Year: 2010
Poll: 40% think Jesus will return by 2050
According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press/Smithsonian Magazine, 40% of Americans think Jesus will return to Earth by 2050. Telephone and online interviews were conducted with 1,546 adults this past April. The Daily Telegraph highlighted some of the other findings: By mid century, 71 per cent … Read more
Treasures in the catacombs
This time last year, the Vatican announced that it had discovered the oldest known icon of St. Paul in the catacombs of St. Tecla in Rome. Now, with the excavation of the tomb complete, they’ve discovered even more: Vatican archaeologists announced the image of Paul was not found in isolation, but was part of a … Read more
A Great Reckoning in a Little Room
There’s an objection that Protestants sometimes pose to Catholics: Why should I confess my sins to a man, when I could simply confess alone, in my room, to God? I’m sure there are all kinds of theological answers to this question. But I want to talk about what the presence of the “other person,” … Read more
The Proud State of California: Sponsored by Coke Zero©
As a long-time SoCal boy, I have watched my former state’s efforts to get off the economic schneid with considerable interest. Yet no amount of concern for the Golden State’s finances can make me think of this suggestion as a good idea: The California Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to begin researching the … Read more
Of Popes and Myths
Two new pope movies have been in the news this week: The first is the miniseries Under the Roman Sky, which focuses on the Church’s efforts under Pope Pius XII to aid Italian Jews during World War II. (Pope Benedict even attended a screening during Easter Week.) On the other end of the spectrum is … Read more
Victims of Sperm Donation
A recent study suggests what the Church could have told us: many children of sperm donors are disturbed and unhappy about their origins. They are, according to the study’s authors, suffering more than those who were adopted: hurting more, feeling more confused, and feeling more isolated from their families. (And our study found that the … Read more
Did Rev. Maciel sexually abuse his own son?
In a sadly unsurprising development, Jose Raul Gonzalez — who is allegedly one of the late Rev. Marcial Maciel’s illegitimate children — is claiming that his father molested him, as well. Jose Raul Gonzalez is seeking unspecified damages from the Legionaries of Christ in a lawsuit filed Monday in Connecticut. The international group has its … Read more
Last week, when the USCCB meeting in St. Petersburg coincided with the Catholic Health Association summit in Denver, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) ran several stories based on the testimonies of bishops attending the meeting. One of these stories got a great deal of attention. In it, Cardinal George castigated Sr. Keehan and the CHA for … Read more
Last week, when the USCCB meeting in St. Petersburg coincided with the Catholic Health Association summit in Denver, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) ran several stories based on the testimonies of bishops attending the meeting. One of these stories got a great deal of attention. In it, Cardinal George castigated Sr. Keehan and the CHA for … Read more
USCCB Official Disputes Cardinal George’s Criticism of Sr. Keehan and CHA
Last week, when the USCCB meeting in St. Petersburg coincided with the Catholic Health Association summit in Denver, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) ran several stories based on the testimonies of bishops attending the meeting. One of these stories got a great deal of attention. In it, Cardinal George castigated Sr. Keehan and the CHA for … Read more
Instruct the Ignorant
Back in 1971, when experiments in educational theory from pointy-headed intellectuals with no children were just starting to become all the rage, my fellow seventh graders and I were pulled out of what used to be called a “junior high” and packed off to a newly built experiment in education called Eisenhower Middle School. It … Read more
Men and Women
I took the year off from Father’s Day yesterday. For several years I’d been making a point, in my secular newspaper column, of writing something quite opposite to “feel-good” on the subject for the Sunday corresponding to this secular occasion. But glancing through the last couple of them, I thought, “That’s enough now: People are … Read more
Rwanda’s “universal health coverage”
You may have caught the New York Times piece last week that made much of the fact that even economically backward Rwanda has universal health care for its residents (unlike the heartless U.S.). Of course, the Times didn’t tell the whole story… Rwanda is so poor, its per capita income is about 1 percent that … Read more
The Mass, brought to you by Steve Jobs
How would you feel about an iPad on the altar? Thanks to Father Paolo Padrini — the developer of the iBreviary app for the iPhone, and now an app for the iPad that contains the entire Roman missal — we may be seeing it sometime soon: Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for … Read more
Christian Art, or Catholic Art?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the literature list and the categories I’d proposed, and I’ve come to a possible problem. See, in addition to what we’ve considered, there’s the whole problem of whether a work is: Christian in general (the Narnia series, Hind’s Feet on High Places), Catholic in particular (Lord of the Rings; The … Read more
Dads are now as stressed as moms
Men are still the major breadwinners in most families, but over the past few decades they’ve been expected to pull more weight at home. Wives now ask husbands to help around the house, share in child-care, and take leadership in areas other than career and finances. Men are finding this very stressful, according to an … Read more
To Be Adopted and To Adopt
When I was a young man, I always assumed parents loved their adopted children less, or at least differently, than those who genetically shared their flesh and blood. When I thought of myself as a father, it never occurred to me that I might one day love my adopted son as much as my biological … Read more
Sunday Comics: Uncle Harry’s Monkey’s Uncle, Part 10
Finally, the end! As always, these pages come from Catholic University’s online archive of Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact. Thanks for the laughs, Mr. Borth!
catholic with a small “c”
Goodness, BILL RUSSELL. I wasn’t even trying to upset anyone this time. In response to the music video of the Black Keys that I posted yesterday, you wrote: [I]t is beyond me to explain how a Catholic can consider loud and inarticulate rock percussionism to be music. I know there will be a laborious apologia, … Read more