Guest Columnists

A Pastor in Full: Father Jay Scott Newman

July 18, 2018

ALMOST A QUARTER-CENTURY AGO, Father Jay Scott Newman, back in Rome to finish a graduate degree after his priestly ordination in Charleston, N.C., took me on an extended ramble around the Eternal City: my first hike up the Aventine; my first visit to the crown jewel of paleo-Christian architecture, Santa Sabina; my first exploration of Santa Maria in Cosmedin – and later in the evening, some essential instruction as to what you don’t put on a pasta dish featuring seafood (hint: a certain hard cheese). I had a grand time but little idea then of the impact Father Newman would have on my life and work in the future. Now, as he celebrates the silver jubilee of his priestly ordination, it’s time to do some of what our evangelical Protestant friends would call “witnessing.”

Heed Mary’s Words: ‘Do Whatever He Tells You’

July 18, 2018

WHEN I WAS in the sixth grade at St. Mary Star of the Sea and St. Gertrude in Far Rockaway, I was always struck by how joyful the priests would be during Mass and outside of Mass with the people. While I was growing up at the parish, I was an altar server and worked as a sacristan. I had the opportunity to watch the priests up close and that led the thought of priesthood to enter my mind.

If You Seek Peace, Avail Yourself to God’s Will

July 11, 2018

When I began to discern my vocation to the Priesthood of Jesus Christ I was in high school, working and in the midst of researching and visiting prospective colleges. I went on to study criminal justice and law at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. While in college, I felt my call to the priesthood grow deeper.

Keep Cool and Read On!

July 11, 2018

The dark blue cap was emblazoned, in bold white all-caps letters with the phrase: “MAKE AMERICA READ AGAIN.”

Enjoyable, Instructive Summer Reading

July 11, 2018

The vacation season is an opportunity to escape TwitterWorld and do some serious reading. These books will help make your summer enjoyable, instructive – or both.

Acts of the Apostles in The Modern World

June 28, 2018

The Church’s custom of reading virtually all of the Acts of the Apostles at daily Mass during the Easter season struck me as particularly apt this year, and for three reasons.

You Are Never Too Old To Answer God’s Call

June 28, 2018

One could say I was living the American Dream. I had a sizeable house in a good neighborhood, a respectable job paying a healthy salary and prospects for continued career advancement. The problem was a sense of incompleteness; a realization that there was something important missing in my life, a hole in my heart.

Nationality and Papacy

June 20, 2018

WITH HUNDREDS OF bishops coming to the Vatican in October 2001 for a Synod, I decided to spend that month in Rome conducting interviews for what would eventually become the sequel to “Witness to Hope” and the second volume of my John Paul II biography, “The End and the Beginning.”