Science and Faith Are Not Mutually Incompatible

Albert Einstein honored Georges Lemaitre, the priest, physicist and mathematician whose Big Bang Theory is now the scientifically accepted origin of the universe.

March 11, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

In 2016, an issue of the former Catholic newspaper Our Sunday Visitor profiled some eye-opening research in an article entitled “Young People Are Leaving the Faith: Here’s Why” (August 27, 2016). It was an analysis of two national studies conducted by The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) to provide insight into the reasons why a third of “millennials” who were raised Catholic reject the faith of their parents as young adults.

In the CARA studies, “Millennials” are defined as those born in 1982 or later. The majority of the young adults who responded with comments on the research indicated that they left their faith for science, concluding that Catholicism cannot be reconciled with science at the high school and university level. They report finding little in the Catholic presentation of faith that challenges that view. The OSV  summary included a sampling of the responses behind their decisions:

“As I learn more about the world around me and understand things that I once did not, I find the thought of an all-powerful being to be less and less believable.”

“Catholic beliefs aren’t based on fact… nothing can be disproved, but it certainly shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

“I realized that religion is in complete contradiction with the rational and scientific world, and to continue to subscribe to a religion would be hypocritical.”

“As I started to enjoy math and science more, I realized the discrepancy between religion and science… Catholicism especially did seem to clash fairly well.”

“[Faith] no longer fits into what I understand of the universe.”

These responses reflect a pattern of thought familiar to many parents of young adult Catholics and others concerned about the dismal conclusions of the CARA research. This is also one of the most common pleas I hear on a global scale from parents and grandparents and other readers of this blog.

I must seem to be an enigma to those who have left our faith or are pondering doing so. Judging from my posts of the last ten years, though it was never intended to be so, I seem to devote almost equal time to both faith and science. For example, we have recently collected in one place a number of posts dedicated to the understanding of Sacred Scripture. We called this collection, “The Bible Speaks.” Apparently it speaks quite loudly. There are presently some 43 titles in that collection, and some have broken records among the readership of this blog.

But there is a similar phenomenon that has been taking place in more recent years. I have also written several posts about science and especially the sciences of cosmology, astronomy and particle physics. One of my friends here who comes to the library where I work has asked me for copies of posts over the last few years. He recently complained of feeling a sense of whiplash, bouncing between science and religion, but he said he finds both to be fascinating. To demonstrate this phenomenon one recent post has broken all records in numbers of readers and especially in numbers of readers who come to it again and again, and who share it. That post is “Did Stephen Hawking Sacrifice God on the Altar of Science?” It seems that many people believed that he did, but I have made a case for the opposite. What strikes me most about that post is the unfathomable number of educational institutions of higher learning that are also sharing it and recommending it.

The same has held true for another recent post that blends principles of both science and faith entitled “The Higgs Boson God Particle: All Things Visible and Invisible.” Our Editor has observed and commented on the high number of academic institutions that have also been visiting religious titles on this blog. Some of these institutions are dedicated to scientific research, and yet here they are suddenly delving into the mysteries of Catholic faith. And yet no one is denouncing anything. They seem to come here to observe and to learn, not to refute.

True Believers

I have some firsthand experience with the challenging questions posed by science for the faith of younger Catholics. A decade ago at one university, the son of a reader of this blog, a science major, sent me a letter filled with questions. The previous summer, his mother had emailed him with a link to one of my forays into the science of cosmology entitled, “Science and Faith and the Big Bang Theory of Creation.” In his letter to me the student wrote that he pretty much just dismissed the post as irrelevant without having read it. He read his mother’s email, but didn’t bother clicking on the link until two months later. The student wrote that he grew up in a devout family that accepted Catholic teachings about the world and universe without question. He attended Catholic schools until switching to a public high school, then abandoned his faith in adolescence because his interest in science made faith seem irrelevant.

