One brisk, gray afternoon in London, I stood on a corner of Hyde Park with one of Frank Sheed’s old friends. “That’s the spot where he used to stand and preach,” she said with a wistful smile. Now an elderly widow, in the 1940s and 1950s she had worked in the London Catholic Evidence Guild … Read more
A reader recently sent me the following: Somebody I know wrote: This following is about abortion, but not “is it right or wrong” or “what does the Church teach,” but “How on earth would you deal with this pastorally?” A friend of mine has a married cousin. She and her husband had a healthy child … Read more
There’s plenty of buzz about the upcoming Anthony Hopkins film The Rite, which tells me that, somewhere, some publicist is going to keep his job. In my long years as an obscure Catholic journalist (is there any other kind?), I’ve gotten regular invites from PR companies that specialize in the “Christian market” to preview movies … Read more
The otherwise inexplicable cure of a French nun suffering from Parkinson’s disease was accepted in early January by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and Pope Benedict XVI as the confirming miracle that clears the way for the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday. John Paul II’s life … Read more
There is a curious and creepy fact I have noticed. It runs through things like Heinrich Himmler’s secret address given in October 1943 to SS troops carrying out the mass murder of Jews: I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, … Read more
We use so many metaphors for the Church: the Mystical Body of Christ, the People of God, the Ark of Salvation, the Bride of Christ. It’s all too easy for these vivid, poetic images to vanish from our minds, or ring bitterly hollow, when our confidence is shaken a bit by crises in our lives … Read more
Catholics once had an intuitive understanding of sacred space: To enter a church, especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, was to enter a different kind of environment, one of the hallmarks of which was a reverent silence. Some of that intuition remains. But much of it has been lost. Thus, within the past … Read more
When it comes to the death penalty, the Church teaches: Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, nonlethal … Read more
On New Year’s Day, three Church of England bishops were received into the Catholic Church. John Broadhurst, Keith Newton, and Andrew Burnham were joined by two retired bishops, David Silk and Edwin Barnes. All five had been ministering to those Anglican clergy and people who had stood apart from the liberal innovations in the Anglican … Read more
The year 2011 was born with the mark of Cain. Last week, Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan‘s largest state, Punjab, was gunned down by his own bodyguard, as the rest of his handpicked guards looked on. His killer, a Muslim fanatic, was greeted with showers of rose petals thrown by lawyers, and the victim’s … Read more
Back in the 1980s, I was involved with a group that produced a booklet looking at the future of the Church in Britain. We were assured — and repeated, without really thinking about it very deeply — that the downward trend of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and ordinations to the priesthood meant that there would be … Read more
Some time back, a reader wrote me with an interesting observation: You know, I just thought of something. I used to have a part-time job as a pest caller (phone surveys, mostly) and so I met a lot of Wiccans. (In the 90’s they congregated in phone & restaurant work, for some reason; don’t know … Read more
In my column last week, I asked the question, “Does the USCCB understand subsidiarity?” I received a variety of responses to that piece, the most interesting being from Msgr. Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian, who posted his thoughts on the website of the Archdiocese of Washington. Writing in a judicious and even-handed way … Read more
Who were the Wise Men? Where did they come from? Where did they go? We do not know. To make sense of the story, we must pay attention to its symbolism. Read in that way, we find that the story has five stages. The magi, whom we also call the wise men, saw; they searched; … Read more
As I make my weekly trek to Tampa International Airport, I merge onto I-275N in St. Petersburg and pass one of the largest homeless shelters in the area. Actually, “shelter” is overstated; it’s really an underpass supported by Catholic Charities, several community and church organizations, and individual volunteers. Because it gets a lot of traffic … Read more
In July and August of 1939, just before World War II began, Msgr. Ronald Knox gave five sermons on the “Our Father” — my edition of his Pastoral Sermons does not indicate where, probably at Oxford. Some 60 years later, Pope John Paul II asked us to devote the final year of the 20th century … Read more
Some years back, I was privileged to hear a tape of some original music recorded by several friends of mine. Singing on the tape were four women with well-trained voices and an astonishing gift for harmony. And though it was done on a shoestring (the whole thing was put together in someone’s basement), the music … Read more
The plan of House Republicans to read the Constitution aloud on January 6, the second day of the 112th Congress, has provoked jeering from the liberal media. Yet in the midst of the jeers came a revealing comment from Washington Post columnist and blogger Ezra Klein in an appearance on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown: The issue … Read more
For the modern informed Catholic, the miraculous and the holy do not necessarily go hand in hand. Among many of the devout, confusion often exists as to whether miracles are real, whether they are from God or from somewhere else, and whether questionable people are profiting from them. In our time, places like Medjugorje have … Read more
Whether right or wrong or a bit of both, thoughtful foreign views of the American scene have a lot to contribute to our national self-understanding. Clifford Longley, a veteran columnist for the London weekly the Tablet, a journal of “progressive” Catholic opinion, is no de Tocqueville, but he’s an intelligent man who, despite his ingrained … Read more