This past Sunday, Pope Francis opened the Synod of Bishops in Rome at St. Peter’s Basilica. This year and for the coming two years, the Synod will be reflecting on the role of synodality in the life of the Church, beginning at the level of the local Church. He called for all the...
Editor’s Note: I have prayed and discerned about whether to post about this topic, and I had more or less decided that it would be against my better judgement. Even after Gareth Thomas submitted the piece below several days ago, I hesitated to publish it. “Don’t feed the trolls,” they say. But I...
The overlap between the anti-vaccination movement and reactionary resistance to the Church’s magisterium has been well-documented. In one recent example, Janet Smith, a professor renowned for her defense of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, argued for Crisis that “the Church does not, and cannot teach magisterially whether or not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine...
The death penalty 2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of...
A reflection on the readings for Sunday, October 10, 2021 — The Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Imagine a young person who is aspiring to be a professional athlete suddenly spots a famous sports star down the street. Chances are that the young person, spotting an opportunity to meet this famous athlete, is going to...
“The Church, then, like John the Baptist, has a specific message for you today, dear workers in the entertainment world. A message which could be expressed in these words: in your work, always remember the people who are your audience, their rights and their legitimate expectations, especially when it is a question of people who are still...
I was recently assigned to read an article about loneliness and existential isolation for a class in my graduate program in clinical mental health counseling. The article presented a view of the human person that closely reflected the Catholic understanding of the human person and the harm caused by both interpersonal isolation and...
The violence of abortion severs a baby from the mother’s womb—quite literally. And yet so often the way we approach the issue of abortion also severs baby from the mother in another way: by focusing on one over the other. Whose rights do we choose to respect? The Church is clear that both...
How does one tell the story of the Second Vatican Council? It is a question that has fascinated many people over the past fifty years, challenged them as well, because for one thing, more than one story is involved. Why was this Council called, what did it hope to accomplish, what actually happened...
The book entitled The Fool and the Heretic is a dialogue between authors Todd Charles Wood and Darrel R. Falk, the “Fool” and the “Heretic,” respectively. Their discussion is moderated by Rob Barrett from the Colossian Forum, an organization that works to “transform cultural conflicts into opportunities for spiritual growth and witness.” Wood...
As both a high school teacher and parish catechist, I always looked forward to diving into the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Some might call me slightly deranged, but I loved being bombarded by the whines and groans of adolescents who just can’t wrap their growing minds around why we need to confess our sins,...
[Filed 2 October 2021 from the Madrid-Alicante train!] The traditional goal for the Catholic pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela, particularly in a Holy Year, is to visit the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great and gain the indulgences that the Church offers for making that journey. Each pilgrim to Compostela walks...
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