For the past two weeks, I have been writing about the meaning and process of marriage annulments. How does this play out in the Diocese of Brooklyn?
Guest Columnists
Synod 2015, Revisited
AS I WRITE, just before Thanksgiving, it’s been over a month since Synod-2015 finished its work. Yet, there is still no official translation of the Synod’s Final Report into the major world languages from the original Italian (a language regularly used by 8/10 of one percent of the world’s population). That’s a shame because, in […]
A Thanksgiving Meditation
Shortly after jihadist murderers killed over 130 people in Paris, with seven of the terrorists blowing themselves up in the process, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to the nation and described the massacres as “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”
When Is a Marriage Not Valid?
An annulment is not a declaration of the invalidity of a relationship; it’s the declaration of the invalidity of consent.
Gratitude Is a Spiritual Practice
Like many families, during the holidays we try to focus on thankfulness by asking each guest at a festive meal to express that for which they are most thankful.
Learning from Mom’s Humility
Some people are naturally funny and good storytellers. I wish I were one of them. I have to speak in public often, and at times I have no choice but to wing it. I’m not funny or especially quick-witted. So when I’m called on to speak extemporaneously, it’s a bit scary. I launch into sentences like a man walking down a blind alley, not knowing quite how he’ll get out the other end.
The Grittiness of Christian Faith
JERUSALEM – Walking through the narrow, winding streets of Jerusalem’s Old City on my first visit here in 15 years, I was powerfully struck once again by the grittiness of Christianity, the palpable connection between the faith and the quotidian realities of life. For here – as in no other place – the believer, the skeptic and the “searcher” are confronted with a fact: Christianity began, not with a pious story or “narrative,” but with the reality of transformed lives. Real things happened to real people at real places in real time – and the transformation wrought in those real people by those “real things” transformed the world.
Youth’s Use of Media
A NEW STUDY ON MEDIA usage by children, ages 8-18, shows that teenagers, ages 13-18, use entertainment media an average of nearly nine hours a day. And “tweens,” children ages 8-12, use close to six hours a day on average. This includes screen time, listening to music and reading print outside of class requirements. This excludes time used with media for school or homework purposes.
John Paul II’s ‘Beloved Kraków’
SEVERAL YEARS AGO, Father Raymond de Souza, one of my fellow faculty members at an annual Kraków-based summer seminar on Catholic social doctrine, made a trenchant observation about the city John Paul II used to call “my beloved Kraków.” Kraków, Father de Souza observed, was the city where the 20th century happened in a singular way.
Success Is an Everyday Thing
For most people, the month of November means colored leaves, bonfires and entirely too many pumpkin spice lattes. For writers like me, November means getting down to business. It’s National Novel Writing Month!