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To judge by some very recent controversies, you might think that scholars are bitterly divided over this question. But in reality, that Jesus really existed is a mundane and rarely contested fact of history. As Bart Ehrman, an agnostic scholar who is widely regarded as an expert on New Testament documents, writes, “The view that Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet.”When skeptics ask, “Is there evidence for Jesus?” they usually mean “Is th …

“She was the victim of a vicious, shrewdly sustained process of character assassination from the moment she set foot in France, a sinister, carefully orchestrated campaign of calumny, which tried in particular to destroy her moral reputation. An intellectual climate fanatically hostile to traditional monarchy, and sheer human jealously, exploited the xenophobic hatred of her as an Austrian and her own aloofness to make her the scapegoat for all French ills."Perhaps the most damning p …

From the beginning of the Church, people have wondered what it is. A big part of St. Paul’s work, as reflected in his letters to the early churches, is clarifying what the Church is and is not. To the Galatians, Paul had to explain that belonging to the Church does not require first becoming Jewish. But he also needed to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with coming into Christianity from Judaism! To the Philippians, he explained that the Church is not a place of self-fulfil …

Among all the dozens of stigmatists who have been declared saint or blessed, the stigmata of scourging appears to be the rarest of the stigmatic injuries.  St. Colette of Corbie (1381-1447) is principally remembered as one of the most important influences of the Poor Clares, as she established many new convents and reformed existing ones. But she also had a tremendous devotion to the passion of Christ, and would commonly go into ecstasies focused on it. During one such ecstasy, Colette&rsq …

Many years ago, as a graduate student, I spent a summer with a Christian Palestinian family in Bethlehem. It was my first visit to the Holy Land, and, as it does for many new pilgrims, it rocked my world.One thing struck me immediately. Throughout the Holy Land, you can see the word hic inscribed in various locations, like churches and alleyways. This simple word, Latin for “here,” was written as a reminder to the believer that the events recorded in the Gospels all happened in …