Last year, I wrote on Where Peter Is that Bishop James Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska had taken a leave of absence to receive treatment for depression and anxiety. This is, as far as I know, almost without precedent for a bishop in the era of modern mental health treatment. At...
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, today is the World Day for the Poor. In his message for today, the Holy Father Pope Francis returned to perhaps the most dominant theme of his pontificate: helping the poor and weakest. Speaking about this year’s theme, “Stretch forth your hand to the poor” (Sir...
A reflection on the Sunday readings for November 15, 2020 The latest data tells us that the richest 1% own more than half of the world’s wealth. In the United States, top 20% of Americans own 86% of the country’s wealth and the bottom 80% of the population own only 14%. I begin with...
Earlier today, I joined my friends Josh Moldiz and Fr. Pat Mullan for a live podcast with The Holy Ruckus, a Catholic media apostolate that Josh started a few years ago with some other local Catholics in the DC area. We talked about Pope Francis, our faith background, and some of the inner...
““If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics...
Realities are greater than ideas. Pope Francis keeps saying these words, and I think his understanding of this is something that sets him apart from his immediate predecessors. Don’t get me wrong—I love Popes Benedict and St. John Paul II. I think they were brilliant and holy men to whom I (and the...
Where Peter Is · The McCarrick Report: Conversation with Christopher Lamb Our good friend, Vatican reporter Christopher Lamb, joined Dan Amiri and I this week to discuss the McCarrick Report. We discuss the harm he did to his victims and the failure of Church leadership to stop McCarrick despite many warnings about...
These have been a heavy few days for Catholics. Journalists and commentators are working to review the McCarrick report and decipher who is accountable, who has been lying, and who has manipulated the scandal to their own advantage. I want these answers as well—they need to be given and people need to be...
UPDATE: Here’s the video. Tonight at 6:30pm (EST) I’m giving a presentation on Pope Francis’s new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing, Michigan invited me to give an hour-long presentation (followed by a brief Q&A). You can watch it live on their Facebook page or watch the recording there...
Obviously the release of the McCarrick Report has caused a great stir in the Catholics world and will continue to do so for some time. It promises to be at the center of everyone’s minds when the US Bishops convene next week for their annual November General Assembly (to be conducted via Zoom...
There are two jaw-dropping revelations in the Vatican report on the apparently irresistible rise of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The first is that St John Paul II personally made the decision to name McCarrick Archbishop of Washington in November 2000 despite being fully aware of many reports of his predatory sexual behavior as...
In a few hours, the McCarrick Report will be released. This document is understood to be around 400 pages long, and it is the result of a two-year investigation into the former prelate’s career in the Church. McCarrick rose to the rank of Cardinal, despite years of rumors and accusations about his predatory...
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