As a parish catechist, I am extremely indebted to Bishop Robert Barron. For years, not a week has gone by when I have not used several resources from his Word on Fire apostolate. Recently, in addition to his catechetical and...
The Benedictine Monastery and the Franciscan Field Hospital Catholics aren’t Countercultural As Catholics, we’re called to resist the “culture of death” and the “throw-away culture.” Does this mean we are countercultural? Are we being called to oppose a culture, or...
Pope Francis surely sends many personal letters that don’t land in the headlines, but his remarkably warm and encouraging letter, sent in response to a note from Father James Martin about his nephew’s confirmation, certainly did. After Francis expressed his...
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...
Two Intertwined Narratives Rod Dreher begins his book The Benedict Option by observing that the “culture war” is over and that the conservatives have lost it. If the war is indeed over, many of the warriors don’t seem to have...
Like many Catholics who live in the Washington, DC area, I have attended the annual March for Life many times over the years. For those who haven’t been, it’s a massive annual pro-life rally held every year on January 22,...
US President Joseph Biden embarked on the first overseas trip of his presidency last week. His first scheduled stops were in the UK and Belgium to gather with world leaders for the G7 and NATO summits, before heading to Switzerland...
In Cardinal Luis Ladaria’s May 7th letter to USCCB president Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, the CDF Prefect warned that without a rigorous and “serene” process, the conversation about “worthiness to receive Holy Communion” would become a “source of...
Today, the cultural division between the Catholic Church and Western society—especially on moral issues—is as wide as it has been since the rise of Christendom. The dictatorship of relativism that Pope Benedict XVI decried in 2005, which “does not recognize...
“Following the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and paying close attention to the special needs of our times, I devoted the encyclical Redemptor Hominis to the truth about man, a truth that is revealed to us in its fullness...
On May 27, the CBC reported that the bodies of 215 First Nations children had been discovered buried under the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The school was run by the Catholic religious order the Missionary Oblates...
How are people chosen to lead catechesis? Too often it is an appointment made without much forethought and typically a knee-jerk response by the parish priest when he realizes the First Holy Communion program is beginning shortly and he’s struggling...
Popular Posts