A married friend of mine is loaded with debt. His home is double mortgaged. His wallet is full of credit cards, all of which carry substantial balances.
My friend claims not to enjoy racking up debt. He doesn't seem to think he has a choice. He pays the tuition of his college aged children, and he supports his family in a comfortable lifestyle. His children take private art and music lessons, and he pays the rent of his unemployed nephew. But as much as he desires to love his...
In 1620, as many of us know, the Mayflower pilgrims came to the Americas to practice their religion freely and to seek a brighter future.
Shortly thereafter, beginning in the 1630s, recently arrived British and Irish Catholics flocked to the colony of Maryland for much the same reason, to practice their religion freely.
By the 1670s, European Jews were moving to Charleston, S.C., where the state constitution guaranteed religious liberty for “Jews, heathens, and dissenters.”
In recent...
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
Once again our nation has experienced another senseless shooting rampage, this time at a theater in Aurora, Colo., that left 12 people dead and 58 wounded. Countless others now suffer the grief of dealing with the death or injury of their loved ones due to this pointless violence. Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the victims and we offer our prayers for them. We pray for the repose of the souls of those who have died.
At the same...
When I was a young seminarian, the rector, before dismissing us for our summer break, would admonish us: remember, guys, there’s no vacation from a vocation. This was certainly wise advice -- we were after all still seminarians even when away from the structured environment of the seminary with its fixed times for prayer and daily Mass. And I think this is wise counsel to all of us Catholics even as we plan for vacations that take us away from our homes and parishes. There can be no...
Do you agree that we get way too many statistics? Seems as if every time I turn around, I’m looking at “the results of a new survey.” What’s worse, the findings often seem to contradict themselves!
One of these statistics does haunt me, though: recently scholarly research shows that, over the last decade or so, about 10 percent of our Catholic people have left the Church.
I don’t mean they have just drifted from the practice of the faith, or consider themselves “lapsed...
A couple of years ago, I was asked to speak at the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s Religious Education Congress in Anaheim. This is one of the largest annual gatherings of Catholic catechists and educators in the world. More than 40,000 attended last year. Catholic faithful from all over the world travel to Anaheim for this four-day conference, including a good number of people from Sacramento.
The organizers of the congress had been after me to give a conference in Spanish. I finally decided...
"The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Then Jesus approached and said to them, 'All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.’” (Mt...
As we approach the celebration of the Fourth of July, we have already begun the “Fortnight for Freedom” invoked by the U.S. bishops as a two-week period of prayer and reflection upon the freedom of religion which we possess in our great nation. The fortnight, which began June 21 and will conclude July 4, is an opportunity for us to come together across the nation and to celebrate what Pope Benedict XVI has referred to as the “most cherished of American freedoms” – religious...
We live in a time of confusion and controversy over what it means to be a Catholic Christian. Many diverse and dissonant voices tell us that our faith is old-fashioned and out of touch. Especially on matters involving human sexuality and the dignity of human life, Church teaching often is portrayed as repressive or intolerant. At best, our culture tends to regard religious teaching and practice as optional. At worst, those who take their faith seriously are regarded as a threat to...
The warm days of May became warmer as the month moved on, and we are not talking about the weather temperatures. The focus continues to highlight Religious Liberty, enshrined in our Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, and reverenced as the marquis issue in the history of our country to this day.
The threats to Religious Liberty become more dangerous as the weeks pass. Back on January 20 of this year, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, decreed that all employers...