He believed, or rather was led to believe, that science and religion are mutually incompatible, unable to coexist in a person of science. “The bias fed to me in academia,” he wrote in a much later letter, “was that science is the new source of all faith, and to be taken seriously as a scientist requires setting aside the faith of my parents in this new world order.” And thus ended his identity as a Catholic. It is a troubling story given that for every convert entering the Catholic faith in America in recent years, more than six others left.

The exit of millennials is not at all for the reasons typically put forward by older Catholics who become disenchanted with their Church. In the CARA study, Catholic scandal and the Latin Mass are barely touched upon as influential reasons. And the millennials are not leaving to embrace some other faith. They now constitute the fastest growing expression of religious belief in America — the “Nones,” who self-identify with no religious affiliation at all. A decade ago in “A Crisis of Faith, Not of Worship,” a soul-stirring post at The Catholic Thing, (Aug. 24, 2016) Father Mark A. Pilon made this point well:

“The real underlying problem is simple: it’s a massive loss of faith… About thirty years ago, a reliable survey revealed that only about 30 percent of Catholics believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist any longer. Why didn’t the bishops call an emergency meeting to reflect on this loss of faith, as they did in 2002 to deal with sexual abuse? … The highest priority has to be this basic question: What caused this massive loss of faith, and how do we work to resurrect that lost faith?”

These are very relevant questions, but some have already begun to change. In early 2025 I wrote a post entitled “On the Great Biblical Adventure, the Truth Will Make You Free.” Something happened over the preceding year that signaled a great cultural change toward openness to religion and especially biblical studies. Book publishers have observed that Bible sales greatly increased by double digits toward the end of 2024. A lot of factors were proposed as contributing to this, including the election of 2024, the assassination attempts on the leading U.S. presidential candidate at that time, and later the assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. These were inflection points causing broad swaths of America and elsewhere in the free world to pause and reassess where we are and where we are going. The biblical interest and its resulting growth of interest in faith also has continued to this day. For those who have suggested that Catholic leaders need to take advantage of this trend, a good start would be to moderate “climate change” as an example of our highest priority while abandoning other priorities, such as respect for life. Our hierarchy might also want to reconsider its revulsion for the Traditional Latin Mass and for those who find spiritual comfort in it, many of whom are younger Catholics. And a prohibition against kneeling to receive the True Presence of Christ is simply mind-boggling for true believers. We cannot welcome back a generation of young believers by browbeating them to abandon the evidence for their belief.

The Folly of Leaving Faith Behind for Science

The answer to the suspected disconnect between science and faith is not as simple as seeking relevancy by replacing faith with science. True believers in both find not only “common ground” but windows to the universe that will leave the believer in awe. The student who had been writing to me, for example, is now on his way back. As time wore on, his mother asked him what he thought about the post she sent him. He scurried to find “Science and Faith and the Big Bang Theory of Creation” buried in his inbox, and then he actually read it.

He later wrote that he was “bowled over” by it, and that it turned on its head the entire scientific orthodoxy that had been fed to him claiming that only freedom from religion could legitimately engage him with the world of science. Science with a bias against faith experience prevented him from seeing the bigger picture.

This student had many questions. First and foremost among them was this: “How is it that you, a person obviously well versed in science, could endure such injustice and still also believe in God?” It was a good question, but the answer requires something other than science’s doubts about faith. A better beginning question was the one I posed in return: “How is it that you, a science major in an American university, never before heard or read that the scientist now considered to be the Father of The Big Bang and Modern Cosmology was a Belgian astrophysicist who was also a Catholic priest?”

That question generated several letters over the last two years, suggesting BTSW posts that he has read and reread and shown to other science majors at his school. Before I get into that, however, I want to describe another development that I read some years ago by Beckie Strum in The Wall Street Journal: “U.S. Loses Top School Ranking to U.K.’s Oxford” (WSJ, Sept. 22, 2016).

