Month: October 2025

A 1446 Word Interview with the Papal Ninja

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Editor’s Note: Matthew Chicoine interviewed Sean Bryan via phone call on September 12th, 2025. Some of the questions/answers have been rearranged, edited, and paraphrased to provide the best reader experience without losing any integrity of the answers given.

How did your journey of faith lead you to embrace the mission of being the “Papal Ninja”?

Providence throughout my whole life, I have always been athletic. I did gymnastics through college. When I was with the Salesians, I was doing athletics through youth ministry work. After my time with the Salesians, I continued to do gymnastics. I saw one of my former teammates from when I was on the gymnastics team at Cal Berkeley participate on the show. I found a Ninja gym in my area. I found the culture of Ninja Warrior inspiring and I found a community there. Some of the veterans took me under their wing and gave me advice. 

When I was developing my story, they told me that people want to hear about you being Catholic. So I took on the name Papal Ninja. In the talks that I give for the youth, I tell them that they are papal ninjas too. Ninjas are individuals who are skilled in training and following the master. And papal refers to the Vicar of Christ. So anyone who is Catholic is technically a papal ninja following the Master of Christ.

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Saint Jude the Apostle: Patron of the Impossible and Apostle of the Heart

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Each year on October 28, the Church honors two lesser-known Apostles, Simon the Zealot and Jude Thaddeus. Their names might not appear as often in Scripture as Peter or John, yet their quiet faith continues to echo across centuries, especially in moments when life feels impossible.

For many Catholics, Saint Jude has become a spiritual companion in times of desperation. He’s the Apostle you call on when all the stoplights turn red, the deadlines loom, and hope seems just out of reach. I’ve learned that firsthand.

The Apostle with Many Names

The Gospels refer to him in several ways: “Jude Thaddeus,” “Judas the son of James,” and sometimes “Thaddaeus” alone. In his own short New Testament letter, he simply calls himself “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.”

Pope Benedict XVI reflected on this humble introduction, noting that Jude’s identity wasn’t found in his status as an Apostle but in his relationships—to Christ, to his brother, and to the faith. He was, in every sense, a man of communion.

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From the Court to the Cross: The Power of Humble Love   

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Guest Post by: David Tonaszuck

A reflection on Luke 18:9-14 

Dear Friends in Christ, 

Imagine you’re watching high school basketball tryouts. The gym’s humming with energy and nerves. Two players stand out for totally different reasons. 

First, there’s Jake. He’s confident—maybe overconfident. He’s telling everyone how many points he scored last year, how hard he trains, how much better he is than the other guys. When he makes a shot, he celebrates; when someone else messes up, he rolls his eyes. He’s talented, no question. But it’s obvious who’s at the center of Jake’s universe: Jake. 

Then there’s Marcus. Marcus isn’t flashy. He fumbles sometimes, and sometimes he misses easy shots. But when he trips, he picks himself up and keeps hustling. When someone passes him the ball, you can hear him whisper thanks. When the coach gives feedback, Marcus listens—not defensively, but with genuine openness. He doesn’t act like he’s above anyone else, but you can tell he loves the game and the people around him. 

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Saturday Chores and the Spiritual Life: How Cleaning Teaches Us to Prepare Our Souls

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Saturday mornings in our home tend to begin with the whir of vacuum cleaners, the lemony scent of Murphy’s wood soap , and the predictable chorus of “Who left this here?” from one of our kids. This week, our mission was clear: clean the house before my brother’s visit. The incentive? A mix of familial pride, the joy of welcoming someone we love, and a few mystery bribes still to be determined.

Our four kids dove into the task with surprising enthusiasm. My oldest, who inherited my love for organization and task completion, made the garage his domain. I’d casually mentioned earlier in the week that we should clean it out, and apparently that seed took root. He was unstoppable, sorting tools, sweeping corners, and directing his siblings like a foreman at a holy construction site.

Watching my children work, I felt a quiet joy. Not just because the garage was finally walkable, but because I glimpsed something deeper at work: a desire to prepare. There’s something profoundly human about that. When we love someone, we want to make ready a place for them.

