This week, Pope Francis delivered part 4 of his Catechesis on Discernment, this time speaking about the vital role of self-knowledge in discernment. Sometimes when we are don’t know what we really want or who we are. We learn who we truly are when we are able to honestly examine ourselves. Yet, as...
Our public discourse is increasingly unhinged. In a recent article for WPI, Christina M. Sorrentino advises us to “think twice and tweet once.” She quotes an address Pope Francis gave to the 2022 World Congress of SIGNIS, in which he warns against the dangers of social media and calls for careful discernment on...
Francis of Assisi died seven hundred and ninety-six years ago yesterday (his feast day is observed the day after his death) in his hometown of long-term malaria that he probably contracted in the Holy Land or Egypt. The visit to what was then the site of the Crusades occurred in 1219. Francis’s trip...
I live in a news-infused household. This means that a cable news station is on the TV most of the day–my husband is more of a news junkie than I am!—and that I am a loyal and eager e-subscriber to The Washington Post, which I read faithfully every day. My preference while driving...
It’s been two years since Pope Francis released Fratelli Tutti, his remarkable encyclical on fraternity and social friendship. When Laudato Si’ came out in 2015, I wrote “Ten Quick Takeaways” for Commonweal magazine. Now I’ve decided to do the same thing for Fratelli Tutti. Why two years late? Well, when it came out I was putting the finishing touches on Cathonomics. I...
When I was in Girl Scouts (a long time ago!), at summer camp one year we learned a couple of Israeli songs. One was called “Hine Ma Tov” and it is very popular with Jewish singers. (A good rendition can be found here: Hine Ma Tov הנה מה טוב.) The lyrics are: Hine...
This morning, Pope Francis dedicated his entire Sunday Angelus address to the war in Ukraine, imploring Russian President Vladimir Putin to cease hostilities and calling for peace. Francis explained that he was doing so because “this terrible and inconceivable wound to humanity, instead of healing, continues to shed even more blood, risking to...
A scripture reflection for October 2, 2022, the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time. You may remember “The Secret Life of Mother Teresa,” the September 3, 2007 Time Magazine cover story about St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Journalist David Van Biema reported a decade after Mother Teresa’s death that her secret letters showed that...
It is certainly a regrettable thing, Dearly beloved Son, that it is possible to meet even among Catholics men who, while they glory in the name, show themselves thoroughly imbued with corrupt principles and adhere to them with such stubbornness that they are no longer able to submit their minds with docility to...
In the summer of 2020, during the long lent of the Covid-19 pandemic, Churches began opening up on a limited basis, and often with strict limitations: mask requirements, building capacity restrictions, social distancing, roped off pews, sign-up sheets. One of the greater challenges for many of us was when bishops and pastors asked...
“You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of the painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if...
One of the transformational moments in my spiritual journey was the realization that in order to grow in faith and my relationship with God, I would have to learn to live with tension and uncertainty. Accepting and living with tension and ideas that contradict on the surface is intrinsic to the Christian Tradition....
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