Sometime after the 2012 US election, I made a commitment that has continued to inform my conscience and my approach to politics and society ever since: I chose to step away. I was something of a political news junkie for...
Death is inevitable. For the bulk of human history, this has been a universally acknowledged and widely emphasized truism. Victorious Roman generals, as they paraded through the city in triumph, would be accompanied by someone whose job it was to...
A reflection on the Sunday readings for November 1, 2020 All Saints’ Day has a very long and interesting history. While the exact origin of this feast is unclear, historians believe that it began organically at the end of the Christian...
God’s continuous act of separation occurs in the so-called first creation account of Genesis (Gen 1:1–2:3): light from darkness, water from water, water from land. This act of separation provides form to the formless, and as creation proceeds so too...
This morning, my local ordinary, Washington’s Archbishop Wilton Gregory, was named by Pope Francis as one of 13 new cardinals who will be elevated during a November 28 consistory in Rome. Archbishop Gregory has served the Church for many years...
A reflection on the Sunday readings for October 25, 2020 When couples approach me for marriage preparation, they must complete a pre-nuptial inventory form. One part of the inventory concerns the couple’s “spiritual assessment.” Among the questions in this segment is...
One key to understanding the Church’s teaching on the economy is to ask—as Francis does in Fratelli Tutti—whether we “include or exclude those lying wounded along the roadside” (FT 69). This is, of course, a reference to the parable of...
I see you. You were brought up with CCD and Sunday Mass and played Necco wafer communion. You gave up candy for Lent, ate fish sticks on Fridays, and know what “Holy Day of Obligation” means (get thyself to church). Your...
Fratelli Tutti is a signature encyclical—not only of Francis’s papacy, but for the Catholic Church. During a pandemic, when the world seems to be at a political, social, religious, and ecological tipping point, comes a papal encyclical on “fraternity” and...
I offer here a sketch of someone caught in the eddies of our time. A sketch because it is not complete; I am still in the midst of confusion and uncertainty. But something of an outline is taking shape, and...
A reflection on the Mass readings for the Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time. At my parish, I am currently leading an eight-week series on St. John of the Cross. John’s poems are all brilliant, but the ones that are the...
The pandemic has revealed how inadequate our virtual lifestyles are for sustaining strong communities. Yes, the lockdowns, capacity limits, and other precautions were necessitated by a charity towards others in our society, especially the elderly and other vulnerable populations, and...
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