For the first time, a university outside the United States was ranked the best university in the world, unseating the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as number one. The U.K.’s Oxford University, the oldest college in the English speaking world, founded in the year 1096, took the top spot in the World University Rankings. Oxford knocked CalTech down to second place, MIT to fifth, and Harvard to sixth bin 2016. At this writing, Oxford has retained that place of primacy for a decade.

Oxford is also host to something missing from more narrowly focused American universities. Oxford is home to a research center called the Ian Ramsey Center for Science & Religion. Its Research Director at the time was Father Andrew Pinsent, a Catholic priest and particle physicist who was formerly on the science team at CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research.

Father Andrew Pinsent holds a Ph.D. in particle physics from Oxford, a Ph.D. in philosophy from St. Louis University, and advanced degrees in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is a member of the United Kingdom Institute of Physics and the Vatican Conference for Scientists, and presently serves on the faculty and formation staff of a major U.S. seminary.

Father Pinsent has also been a guest writer at this blog. His post, “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang” was the final leverage that my university friend and correspondent needed to accept the fact that something essential has been missing from his education and exposure in both science and religion. The fact that his science education did not include the story of Georges Lemaitre — the astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and Catholic priest who changed the mind of Albert Einstein on the nature and origin of the universe — told him that it was science, and not faith, that deprived him of a wider world view.

This is a story that has been covered and uncovered at Beyond These Stone Walls  in a series of science posts that has run parallel to our collection on Sacred Scripture. Reading these, and especially exploring Father Pinsent’s work, has opened my friend’s eyes as a young Catholic scientist, but it was a part of Father Andrew Pinsent’s guest post that more fully opened my own eyes when he wrote:

“What is to be done to help raise the profile of people like Fr Georges Lemaitre? Among Catholics with some kind of popular outreach, Fr Gordon MacRae, through his widely-read blog Beyond These Stone Walls, has done more than almost anyone I know in recent years to draw attention to Fr Lemaitre. Inspired in part by Fr Gordon’s work, my colleagues and I in England have put together a series of posters called the “Catholic Knowledge Network.”

— Fr Andrew Pinsent, “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang”

I think I have come to understand Father Georges Lemaitre’s science whose footprint in the history of modern cosmology is parallel to that of Albert Einstein. They were colleagues who became friends, primarily through Einstein’s great respect for Fr Lemaitre’s gifted mathematical and scientific mind. After a lecture about his theory of relativity at a European university in the 1930s, Einstein was approached by a science writer who asked him whether he thought anyone in the audience really comprehended his work. Einstein’s simple answer was “Lemaitre, certainly. As for the rest…”

The scientific dogma of the age was that the universe was static, eternal, and unchanging. Einstein also embraced this view, but it dismissed the beliefs of established religion that the universe was created from nothing.

However, Georges Lemaitre and Russian mathematician Aleksander Friedmann had more faith in Einstein’s mathematics than other scientists of their time. At first, Einstein payed little attention when they used his own equations to conclude that the universe is not static but expanding, and its rate of expansion is increasing when all established science said the opposite.

It was the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble (in whose honor the Hubble Space Telescope is named) who in 1929 discovered physical evidence that Lemaitre is right, that the universe is in fact expanding. Two years later in 1931, Father Georges Lemaitre concluded that the universe began “On a day without yesterday,” 13.8 billion years ago, with the explosion of a primordial atom from which space, time, and matter were created.

The idea was ridiculed, and “The Big Bang” was a pejorative term some scientists used to taunt the physicist priest. But he was right, and he turned science on its head with this revelation that has since been demonstrated with the discovery of cosmic background radiation emanating from The Big Bang.

Einstein, who first disagreed, ended up applauding the idea as “The most beautiful explanation of creation I have ever heard.” It was a bigger bang for science than even Einstein realized. It took the language of mathematics to comprehend that it points to what faith always told us: a universe arising out of nothing.

