Guest Columnists

Paul, Apollos and Cephas, All Over Again

February 22, 2017

IN APRIL 2016, Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, England, issued a pastoral letter on the interpretation of “Amoris Laetitia” (the pope’s apostolic exhortation on marriage) and re-affirmed the Church’s long-settled teaching: The divorced and civilly remarried, while members of the Christian community, are not living in full communion with that community, and should not present themselves for Holy Communion until their manner of life changes or their irregular marriage has been regularized under Church law.

Two Episcopal Firsts, Two Different Times

February 22, 2017

ON JAN. 9, 2017, I was at the Mexican American Catholic College in San Antonio, Texas, speaking to a group of second-year theology students from Saint Meinrad Seminary in Indiana.

A Eucharistic Embrace

February 15, 2017

Second in a series, EARLY IN HIS book “Our One Great Act of Fidelity: Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist” (New York: Doubleday, 2011), Ronald Rolheiser stresses that the Eucharist is a great mystery that we will never completely understand. He confesses that in his studies he took excellent courses on the Eucharist, but in the end he realized that he did not understand the Eucharist.

Synod-talk, Again

February 15, 2017

ON JAN. 13 THE General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops published a “preparatory document” for the 2018 Synod on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment.

Confession Helps Readjust Our Focus

February 15, 2017

by Maureen Pratt, “CONFESSION IS GOOD for the soul,” they say. I agree. I also find that it helps us to live well no matter what our station or situation in life, especially if we make it a time to move fully out of our own comfort zones.

A Papal Tutor of Heroic Virtue

February 8, 2017

ON JAN. 20, Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to publish decrees acknowledging the “heroic virtues” of six men and one woman: two diocesan priests, three priests in religious orders, the foundress of an Italian religious community and a Polish layman.

Surviving the Suicide Of a Loved One

February 8, 2017

The suicide of someone you love is shattering. You think that you have lost your mind, that you are crazy, that you won’t be able to live through the next hour, let alone the rest of your life. You are convinced that you’re the only person who has ever felt this way, that no one in the world could ever experience such devastation and be able to survive

Theology Isn’t Math; But It Is Theology

February 1, 2017

DURING THE HEYDAY of the Solidarity movement, a famous Polish slogan had it that, “For Poland to be Poland, 2 + 2 Must Always = 4.” It was a quirky but pointed way of challenging the communist culture of the lie, which befogged public life and warped relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, colleagues and neighbors.

What It Means to Be Catholic First

February 1, 2017

by Richard Doerflinger

THIS PAST PRESIDENTIAL campaign, one of the most bruising and discouraging on record, left many of us dissatisfied with the electoral system and politics in general. As usual, Catholics voted for the winning candidate – despite internal divisions between churchgoers and nonchurchgoers and between white and Hispanic Catholics.

Fake History

January 25, 2017

SPEAKING OF PUBLIC policy debates, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that, while everyone had a right to his opinion, no one had a right to his own facts. Something similar might be said about today’s debates in the Church: everyone has a right to their own opinion about the state of Catholicism in 2017, but no one has a right to invent their own Church history.