Learning to be Quick to Listen

Catholics don’t celebrate the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus because it's a random organ. We don’t have feast days for Jesus’ arms or kidneys, for instance. Rather, the feast honors his divine-human love for us, a love that the Catechism refers to as “our hidden center.” This devotion goes all the way back to the Middle Ages, but its celebration as a solemnity became especially important in the seventeenth century as a response to the devastating heresy of Jansenism . The Jansenist heresy created a deep and lasting spiritual anxiety for Catholics, largely because it painted a distorted picture of God as an “implacable judge” rather than a merciful Father. Jansenism wrongly taught that God predestined some people for hell, that most people lacked the perfect contrition required to be forgiven in the sacrament of confession, and that unworthy reception of Communion was a grave risk. The resulting vision was a cold, distant God who was not to be loved but feared. This led o...

It's a question many of us have asked: if we weren't around to eat the forbidden fruit, why do we need to be forgiven for original sin? The Catholic Church has a profound answer, one that distinguishes between the personal sin of Adam and Eve and the fallen state we all inherit. The Church teaches that we cannot be guilty of another's personal sin. That would be metaphysically and scripturally absurd. Instead, Adam and Eve alone committed the personal act of original sin. What we inherit is not their action, but a state of being—a "sin" by analogy, not a personal sin. This inherited condition represents a real and proper sin that must be addressed, even though it's in its own unique category. This distinction is crucial. When the Church calls original sin a "sin," it is not using the term in the same way we talk about personal sins like lying or stealing. Original sin is not an act we commit, but a fallen state of human nature we receive through ...