About five years ago, I volunteered to direct our parish children’s choir. The previous director had moved from the parish and I could see how much it pained our music director to lose this ministry. So, with nothing more than my years of piano lessons, choir, and cantoring, I took it on. At...
Where Peter Is · Universalism And Hell in Catholic Theology When Pope Francis said last year, “The good Lord will save everyone,” not many Catholics seemed to notice, despite the enormity of the statement. Perhaps after nine years we have grown so accustomed to him saying things that seem unusual for a pope,...
A Scripture reflection for May 8, 2022 – the Fourth Sunday of Easter. There is a memorable scene towards the end of the movie, Titanic. As the ship is preparing to take its final plunge into the cold waters of the Atlantic, Jack Dawson and Rose are hanging straight down from the edge of the ship. Jack...
Here I feel it urgent to state that, if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable...
When I was learning French, there was a phrase I picked up without paying much attention to it. The phrase was « Je n’ai pas de voix au chapitre » and it means “I have no say in the matter.” It was only when I entered religious life that the literal translation – “I have...
Yesterday brought devastating news for the Church and Catholic journalism, when Catholic News Service (CNS) announced that they will be shutting down their Washington, DC and New York bureaus at the end of the year, and that all of its US-based staff would be losing their jobs. They also announced that their Rome...
Editor’s Note: At Where Peter Is we are excited to support the new initiatives of our longtime contributors and friends–particularly when those efforts are deeply shaped by the method of Pope Francis. Paul Fahey, a co-founder of this site, is launching a podcast with friend of WPI, Dominic de Souza. And we are happy to...
The “direct action” techniques associated with groups such as Operation Rescue have always been controversial among pro-life activists. Is blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic an effective way to save lives—or do such actions merely damage the pro-life cause overall? Is the use of graphic images a justifiable way to demonstrate the...
In Let Us Dream, Pope Francis cuts through the partisanship and the ideologies in our world to offer a simple diagnosis of the sickness responsible for the decay and moral rot that infects our culture. He calls this illness the technocratic paradigm, which, Francis says “is a mindset that despises the limit that...
After the simplicity and austerity of Lent, the 50 days of Easter can seem like an avalanche of sacramental and devotional gifts. About seven or eight years ago, my husband and I arrived at Church 30 minutes before Mass to get ready to cantor and lead the music. Usually, our preparation included catching...
In the first part of this series, I shared my own story of miscarriage and infant loss, and how grieving those children brought me into contact with parents whose children died in very different circumstances. While the pro-whole-life movement addresses an array of issues, my experiences have taught me that there are specific things...
This is a reflection on the readings for May 3, 2022 – the Third Sunday of Easter Kintsugi, or Kintsukori, is a 15th century Japanese art of repairing broken pottery and transforming it into a new work of art with gold. The name is derived from the words “Kin” meaning golden and “tsugi”...
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