“What is more pleasing than a psalm,” asks St. Ambrose, the fourth-century Archbishop of Milan (“Explanations of the Psalms,” Liturgy of the Hours, III: 347-8)?
We live in a disengaged world of our own making. Buried in digital gadgets, surrounded by noise, we are restless, easily bored, easily distracted—but free. We seek respite and escape from a gripping ennui. Is this all there is? Teilhard de Chardin reflects: “It is a terrifying thing to have been born; I mean, to...
The Fortnight for Freedom begins on June 21. For the secondtime in as many years, prayers and activities will seek to educate Americansabout current challenges to religious liberty.
One such contest surrounds calls for redefining marriage toinclude homosexual unions. With dimensions that illuminate the broader subjectof sexuality in contemporary culture, the latest push to legalize gay“marriage” presents an opportunity in the days ahead to discuss specificallywhat the Catholic Church...
Dedicated to Lee and Margaret Matherne
There is one thing we all long for: to love and to be loved. There is one thing that we all dread: suffering. The title of this article should therefore puzzle its readers. It seems to imply some sort of contradiction. My purpose is to show that it is one of the many enlightening paradoxes of Christianity: on this earth, the two are deeply and inevitably linked.
Until it starts loving the human heart hibernates. This affective response (sanctioned...
On Father’s Day nine years ago, my son Dominic was born. Most of the world knows Dominic as the disabled boy Pope Francis embraced this past Easter Sunday while he was touring St. Peter’s Square.
What I didn’t know when Dominic was born in the early morning hours of Father’s Day, 2004, in what the medical profession calls a "crash" (emergency) C-section, but what I know now, is how the birth of this boy would change my entire outlook on and experience of fatherhood. His birth...
I once attended an annual father-daughter dance with my two daughters at a local school. I always appreciate such events because it reminds me just how important fathers are to their daughters. I got to talking to another dad that I’ve known for five years or so. He’s married with two children. Within the last two or three years him and his wife have been more involved in parish ministries. To be sure, the two of them have taken their faith more seriously. But he is a traveling man and...
Is Pope Francis our first anticlerical pope? Technically speaking, he isn't – his two predecessors also were more or less critical of clericalism – but he is well on his way to being the most outspoken one.
Consider a widely circulated quote from a 2011 interview he gave while he was still Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. In case you haven't seen it or have forgotten it, the key passage goes like this:
"As I have said before, there is a problem: the temptation to clericalism. We...
Greetings from San Diego, where I have joined with my brother bishops from across the country for our annual Spring meeting. I spent last evening catching up on the news from back home, and came across a few items I’d like to share.
Yesterday, the online edition of “USA Today” ran an op-ed column from me, as president of the USCCB, expressing our support for the immigration reform bill now before the U.S. Senate. Let me share an excerpt with you:
"Immigration reform is an issue close...
Like mothers, fathers come in all different shapes, sizes, and personalities. The most basic and universal understanding of father is one of begetting children. A father is much more than a begetter. Father is not a name but a relation and a presence. Steve is a person before becoming Paul’s father. Fatherhood is added on to his personhood.
Father-Roles
Recall some father-roles in movies and in television. Take for example the role of Stanley Banks (“Pops”) in “Father of the...
"Beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend for the hearts of men."
– Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
"Late have I loved thee, Beauty so old and so new; late have I loved thee. Lo, you were within, but I was outside, seeking there for you, and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong – I, misshapen. You were with me, but I was not with you. They held me back far from you, those things which would have no being, were they not in you."
– Augustine, The...
Rosaries seem so simple to the senses, initially. Eyes find spheres in a circle linked to additional spheres and a crucifix. Ears hear what sounds like chanting. Mouths profess a collection of beliefs at the start, repeat the same three (maybe four) prayers in five successive and identical cycles, and finally hail an unseen queen at the end. Hands touch the spheres to mark progression.
Sensory experiences can comfort even the most faithless heart. The Rosary is no different in that...
