It has become a truism of late that the internet in general and social media-driven “Web 2.0” in particular have had a disastrous effect on most people’s ability to understand ambiguity and get along with others. This point has been...
There is no peace to be compared with that of the souls in purgatory, save that of the saints in paradise, and this peace is ever augmented by the inflowing of God into these souls, which increases in proportion as...
Recently Pope Francis gave a video address to the fourth World Meeting of Popular Movements (EMMP), a primarily but not exclusively Latin American coming-together of social and political activists against poverty and inequality. Francis made a positive reference to the...
I’m not sure how to begin an essay like this because it’s a genre of writing that I have not really done for Where Peter Is before. This site features everything from personal reflection to theological disputation, but blind rage...
In a recent conversation with a Reformed Christian acquaintance, I was commended for converting to Catholicism even though certain aspects of Catholic teaching are extremely offensive to my preexisting political and moral opinions. I told him that in some sense...
I’m a little hesitant to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks for Where Peter Is. But I volunteered to do so, and so here I am. As a member of one of the youngest cohorts that...
Every three years, the Sunday Gospel readings spend a few weeks working through chapter 6 of the Gospel of John. The Year B Gospel readings mostly focus on Mark’s Gospel and so John 6 comes as a somewhat startling and...
Within the past twenty-four hours, Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, has fallen to the militant Islamist theocratic group the Taliban amidst the ongoing withdrawal of US forces from that country. The US overthrew a previous Taliban-led government in 2001 and...
Today, August 14th, brings us the feast day of St. Maximilian Kolbe, one of the two “martyrs of Auschwitz” along with St. Edith Stein. Kolbe was a Polish Franciscan who was interned in the infamous death camp for publishing anti-Nazi...
When I heard that Pope Francis had promulgated a motu proprio reimposing restrictions on the celebration of the 1962 Missal (or the Vetus Ordo), my first thought was this was greatly needed and long overdue. My second thought was that...
A few days ago Religion News Service (RNS) ran an article by Jack Jenkins on Douglas Lucia, the Bishop of Syracuse, New York. Lucia has denounced something called the “doctrine of discovery,” and has called on the US bishops to...
For much of my life, I’ve dealt with a persistent unease about the sex into which I was born. This wasn’t something I asked for, although it also hasn’t made me as miserable as some might assume. My unease has...
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