I think I finally came to some rudimentary understanding of the science behind this through the language of mathematics. For this I owe thanks to Robyn Arianrhod, and her book, Einstein’s Heroes: Imagining the World Through the Language of Mathematics (Oxford University Press 2005):

“In 1932, Lemaitre sowed the seeds of the Big Bang theory when he suggested that the universe had started as an explosion of a ‘primeval atom’ that… continued expanding from that explosive beginning. Some of the world’s most ancient creation myths have also imagined the world exploding from some sort of cosmic seed…”

“In 1970, English physicists Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose showed that Einstein’s equations predicted the universe had expanded not from a tiny piece of matter located in an otherwise empty cosmos, but from a single point in four-dimensional spacetime. This meant that the Big Bang was not an ordinary explosion which took place at a specific three-dimensional location at a given time on the cosmic stage, but that Space and time themselves were actually created in the explosion, along with all matter and energy. Before this point … there was no time and no space. No geometry, no matter, nothing. The universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.”

— Einstein’s Heroes, p. 187

“The universe simply appeared out of nowhere. Out of nothing.” Take a moment to ponder that conclusion of science and it will sound a lot like a tenet of faith. Science, mathematics, and faith all open a window to the universe onto the same panoramic vista. And the awe this truth evokes is at one and the same time the comprehension of science and the inspiration of faith.

And as for my student-friend’s first question about the mystery of suffering in the light of faith, I can only gather up some prescientific humility to echo God against the protest of Job:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?… Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?”

— Job 38: 4, 31

+ + +

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post.

You might also like these other posts from Beyond These Stone Walls about the great adventure of science and faith:

On the Great Biblical Adventure, the Truth Will Make You Free

Science and Faith and the Big Bang Theory of Creation

The Higgs Boson God Particle: All Things Visible and Invisible

Did Stephen Hawking Sacrifice God on the Altar of Science?

The James Webb Space Telescope and an Encore from Hubble

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence

A new Manual for Eucharistic Adoration from the Poor Clares and Saint Benedict Press has found a captive audience in Fr Gordon MacRae as he marks 34 years of priesthood.

June 1, 2016 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“You have GOT to be joking!” That was my first reaction. In early April this year, I was summoned to a prison office to sign for “personal property.” I had no idea what it could be. I hadn’t ordered anything recently from the place where we in prison must purchase shoes, clothing, toiletries. So it had to be a book, but receiving books here also requires that I know in advance that the book is coming. I knew of nothing.

I signed for the mysterious item and returned to my cell where I sat down on a concrete stump — the same one I am typing upon at this moment. “You have GOT to be joking’” I said to myself as I perused the book in my hand and its cover letter. It was from Christian Tappe, Director of Marketing at Saint Benedict Press in Charlotte, North Carolina. The letter began:

“I am pleased to enclose this review copy of TAN Books’ Manual for Eucharistic Adoration… written by the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. If you would like more information, or to schedule an interview…”

I was more bewildered than ever. It was the fourth time in the last year that a Catholic publisher has sent me a book to review on These Stone Walls. Are people actually reading TSW? But this particular book was a complete mystery. First off, I should not have received it at all. The shipment and cover letter were addressed to “Father” Gordon MacRae with no prison number (67546) as required on anything sent to me. In the ordinary course, either the use of a title or the absence of a number would cause the book to be rejected and returned to sender without my even knowing about it. But here it was, in my hand nonetheless.

My first impulse was to toss the book aside as useless, at least for me. My apologies to the Poor Clares who so lovingly wrote it, and to the publisher who so kindly sent it to me. I am a slow learner, so the nicely adorned book sat unopened in a corner of my cell for a month. I was simply too caught up in the glaring irony of it. There is no True Presence here to adore. There is only the present absence.

To make matters worse, and more mysterious, on the same day I received the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration  I learned from lawyers that we had lost yet another effort at appeal of my wrongful conviction and imprisonment. It took one full year for the First Circuit Court of Appeals to notify us that they will not review an earlier decision to dismiss my appeal with no hearing on its merits or evidence. This has made the road to justice ever steeper and more treacherous. I am told that others will be taking this up to write about it.

