fi and the marks of good storytelling, bringing his own experience and experiments to bear on the topic.

Today, we celebrate the Annunciation, which is observed as a solemnity in the Church due to its importance. (As a solemnity, we can also celebrate and splurge by enjoying whatever we gave up for Lent.) The solemnity recalls that moment, at once joyous and breathtaking, in which St. Gabriel heralds the Good News to Mary that she has been chosen to become the Mother of God! The angel heralds the Incarnation — God becoming man. Mary’s affirmative response, her Let It Be, greenlights a hugely significant event: the visible entrance of God into the drama of human history.

Like the fruit in the youthful Tree
In the easterly garden long ago
The Lord Jesus wants us to see
The life-giving food He does bestow
And taste the Goodness He gives there
His proclamation, His Word, sweet as honey
The Bread from Heaven, true and fair
Helping us reach green hills, peaceful and sunny
To achieve second Paradise, a second Tree there must be
A second Adam, and perfect, to defend all His kin
Hangs as the new Fruit on a new Tree in order to free
The whole of His creation from our ...

Summary
The “Dark Ages” were not backward; the Islamic world preserved Greek philosophy, which was essential for thinkers like Aquinas.
Aquinas heavily adopted Aristotle’s concepts of nature and his four causes for his own proofs for the existence of God.
Aquinas and Plato agreed that the human soul is immortal and the seat of reason, though they differed on its relation to the body.
Like Averroes, Aquinas argued the universe’s fine-tuned order points to a perfect, intelligent Creator rather ...

The tail end of last year witnessed the publication of The Lady and the Fountain, the debut book of Hannah Athol, a PhD candidate in biological engineering who also has a soft spot for medieval romances. A very short but swift escapade through the lands under King Arthur’s rule and the watch of his chivalrous knights, The Lady and the Fountain is a retelling of a 12th century French tale of Camelot by Chrétien de Troyes and sits nicely in the same vein of stories as the Welsh Gereint and Enid...

A Poem:

The land once was full of trees now felled,
A thriving community was the wood,
Drinking from unseen wells, in sunlight they reveled,
Those stumps where once the living stood.
I see this tantalizing yesterday,
Bathed in glowing, nostalgic light,
And a hilltop Tree showed the Way,
Gave shade with boughs; its blossoms, fragrant delight.
Encircling It are many a shoot and stalk
Conifers, laden, pining for the light of Daystar
Lend resiny incense to the breeze and chalk
Up their offspr...

Everything’s pointing to St. Joseph. My wife Ellen reminded me that she gifted me Father Calloway’s book, Consecration to St. Joseph, last Father’s Day, and that I should read it (sometime soon). My confessor recommended cultivating a deeper devotion to the head of the Holy Family. My social media feed informed me that all of March, not just a single day, is dedicated to the foster father of Jesus.
God’s trying to tell me something!
Whether we struggle with employment or purity or fear of dea...

Earlier this year, the independent publisher Slant Books released the novel Child of These Tears. Focusing on a juvenile protagonist, Constance Baker, and set in colonial America at the beginning of the 1700s, the book is delivered in fragments, or little glimpses, in the form of letters, journal entries, and other brief snapshots into the characters’ lives, hearts, and minds. This delivery, while rather unique, allows both for a quick read and a depth of introspective development that might ...

Thomas’ classmates snubbed him, judged him on the spot
“Dumb Ox” they dubbed him in jest for his taciturn ways
But they forgot that quietude is the wise man’s lot
He soon poured forth silver speech, cutting through darkest haze
He gained wisdom from scholars pagan and divine
Admiring their harvests, their new and old yields
Yet he favored one that above the rest did shine:
Rich, golden grasses gleaned from Macedon fields
The Ox took the Greek grains, mulled them over in his jaw
Ruminated on t...

Many people get introduced to the Jewish writer and Holocaust victim Anne Frank via her Diary of a Young Girl in a middle school literature class. But my own first impression of Anne came from her less well-known Tales from the Secret Annex, which deviates from the tone and material of her Diary in that it is a collection of mostly fictitious anecdotes and sketches.