Despite the way my office usually looks, I’m something of a perfectionist. It’s not that I always see the glass half-empty, just that I think about what might make the glass and whatever else is in it a littler bit better. I know that it drives some of my friends nuts, but when I sit in the pew on Sunday morning I’m not judging how bad things are (actually my parish is really good, otherwise I wouldn’t be there); rather, I’m imagining – imagining what more it could be.
Many...
Catholic education begins with Christ the Teacher. As early as the third-century, he is portrayed in Alexandrian frescoes and wall paintings holding the book of Scripture. At least two parables point to the essence of good education. The Good Shepherd, in his undying love for every creature, leaves the ninety-nine sheep for the lost one. In the parable of the talents, the three servants are entrusted with talents to develop (Mt 25:14ff).
Our Lord tells the Twelve that the Holy Spirit,...
Fort Hood. Tucson. Aurora. Newtown. Boston.
These are just a few of the tragedies that have taken place over the past several years.
To his credit, President Obama responded to each of these horrific incidents with great aplomb. For the most part, he put politics aside and assured us everything would be okay and that the resolve of the American people would never be broken.
On April 25th, President Obama visited West, Texas to comfort those who lost loved ones in an explosion at a local...
I can’t believe I am about to defend Mother’s Day – I who dislike being fussed over and think of the occasion mainly as the day I’m going to be forced to stand and feel conspicuous in the middle of Mass.
Nevertheless, I’ve seen some attacks on Mother’s Day from strange quarters over the years, beginning about 20 years ago when I went to greet a priest friend after Mass and overheard him being reamed out by some lady telling him he had no business speaking about mothers in...
In January the Sundance Film festival “canonized” the work of late term abortionists in the United States, and gushed unbounded praise and admiration for their heroic “care of women.” The centerpiece of this hagiographic exercise was the documentary film “After Tiller,” by directors Lana Wilson and Martha Shane. The movie uncritically portrays the lethal practice of four late term abortionists: Warren Hern, who performs late-term abortions in Boulder, Colo.,...
On May 13, 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared for the first time to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal. She shone radiantly before those whom the world initially took no notice – as the Mother of God tends to do – during a year that also saw the rise of Soviet communism and the horrors of World War I. Brutalities inflicted by Russian Bolsheviks and trench warfare, however, only further underscored the Fatima message – the need to pray the Rosary daily and for the...
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a Catholic Frenchman and a reputable historian, visited America in order to study its political, judicial and educational institutions. In the years to follow he wrote a book called, Democracy in America. What he found was that the early Americans took it for granted that a free society depends on an education system which was inspired and managed by local communities. They instinctively knew the dangers of a State-run school system and its effects on...
In 2008 everyone was talking about Barack Obama’s history as a community organizer. Those on the political right wrongly assumed all community organizers were Marxist agitators who simply wanted the government to give people “stuff.” Those on the political left, on the other hand, defended Senator Obama’s former profession by linking it to Jesus Christ, proudly proclaiming that “Jesus was a community organizer” and that Barack Obama was simply following in his footsteps. ...
This has been a custom in the Church dating back many centuries. And it is beautiful to associate Mary with the coming of Spring and the new birth of flowers and plants and crops in the field.
In this special month, in which we will celebrate Christ’s Ascension into Heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, I encourage you to deepen your devotion to Mary.
In the Acts of the Apostles, we see the beautiful image of the early Church united in prayer around “Mary, the mother of...
Gustave Reese, the pre-eminent Medieval and Renaissance musicologist of his day (d 1977), was also famous for striking fear in his students if they came to class unprepared. A simple composition demanded historical and textual analysis with biographical information about its composer. An even closer probe was required into its musical setting and its variants in regional manuscripts. Reese’s students would master the art of interdisciplinary scholarship, or withdraw from his...