In the Nighttime

So it was in the dim and murky light of continued injustice that I tossed aside the good sisters’ book about Eucharistic Adoration, and shrugged it off. But appearances can be deceiving, and you never know what apparently “useless” thing might have a profound influence on your view of the world — not only the world you live in, but the world that lives in you. Who you are is in large part a collision of these two worlds, and a person of faith risks great loss if the interior life is forfeited to live only in that other, more calamitous world. We have to live in and with both worlds, and we have to keep them in balance.

One day recently, I saw a vocation ad in Our Sunday Visitor for a community of sisters. The ad described them as a “monastic, cloistered and contemplative community,” and then added, “Find us on Facebook!” That, to me, seemed a collision of two worlds, but it works if the sisters can reflect in the latter world the light that shines in the former.

On June 5th I mark thirty-four years of priesthood. Twenty-two of them have been in a place where presence before the Blessed Sacrament is unavailable and simply impossible. It can only be imagined. It has been a long time since I wrote of the power of the True Presence in a place where it seems absent. In 2010 I wrote a post entitled “The Sacrifice of the Mass” (Part I and Part II), and it seemed a pivotal point not only for These Stone Walls, but for my life as a priest in extraordinary circumstances.

The two-part post described the utter deprivation of something many readers simply took for granted in their world. For my first seven years in this prison, Mass was unavailable to me, and without it I found myself growing ever more distant from my life as a priest. That post described the extreme efforts it took to gain the ability to offer Mass, beginning with what I today call a “spiritual offering.”

It wasn’t what you might think. It was along the lines of a “Spiritual Communion,” and I got the idea from reading Father Walter Ciszek’s book, He Leadeth Me. During twenty years in a Siberian prison accused of being a Vatican spy, Father Ciszek could only imagine the Mass. Sitting in the pitch dark at night on his bunk, he began to recite The Roman Canon in his mind, and to imagine himself present before the Blessed Sacrament. After reading this, I began to do the same, and my post, “The Sacrifice of the Mass” evolved from that. After I wrote that two-part post, a TSW reader sent me a letter, an excerpt of which follows:

“I cannot imagine what sustains your identity as a priest in that prison. There is nothing in that environment that in any way supports your priesthood. You are not ever in the company of other priests. Your diocese and fellow priests have cast you off. You see yourself each day in the mirror wearing the uniform of a prisoner, and you know in your mind, heart and soul that there has been no justice in your being forced to wear this role.

“And yet when I read your writings, your priesthood is always at the forefront, the part of you that shines the brightest, that speaks the loudest, that sustains not only you but apparently many of those around you in that place. Can you explain, Father MacRae, what exactly allows you to retain a priestly identity?”

Come Be My Light

I do not have an answer for this. After I wrote my recent post, “Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Pentecost Illumines the Night,” some readers wrote in comments that they are moved by my faith. It is not so obvious. At least, it is not obvious to me. I struggle with faith on a daily basis, and I found a kindred spirit in Saint Mother Teresa when I learned that she struggled as well. The truth is that it was the Poor Clares’ Manual of Eucharistic Adoration that caused me to look more deeply into the faith life of soon-to-be Saint Mother Teresa. The Manual includes an admonition from her, and it was this quote that prompted me to write “Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Pentecost Illumines the Night.”

“The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time you will spend on earth. Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in heaven, and will help bring about everlasting peace on earth.”

Manual, p. 111

It was from writing that post that I fathomed the necessity of Eucharistic Adoration. It is not for us to be present to Him. It is for Him to be present to us in a way that “will deepen your union with Him.” That is the very purpose of the interior life, that other world that we must balance with our other foot in this world.

While writing my Pentecost post, I learned of the spiritual deprivation often experienced by Mother Teresa, but that deprivation never seemed able to diminish her commitment to serve the poor. Rather, the opposite happened. It was her service to the poor that brought her to the Paschal Mystery and kept her there, ever providing the beckoning of Christ that compelled her spiritual life. Mother Teresa sought union with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and brought Christ from there to the poor. It was never the other way around.

