By Maureen Pratt This year, I was asked to help at my parish’s Advent reconciliation service, and as soon as work began to put it together, I became much more aware of the role of “I’m sorry” in my daily life. From “my bad” to “mea culpa,” the variety of ways we use to declare […]
That “there is no end to the making of books” is attested by both revelation (see Ecclesiastes 12:12) and a browse through your local bookstore – which, if well-stocked, will help you get the following to deserving readers on your Christmas list: N.T. Wright, “Paul: In Fresh Perspective” (Fortress Press) The former Anglican bishop of […]
By Msgr. Joseph P. Calise The experience of waiting for something can cause a lot of different emotions. The effects of waiting for a train when you are late for work or waiting for results from some medical tests are very different from waiting for the tooth fairy or Easter bunny to come. Waiting can […]
By Carolyn Y. Woo In the Catholic Relief Services guest dining room in Baltimore, we have decorated the left wall with pictures of various grains, plants, trees and water. The inscription reads: “We shall see the bounty of the Lord.” On the opposing wall, we have the words from Psalm 27:13, “in the land of […]
By Father William J. Byron, S.J. As the Thanksgiving season quickly spills over into Advent and Christmas, many people find themselves remarking that this is their favorite time of the year. Thanksgiving Day is, of course, a secular feast day, and we know Christmas is not. And most of those who speak of “the holidays” […]
Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977), a German Catholic philosopher, was part of a circle of thinkers that first formed around Edmund Husserl, founder of the philosophical method known as “phenomenology.” Others in that circle included Max Scheler, on whom Karol Wojtyla (St. John Paul II) wrote his second doctoral thesis, and Edith Stein, now St. Teresa […]
History sometimes displays the happy capacity to arrange anniversaries so that one sheds light on another. On Nov. 21, 1964, Pope Paul VI solemnly promulgated the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which began by proclaiming Christ the “Light of the Nations” and is thus known as “Lumen Gentium.” In November, 1989, the […]
By Kelly Bothum I will be honest – the recent Synod of Bishops on the family was not a topic of discussion at my family’s dinner table. Finding half an hour for our family of five to scarf down the latest concoction in the slow cooker before we splinter off to the next band practice, […]
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s department of external relations and a frequent visitor to the West, is a man of parts: a widely published author, a composer, a gifted linguist. He can be charming and witty, as I discovered at the Library of Congress in 2011, and in the intervening […]
Jesuit Father William J. Byron shares the story of a Catholic-school educated Philadelphia physician who has volunteered to use her medical knowledge and skills to minister to Ebola patients in Africa.
