Today's Page · Thursday, August 13, 2026

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Baptized behind bars: Matthew 25 and the work of accompanying incarcerated people
On July 26, two men at a maximum-security penitentiary in Campo Grande, Brazil received baptism, Eucharist, and confirmation after two years of catechesis. Their story opens a practical question: what does Matthew 25's mandate to visit the imprisoned require, and how can Catholics support both prison ministry and the difficult transition back to public life?
Bringing Divine Mercy to the Catholic University of America
Father Charles Sikorsky announced on August 12th that Divine Mercy University will move to the Catholic University of America campus in the summer of 2027. The relocation centers on O'Boyle Hall, currently home to Catholic University's school of psychology, which is now under renovation. The move builds on an existing clinical partnership between the two institutions.
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A 30-year Study Correlates Lack of Religious Community and Anxiety
A study published in Developmental Science by Leonard Konstantin Kulisch, Ana Lorena Domínguez Rojas, Silvia Schneider, and Babett Voigt tracked anxiety disorder rates across 70 countries over three decades and found that where religious faith declined as a childrearing value, youth anxiety rose. The protective effect operates at the level of the community, not the individual household. For Catholic Christian families, the data confirms what a sound anthropology of the person already predicted.
justice worship
Defend the Person, Propose the Gospel: What Archbishop Wester's Mosque Defense Reveals About Catholic Identity
Archbishop John Charles Wester of Santa Fe publicly defended the right of Muslims to build a mosque in New Mexico, grounding his argument in Dignitatis Humanae and U.S. constitutional protections. His statement is correct as far as it goes — and Catholic tradition requires going further. Defending a neighbor's legal right to worship and praying with genuine charity for their conversion are not competing obligations; they are the same missionary posture held at full tension.
What Two Psychiatrists Saw at Exorcisms, and What It Means for Catholic Clinical Care
José Miguel Gaona and Richard Gallagher spent decades apart, studying exorcisms as skeptics, and arrived independently at nearly the same estimate: psychiatry explains the overwhelming majority of it. What matters for Catholic clinical practice is what a clinician is actually supposed to do with the small but significant remainder.

When the Machine Pulls the Trigger: Conscience, Distance, and the Church's Case Against Autonomous Weapons

Pope Leo XIV's 2026 encyclical *Magnifica Humanitas* declares it 'not permissible to entrust lethal or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems.' The argument is not merely technical but anthropological: autonomous weapons complete a long trajectory of moral distancing that removes the human will from the moment of execution entirely. The Catholic tradition insists that a conscience, not an algorithm, must bear the weight of lethal force.

Aug 11, 2026 · 5 min read

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Environments control people: what Skinner got right, and what he missed

B.F. Skinner argued that environments, not inner lives, shape human behavior. His insight captures something real about how habits form and disorders persist. But it leaves the person without a soul to save.

personal unity

The Hands That Think: What "Grandma Hobbies" Reveal About Body and Soul

Younger adults are picking up knitting, quilting, and sourdough baking in numbers large enough to draw wide press coverage. Catholic anthropology explains why this is more than a wellness trend: the human person is a body-soul unity, and work done with the hands trains faculties, attention, and vocation that screen-based labor systematically starves.

prudence caution

When Helping Becomes Controlling: How to Spot Coercive Dynamics in Coaching, Therapy, and Corporate Training

A new guide by therapist Jenni Walford names seven manipulation techniques, first identified in high-control religious groups, now normalized inside mainstream coaching, wellness, and leadership training. Her argument isn't that these programs are cults. It's that good intentions don't cancel harmful effects, and the reason the harm is real is freedom, not technique: Wojtyla's personalistic norm forbids treating a person merely as a means, however good the end.

Top stories

Baptized behind bars: Matthew 25 and the work of accompanying incarcerated people

Bringing Divine Mercy to the Catholic University of America

A 30-year Study Correlates Lack of Religious Community and Anxiety

Defend the Person, Propose the Gospel: What Archbishop Wester's Mosque Defense Reveals About Catholic Identity

What Two Psychiatrists Saw at Exorcisms, and What It Means for Catholic Clinical Care

When the Machine Pulls the Trigger: Conscience, Distance, and the Church's Case Against Autonomous Weapons

More to read

When Psychology and Magic Share a Shelf: Discerning Real Therapy from Its Imitations

What You Value Most: The Interior Ordering Problem in Response to Anxiety

The Funeral Mass Is an Act of the Church, Not a Stage for Grief

Top stories

Baptized behind bars: Matthew 25 and the work of accompanying incarcerated people

Bringing Divine Mercy to the Catholic University of America

A 30-year Study Correlates Lack of Religious Community and Anxiety

Defend the Person, Propose the Gospel: What Archbishop Wester's Mosque Defense Reveals About Catholic Identity

What Two Psychiatrists Saw at Exorcisms, and What It Means for Catholic Clinical Care

Latest

Environments control people: what Skinner got right, and what he missed

The Hands That Think: What "Grandma Hobbies" Reveal About Body and Soul

When Helping Becomes Controlling: How to Spot Coercive Dynamics in Coaching, Therapy, and Corporate Training

More to read

Surrender, Rightly Understood: What "The Surrendered Wife" Gets Right About Freedom in Marriage

The Reverse Centaur in the Exam Room: What a ChatGPT Lawsuit Reveals About Intellectual Proxy in Medicine and Psychology

Odysseus, Washington, and the Psyche That Has No One to Imitate

When Housing Costs Hollow Out the Home: A Catholic Anthropology of Family Stability

Seeking Help Is an Act of Faith: What the Philippine Bishops' Mental Health Letter Gets Right