If you attend any major Catholic gathering throughout the United States, chances are that talks are offered in the two predominant languages in which most Catholics worship in the country, namely English and Spanish.
Guest Columnists
Is There a Need for Permanent Deacons?
My sacramental theology class during formation included so much information about the matter, form, minister and recipient of each sacrament. It was wonderful for someone like me, a “cradle Catholic” who does not recall learning all these essential facts.
Friday Mornings Without Charles Krauthammer
TAKE MY WORD FOR IT: You don’t want to be around me at breakfast. I am not a chipper morning person, and it’s best to leave me to the coffee and the newspaper – and I mean newspaper, not online edition – until I become fit for human company.
A Different Kind of Water Balloon Fight
WITH HIS BIGGEST GRIN, my toddler came to show me the water balloon he was gifted from a friendly mom at my neighborhood playground.
Invest in Tomorrow’s Catholic Leaders Today
CATHOLICS IN THE United States have excelled in developing amazing structures and resources for pastoral leadership formation at all levels in seminaries, houses of formation, colleges and universities, pastoral institutes, online programs and catechetical formation initiatives, among others.
Affirming Humanae Vitae
JULY 25 WAS THE 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical on the integrity of love and the appropriate means of family planning. Issued during the cultural meltdown of the 1960s, and in a year when irrationality stalked the entire Western world, Humanae Vitae instantly became the most vilified act of the papal magisterium in history. And to what should have been their shame, entire national episcopates distanced themselves from Pope Paul’s teaching by a variety of stratagems, many of which exhibited some degree of theological confusion and some were downright cowardly.
From Haiti to Brooklyn: Pursuing the Priesthood
ACCOMPANYING MY mother to the public market in Haiti one day when I was eight years old, I saw a man wearing a cassock crossing the street.
To Know Your Purpose, Simply Ask Your Maker
Growing up in today’s society, it is not uncommon to hear clichés being taught to children, such as, “Do what makes you happy,” or, “Follow your heart.” While it is true that we ought to do what makes us happy and do what we believe to be right, those phrases leave out an important fact: without God, you cannot be happy.
On the Great Tom Wolfe
When the great Tom Wolfe died on May 14 – he of the white suits, the spats, and the prose style as exuberant as his wardrobe – I, like millions of others, remembered the many moments of pleasure I had gotten from his work.
A Pastor in Full: Father Jay Scott Newman
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.”