I once asked some high school students to identify a couple of trees – a birch and an elm – based on pictures of their leaves. They offered a few sheepish guesses: Oak? Maple? They kept guessing.
Guest Columnists
A Hillarian Lesson for Church Leaders
PERHAPS IT WAS being “overcome with Paschal joy” (as the Prefaces for Easter put it). Maybe it was my guardian angel whispering in my ear. Perhaps I’m just getting older and thus less crotchety. But for a brief moment, at around 7:30 EDT on the morning of May 3, I felt a blush of sympathy for Hillary Clinton for the first time in 25 years.
Mother and Child in Hispanic Catholic Eyes
by Dr. Hosffman Ospino
MAY IS TRADITIONALLY a month when Catholics turn our attention toward Mary more intentionally. Marian processions and crownings in parishes and schools remind us of childhood. I love processions!
Motherhood: A Vocation that Grows and Changes
by Effie Caldarola
IN 1916, PADRAIG Pearse was executed by the British for his role in the Irish Easter uprising.
The Fifty-Day Party
IF YOU CAN find it in your attic, open your old, pre-Vatican II missal, and look at the Sundays between Easter and Pentecost, which are titled “Sundays after Easter.” Now look at a contemporary Missal, or your current issue of Magnificat, and note the difference: those Sundays are now styled “Sundays of Easter.” Three letters were lost in the transition from after to of, but that subtraction represents a great recovery of liturgical insight.
The Resurrection Mystery, A Grandmother’s Insight
by Carol Powell
THE DEATH-RESURRECTION mystery is woven into the fabric of the universe. All around, life is bursting forth proclaiming joy. Trees are budding, flowers are blooming, birds are singing. Rejoicing is in the air.
Après Gorsuch le Deluge
DID YOU FIND the Gorsuch hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee a depressing exercise in political theater? Are you tired of the members of the “world’s greatest deliberative body” playing “Gotcha!” games that would embarrass a well-trained high school debate team? Have you had it with a mainstream media that doesn’t hold senators accountable for gross ignorance and bias and a social media universe that’s constantly in hysterics?
Walking at Their Pace
by Laura Kelly Fanucci
I BALANCE THE laundry basket on my hip while coaxing a sleepy preschooler downstairs. He wants me to carry him. I explain that my hands are full. He crosses his arms and pouts. I ask him to come with me. He takes one stubborn step down the first stair and glares.
Catholic Press Is Needed Now More Than Ever
by Rita Piro
MOST ANYONE WHO attended a Catholic high school in the Diocese of Brooklyn during the 1950s and ’60s, will likely remember The Tablet Club. Each week, club members would distribute the latest edition of The Tablet to their classmates to be read and discussed in religion class, and then brought home to their families.
Death Without Dignity In the Nation’s Capital
by Richard Doerflinger
RECENT PARTISAN impasses in Congress raise the question: Can the two parties agree on anything?