Eucharistic Adoration

So how could I, as a priest wrongly imprisoned for decades, possibly bring my interior life into this world where the True Presence is so overshadowed by the present absence? No matter what the source of the sense of emptiness is in your life, if you are reading this you know what I mean by “the present absence.” That is why God allowed Mother Teresa and others among our patron saints to suffer spiritual deprivation, and to endure it. It was so that we might emulate them as they serve as beacons in spiritual darkness. Their witness inspires hope in the dark, not just our rescue from it.

As has happened on so many nights in prison, I awoke one night recently, filled with an anxiety that has no name. It’s not related to anything I can identify. It’s just there, a natural side effect of the stifling nature of an American prison. I have a little battery-powered book light purchased from the same prison vendor from which we purchase clothing and other needs. Waking often in the night, I have gotten hundreds of times my money’s worth from that small light.

I switched on the light in that anxious night, and reached for my glasses and a book on a small shelf at the end of my iron bunk. I thought I had grabbed another book, but my hand landed on the previously untouched Manual for Eucharistic Adoration by the Poor Clares. It has a ribbon page marker so I opened to the ribbon and was struck by this admonition from Saint John Vianney, the Curé of Ars and the patron saint of priests:

“When you awake in the night, transport yourself quickly in spirit before the tabernacle, saying, ‘Behold, my God, I come to adore you, to praise, thank, and love you, and to keep you company with the angels.’”

Manual, p. 116

So that night I tried to imagine a time and a place in which being before the Blessed Sacrament was most meaningful to me. Sadly, it was long ago. It wasn’t during my years as a parish priest when time and again I passed by the sanctuary and tabernacle barely noticing, blindly going from one pastoral task to another, not even genuflecting, not even knowing that I failed to bring Christ with me because I failed to stop and enter into His Presence. At some point in my life as a priest, this world collided with that one, and demolished it. This has been the real priesthood scandal. Action somehow overshadowed contemplation to our priestly peril.

It was only years later, after year upon year of absence, that I became aware of this deprivation of the Presence of God. So in that night of prison anxiety my mind fled down the nights and down the days, past the parishes where I served, and the seminary I attended, to a Benedictine Abbey just twenty miles from this prison. The journey in my mind took me to 1977. I was a Capuchin then, attending school at Saint Anselm College, and my most special place on campus was a tiny alcove built into the Abbey Church.

There, before a magnificent granite tabernacle, I spent many hours in the Presence of the Lord. Last year, a reader found a photograph of the interior of the Saint Anselm Abbey Church and printed it for me. It is the opening graphic for this post. Then our Missionary of Mercy Friend, Father George David Byers, found a photo of the Blessed Sacrament alcove to the right of the main sanctuary. This is where I went back then, before the world shook lose the Holy Longing to be in His Presence. This is where I go now when I awaken in the night. Sometimes, now, I don’t think I awaken with anxiety and then go there. I think I now awaken just to go there.

In just a few months, These Stone Walls will mark seven years in publication, just one third the time that I have been in this prison. During that seven years, many readers have sent me letters and comments informing me that they have devoted an hour before the Blessed Sacrament to be in His Presence in my stead. You have bestowed upon me a most priceless gift, and for this I have much gratitude.

Now the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, along with author Paul Thigpen and Saint Benedict Press, have provided a road map to the interior life, and a tool to converse with the Living Christ among us. I most highly recommend the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration and, if you are not there already, the restoration of the Lord’s Presence in your interior life.

I humbly thank you for thirty-four years of priesthood, even out here on the dark peripheries from which I write. Without you, I might have forgotten how to be a priest, and might today be just a prisoner. There are two kneelers before the Blessed Sacrament at Saint Anselm Abbey Church in Manchester, New Hampshire. Some night when anxiety awakens you in the dark, join me there. I’ll have the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration in my hands.