It has been a rough few months for the Church. We are told that disagreeing with the dominant culture by affirming age-old truths is discriminatory and bigoted. Are this summer’s legal decisions harbingers of dark days ahead for those committed to expressing their religious convictions in their daily lives?
The Brooklyn Queens Diocese supports a Lay Ministry Program in conjunction with local parishes. It’s a wonderful opportunity to deepen your faith and to understand the many aspects of the Catholic Church, and most importantly, the Bible. One of the goals of this three-year program is to prepare participants to be lay ministers within their parishes. These new lay ministers will join existing parish ministries or start their own ministry, fulfilling the needs of their parish.
Recently, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said the pope should “leave science to the scientists.” His sentiment is echoed by those who deny climate change and contend that the Church should stay out of the debate – following the release of “Laudato Si’” and the conversation that the pope’s encyclical letter on the environment has generated.
One of the things I love most dearly about Jesus in the Gospels is His earthiness. As Christians, we’re sometimes tempted to make this God stuff a bit fussy and pretentious. We occasionally lapse into a piety that lacks authenticity. Or we think faith is all about contrition rather than gratitude and joy.
Pope Francis speaks for the church I grew up in when he calls for an organized moral response to the injustices of modern capitalism.
Of all the injustices Pope Francis could address in the June 18 encyclical on ecology and climate, lack of access to clean water is emblematic.
Pope Francis’ concern for those suffering on the margins and for small Catholic communities that have kept the faith alive through war or repression will take him to Bosnia-Herzegovina in early June.
When the graduating class of St. Francis Prep, Fresh Meadows, files into St. John’s University on Saturday, June 6, another academic year will be concluding. But here at the Prep, education and faith always continues! We have an expression that we use frequently – “High school is four years, But St. Francis Prep is forever!”
“If they kill me, I shall rise in the Salvadoran people” – The legacy of Oscar Romero. I have heard this statement of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero countless times as I showed the movie “Romero” every semester to my high school students and read it over and over in books and publications about him. But while in El Salvador in March celebrating the 35th anniversary of his assassination, I saw the truth and reality of these words as I walked and prayed with the Salvadoran people.
By Father William J. Byron, S.J. Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa in Honduras and past president of the Latin American bishops’ council, was on the campus of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia at the end of April to participate in a meeting of about 250 Catholic community organizers gathered to express their hopes […]
