I’ve explained to God that He might want to rethink this free-will business. Yes, my generation can handle it, but those young people may not be able to handle it. “It seems to me,” I’ve told Him, “it’s just too much responsibility and freedom for them.” Apparently God disagrees.
I was at St. Joseph’s Church, one of the most beautiful churches in Astoria, where there is a lovely statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when I fell in love with the Miraculous Medal Novena.
What is the thoughtful Catholic voter to do when neither presidential candidate is even minimally committed to human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity and solidarity, as the social doctrine understands those concepts?
It seems that Prince loved himself, but in the way that God urges all of us to love ourselves, by perfecting our talents and using them to serve the common good. To do this, Prince ultimately became a man of prayer
I worked a lot of hours and have no regrets… What I have learned is that I could have managed my stress better, set boundaries and switched off work issues when I was with the family…
The Catholic love affair with the United States of America is heading into rough and uncharted waters – not only in this 2016 election cycle, but also for the foreseeable future.
Despite the women’s movement, more equality, less discrimination and more opportunity in the workplace, I think the challenges facing girls remain, perhaps in different forms and certainly with new technology.
DURING TALKS AROUND the country in recent years, I’ve been asking Catholic audiences how many of those present know the date of their baptism. The high-end response is a little under 10 percent. The average is about 2-3 percent.
Getting personal, as in engaging and knowing one another, underlies Pope Francis’ urging for a culture of encounter. He speaks against the tendencies to intellectualize, judge, dismiss and demonize the poor, the unemployed, the undocumented migrants, etc. They are categories of social construction with statistics, theories, precedents, antecedents and solutions that delineate costs and benefits. Too often they are devoid of faces, stories, pains, dreams. That need not be the case.
The announcement that Archbishop Christoph Pierre will succeed Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò as apostolic nuncio to the U.S. is an opportunity to pay tribute to a courageous churchman who has served Catholicism, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis in an exemplary way during his tenure in Washington.
