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.
Guest Columnists
The Most Important Day of Your Life
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.
Trying to Foster a Culture of Encounter
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 Best Nuncio We’ve Had Thus Far
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.
A Timely Look at Marriage, Church Law
Msgr. John Alesandro has written a timely book on Church law about marriage and the family. It was inspired as Pope Francis was inviting bishops of the world to a Synod on the Family.
Strengthened by Other Survivors
I still feel “not so good” at times, but I am feeling hopeful that the scourge of sex abuse by clergy is at last being handled responsibly.
Still Battling to Recognize the Good and Focus on the Light
For the past few years, I’ve awoken each day to the same unstated question: “Who will win today, the light or the dark?” That’s what the last few years have felt like – a pitched battle for my mind and my soul.
Abuse Survivors Will Pray for Healing
A Mass is of Hope and Healing is by no means a way to erase that fact or to avoid it. Rather, it is the most powerful way to confront it and help to correct it.
The Merciful Grace Of the Truth
At the Easter Vigil a few weeks ago, tens of thousands of men and women, mature adults, were baptized or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. Each of them walked a unique itinerary of conversion; each of these “newborn babes” (1 Peter 2:2) is a singular work of the Holy Spirit.
Strolling Amid Sands Of a New Creation
By faith, we know that evil has been vanquished. By experience, we know that it still exists. This is the mystery: vanquished, but not extinguished.