Many years ago I was attending my first faculty reception at my first formal faculty appointment, at Stanford, and was met at the receiving line by the sponsoring dean with a warm handshake and the baffling words, “I want to tell you that I have the greatest admiration for your Church.” The two of us … Read more
The otherwise inexplicable cure of a French nun suffering from Parkinson’s disease was accepted in early January by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and Pope Benedict XVI as the confirming miracle that clears the way for the beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday. John Paul II’s life … Read more
A little more than a week after three Anglican bishops were ordained as priests in the new ordinariate in England, Our Lady of Walsingham, another wave of converts is announced: Seven Anglican priests and 300 members of six congregations are to join a new section of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Diocese of Brentwood says. … Read more
Former Planned Parenthood director and new author Abby Johnson (see the banner ad for Unplanned to the right) is in the process of entering the Catholic Church. “When we went to the Catholic Church for the first time we knew that was where we were supposed to be and we have been there ever since,” … Read more
On New Year’s Day, three Church of England bishops were received into the Catholic Church. John Broadhurst, Keith Newton, and Andrew Burnham were joined by two retired bishops, David Silk and Edwin Barnes. All five had been ministering to those Anglican clergy and people who had stood apart from the liberal innovations in the Anglican … Read more
Back in the 1980s, I was involved with a group that produced a booklet looking at the future of the Church in Britain. We were assured — and repeated, without really thinking about it very deeply — that the downward trend of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and ordinations to the priesthood meant that there would be … Read more
In my column last week, I asked the question, “Does the USCCB understand subsidiarity?” I received a variety of responses to that piece, the most interesting being from Msgr. Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian, who posted his thoughts on the website of the Archdiocese of Washington. Writing in a judicious and even-handed way … Read more
There’s been a bit of a dust-up over the “silence” of the USCCB on the repeal of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for the U.S. armed forces. Cardinal Wuerl’s comment, however, was right on the mark, in my opinion. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, DC stated last month on Fox News Sunday that “there … Read more
Ecstatic dancers whirl around a woodland bonfire. Spells are cast in suburban living rooms. A pentagram-wearing priestess wanders through an interfaith festival. Today, witches can be as near as next door — and in the public square as well. Wicca is a conspicuous part of a burgeoning pagan revival in the Western world. Although hard … Read more
The Discovery Channel will be debuting a reality series this spring that explores and recreates past cases of exorcism. Here’s the twist: They’ve gotten the cooperation of the Vatican to do so. The Exorcist Files will recreate stories of real-life hauntings and demonic possession, based on cases investigated by the Catholic Church. The project includes … Read more
Artist Lloyd Osterdorf has so far taken us through the lives of nine Catholics of the 20th century who lived out the social doctrine of the Catholic Church in their daily lives. Today, we have the final entry in the series “Catholics in Action,” serialized in 1952-53. As always, these pages come from Catholic University’s … Read more
At Our Sunday Visitor, our friend and longtime Vatican analyst Russell Shaw says Pope Benedict XVI’s new book-length interview reveals a pontiff who understands his role, and its limitations. When Seewald says the Catholic Church’s membership of 1.2 billion and its geographical extension throughout the world make him “the most powerful pope of all time,” … Read more
Catholics are obsessed with rules about what can and cannot be done. Contraception, abortion, women in the priesthood, even kneeling for the Eucharist are often subjects of controversy whenever Catholics discuss their faith. Thus, when Pope Benedict XVI made his now-famous comment in Light of the World about condoms, it was inevitable that his utterance … Read more
No one will bear witness for the witness. — Paul Celan, poet and Holocaust survivor “To believe” has thus a twofold reference: to the person, and to the truth: to the truth, by trust in the person who bears witness to it. — The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 177 Elie Wiesel survived Auschwitz … Read more
People are worried about me. One reader writes: You don’t give enough credit to the system we have in America. It is the closest thing to idealistic conditions as humanly possible (City of God, Augustine). That’s bad enough, of course. But in addition to my failure to identify America with the City of God, I … Read more
He is everywhere, of course. There would be no anywhere without him. The Trinity dwells within the graced person, and the faithful can say with Paul, I live now, not I, but Christ lives within me. In a sense we can find him in one another. But sacramentally, under the appearance of bread, Jesus is … Read more
Though he was no friend of the Catholic Church, Erich Heller was the enemy of our enemies, and under current circumstances, that should be good enough for us. The man has been dead for 20 years, and my paperback copy of his most famous book, The Disinherited Mind, has been yellowing for half a century, … Read more
The bishops really don’t want to deny communion to anyone unless they believe it’s absolutely necessary. Archbishop John Nienstedt (Minneapolis-St. Paul), however, denied communion to 25 students and members of the St. John’s Abbey community in Collegeville, MN. They were wearing rainbow buttons and sashes in protest of the Church’s position on homosexuality and homosexual … Read more
As the discussion continues to move along in the comments over on my piece about the need for traditional Catholics to show a bit more friendly charity (the horror!) examples have begun to spring up around the Internet showing exactly what I’m talking about. Predictably, one of the very forums I mentioned as an example … Read more
Over at Catholic.org, my friend Deacon Keith Fournier makes the argument that Catholics need to “take back” the phrase “social justice” in its true meaning. His argument is a continuation of an exchange we shared at the Catholic Leadership Conference in Philadelphia a few weeks ago. Deacon Fournier was in the midst of making the … Read more