That, in a nutshell, is the spiritual life.

Preparation as a Form of Love

We often think of preparation as drudgery, checking boxes before the “real thing” begins. But in the Christian life, preparation is part of the encounter. The work of getting ready disposes our souls to receive grace. It’s the difference between rushing through confession before Easter and slowly, intentionally, letting God sweep through the clutter of our hearts.

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Saint John Bosco: Teacher of the Two Pillars

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In the autumn of 1873, Saint John Bosco shared a vision with his spiritual director that would crystallize the spiritual wisdom of his entire life’s work. In this dream, he beheld the Church as a mighty ship besieged by enemy vessels bent on her destruction. Yet amid the chaos and bombardment, two towering columns rose from the sea, steadfast and unshakeable. One was crowned with a statue of the Immaculate Virgin, bearing the inscription “Help of Christians.” The other, taller and more enduring still, supported a Eucharistic Host and proclaimed “Salvation of believers.” The Pope, steering the flagship through the storm, safely moored the Church to these two columns. At that moment, all enmity dissolved.

For Bosco, this vision was no mere spiritual fantasy. It was the culmination of decades spent educating poor and neglected youth. It revealed the deepest conviction of his pedagogical mission: that the salvation and flourishing of souls rests entirely upon devotion to Mary and frequent reception of the Eucharist. To understand Saint John Bosco as a teacher is to understand him as a herald of these two pillars, and to grasp their central importance for Catholic life today.

The Foundation: Reason, Religion, and Love

Don Bosco’s approach to education, which he termed the “Preventive System,” stands in sharp contrast to the harsh disciplinary methods of his era. Where other educators relied on fear, punishment, and distance, Bosco built his entire method on a trinomial foundation: reason, religion, and love. This was not mere sentimentality. It was a profound theological conviction about the nature of the human person and the work of formation.

The Preventive System sought to prevent faults rather than punish them after the fact. Bosco believed that young people, prone to fickleness and distraction, often stumbled not from malice but from momentary forgetfulness or weakness. A strict system of repression might stop disorder, but it could never transform hearts. It would breed resentment, bitterness, and revenge—scars that lasted into adulthood. Instead, Bosco positioned educators as loving fathers who would walk alongside their charges, offering counsel, warning them of dangers ahead, and drawing them toward goodness through affection and trust.

The genius of Bosco’s method lay in its recognition that education is fundamentally a work of the heart. An educator must first be loved before he can be respected. He must be present, not as a distant authority, but as a benefactor invested in each student’s welfare. This way, the educator becomes a cherished guide, whose words and counsel stay with the student long after school ends.

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An 1871 Word Interview about The Scriptorium Project

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Editor’s Note: Matthew Chicoine interviewed D.P. Curtin, founder of The Scriptorium Project , via email in October 2025. Some of the questions/answers have been rearranged, edited, and paraphrased to provide the best reader experience without losing any integrity of the answers given.

The Scriptorium Project seeks to make rare texts from Christian antiquity accessible for the first time in English. What inspired you to begin this work, and why is it important for the Church today?

In short: a really bad orientation group in college. My first day at Villanova involved an overly perky student orientation leader. After one too many fun facts and ice-breakers, I asked to use the bathroom. I never came back. Instead, I went to the library, where by chance I discovered the catalogue of the Jesuit Father Jacques Migne. That would prove to be providential. For the unfamiliar, Fr. Migne compiled many significant works of the Greek and Latin church into large books called “Patrologias” during the 19th century. They were massive works, but they obviously struggle with being relevant now as the use of Greek and Latin has fallen out of favor.

When I discovered them at Villanova, they were in bad shape. Many of the works of the Scriptorium Project are drawn from Migne’s collected texts. In terms of their importance to the modern church, you might say that the Scriptorium Project is a primary source movement. Rather than relying on commentary or later works about saints and church councils, these are the original texts themselves, laid bare in English so that everyone has access to them. 

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