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...
"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...
“Parents are parents for eternal life,” reflected Father John Hardon, S.J., “God gives them children in this world, but not for this world.”
Father Hardon was right. The vocation of parents is to prepare their children for their eternal destiny – a life in Jesus Christ, sharing in heaven itself. The job of a parent is to prepare children to become saints. To know their worth, their dignity, and their beauty as redeemed sons and daughters of the Father.
It isn’t easy to prepare...
Anything without heart, anything without love – and I mean politics, music, law, art, even religion – anything without love, no matter how brilliant, is finally inadequate and weak. At the end of the day, the human soul yearns to be loved, and to love in return. And it won’t settle for anything less.
God loves us so deeply that he sent his only son to live, suffer, die and rise again for our salvation. That’s the message of Easter. The message of Pentecost – the “birthday of the...
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...
Our news outlets are not known for their squeamish attitude toward violence. On the contrary, reporters are often criticized for fixating on violence, exploiting it as fodder for the 24-hour news cycle.
We rarely see journalists shying away from a gruesome case. Yet, the media has been reluctant to cover the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell – a Philadelphia abortionist accused of committing unspeakable crimes at his “Women’s Medical Center.”
Already indicted by a grand jury, Gosnell is...
Violence and grief in the Boston area have rightly dominated our news media for the past week. The latest terrorist bloodshed is not at all senseless. It’s the work of calculated malice. Innocent people, including children, have paid the price for other people’s hatred. Our most important task right now is to pray for the victims and their families.
God exists, and God can heal even the worst suffering, despite every human attempt to ignore him and every terrible sin that seems to...
Marriage, most fundamentally, is gift. Or, perhaps more clearly, marriage is a series of gifts, connected and intertwined with one another.
Marriage is the gift of a husband to a wife. And the gift of a wife to a husband. Marriage is a gift from God – an opportunity to form a family, a community of love. Marriage is the place where the gift of life begins. And marriage is a gift to every community, every culture, every people – marriage is the gift of stability, of civility and of love....
I wish all of you and your families Easter blessings! This was a joyful Easter for me and I was touched to see so many of you at our services at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. In some cases, we had “standing room only,” which is a beautiful sign of your devotion to Jesus Christ.
For all of us, this was also the first Easter celebrated with our new Pope Francis. In my prayers during this time, I have been trying to accompany Pope Francis as he begins his ministry as the Vicar...
Not many news reports carried the story. But somehow it was able to leak. A professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton was teaching the course called “Intercultural Communications.” In one exercise to demonstrate the deep-seated emotions that surround issues, the professor asked the students to write Jesus’ name in big letters on a paper, place the paper on the ground and then stomp on the name of Jesus. Ryan Rotela, a junior, refused.
Ryan was polite and sincere. He calmly...
