At about this time last year, I bumped into a friend at the laundromat. My mind was occupied with loaded laundry baskets and grumblings about my broken washing machine, but all that left me the moment my eyes met hers. She was in pain. Her newborn granddaughter, she told me, was gone. There were many … Read more
It’s sad to watch the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, and others attack Pope Benedict XVI. The story they have spun over the last week about his supposed mishandling of the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Rev. Joseph Murphy is risibly tenuous. These once-great newspapers trivialize themselves by publishing front-page stories making obvious their … Read more
To wrap up Lent in my class, “Finding the Face of God in the 20th Century,” I decided to concentrate students’ minds with a chorus of De Profundis. For two solid weeks, we have worked our way through literature of the Holocaust: Eli Wiesel, Victor Frankl, and convert Roy Schoeman. And the timing seems fitting: … Read more
It is an honor, of sorts, to have one’s Lenten penances externally imposed, and the whole Church has shared in this honor this year. Led by an ignorant and malicious attack in the New York Times, the liberal media internationally have been doing everything in their power to pin something — anything — on Pope … Read more
Recently, one of my readers wrote me: Here is a thought I’ve come back to after a time. Understand that I come at this as someone who has a bit of detachment from the idea of “love one’s country,” etc.; not of disdain, or despite of fellow man, but as one who can look hard … Read more
A red array of metaphors can be read in the wounds Christ received on the cross. The wounds can stand for our suffering and its sources, for our sins, for our vulnerabilities. They can be the cruel divisions torn in the Body of Christ, the Church, by heresy and history. Here are five small thoughts … Read more
There are only two facts Catholics need to know about the health-care bill to decide it must be repealed: The bill signed by the president includes federal funding for abortion, and the executive order does nothing to remove that funding. You don’t have to accept those facts on my authority — they have both … Read more
Call it the Lord Jim Effect. Like the hero of Joseph Conrad’s great novel, most of us go along most of the time thinking we know ourselves pretty well. Then something happens — a new experience, a new friend, a crisis — to open our eyes to a previously overlooked piece of the puzzle that … Read more
Some years ago, when speaking at a Catholic meeting, I said that the older rite of the Mass — what we then called the Tridentine rite — should be allowed more widely. I received a massive round of applause. At the time, I attended the Mass in that form fairly rarely; I just thought … Read more
This wasn’t what Bishop John Shelby Spong expected. Meeting in a posh ballroom of the glitzy, glass Marriott Hotel on Times Square, his audience was overwhelmingly white-skinned, white-haired, well-educated, and well-heeled. Nothing unusual there. But the questions? “All evidence suggests that pre-modern forms of Christianity are in better health than the small strands within Christianity … Read more
Yesterday afternoon, I spoke with Rev. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., on the phone from his Trinity Retreat Center in Larchmont, New York. Father Groeschel is recovering from a nasty cold, and we were speaking about other matters, but I couldn’t resist keeping him on the phone long enough to hear his thoughts on the health-care vote. … Read more
I belong to a relatively liberal congregation. For instance, the former pastor often applied St. Paul’s admonition about “freedom from the law” to Vatican “laws,” and asked for and received an exemption from the 2002 reemphasis by our bishop on kneeling after the Sanctus; and the present pastor, before the last election, mentioned in a … Read more
I once read an interview with Garrison Keillor in which he recounted going to a funeral. During the final prayers, the minister prayed for the deceased — “and for the next person here who is going to die.” He said that most of the guests were outraged and offended, but that he was moved and … Read more
“Don’t mess with nuns!” is a comment I’ve often heard over the years from cradle Catholics who were taught by them. The question now arises whether the undecided Catholic members of the House will be influenced by the 60 nuns — each a leader of her religious order — who signed a letter to members … Read more
“You’ve got to disintegrate the positive/then figure-skate about the negative/latch on to the pejorative/don’t mess with Sister In-Between.” If that’s what I’ve been singing for the past few columns, let me here squirm out of the blame and shunt it onto the subject matters I’ve dealt with: modern liturgy and terminal cancer. These two things, … Read more
One of the most mysterious rifts to have developed in the Christian world is that between those who pray to the saints in glory, or for the dead in Christ, and those who regard all this as utterly sinister. The rift is, of course, of extremely recent vintage, historically speaking. But it is deep … Read more
Many people these days are utopians of some variety. We think that we can get rid of the doom that stands over us by our own efforts. We can reorganize the polity, the family, education, or the economy so that things will be fine. We cannot accept that the issue has to do with ourselves, … Read more
The Catholic Health Association (CHA), a lobbying group for Catholic hospitals, has offered its support for the health-care bill as it currently stands. A statement from CHA president Sr. Carol Keehan expresses “concern on life issues” while underscoring the bill’s requirement that “a separate check” would have to be written for abortion services. Sister Keehan’s … Read more
Having grown up in some of the most liberal dioceses in California, there were many times when I had to endure some questionable thinking from some pretty high places. During my confirmation classes, I was subjected to a sermon by the then pastor (who later left the priesthood) about how Catholic couples should get married … Read more
The lobbying strategy of the Catholic bishops in the health-care debate thus far has been one of qualified support. We support the health-care reform bill, the bishops argue, as long as it does not contain abortion funding and provides conscience protection for health-care workers. The only help the bishops have received in their effort is … Read more