Since the first Holy Thursday of his papacy, when he moved the Mass of the Lord’s Supper to a youth prison on the outskirts of Rome, Pope Francis has used this day to paint a portrait of his vision for the Church: a Church that goes out to the margins and encounters, evangelizes,...
As we progress through this Holy Week, turning our minds toward the great Paschal Mystery and the Passion of our Lord, I would like to share and reflect upon one of the moments that struck me deeply during the early part of Francis’s papacy. It was April 13, 2014, on Palm Sunday, when...
“The young person of today is met with a host of external and internal challenges and opportunities, many of which are specific to their individual contexts and some of which are shared across continents. In light of this, it is necessary for the Church to examine the way in which it thinks about...
As an American it is difficult at times to think beyond the Right/Left, Capitalist/Socialist dichotomy that permeates our economic and political landscape. This often makes it difficult for Catholics on either side of the aisle to understand what the Church teaches about the ownership and use of property. It also makes it difficult...
“How much mercy it is necessary to have! And even those who err…. We must really be in place with ourselves. I will just recommend one virtue so dear to the Lord. He said, “Learn from me who am meek and humble of heart”. I run the risk of making a blunder, but...
In 1972, I spent 40 days in a hermitage a mile from Christ in the Desert Monastery, in Abiquiu, NM. (“Hermitage”? Please translate into standard modern English.) That is, I went camping with a friend for a couple of weeks, then alone for a few weeks more. I had no agenda for the...
When I wrote my 3-part series “Was Pope Benedict forced to resign?”, I was able to gather a lot of evidence showing how the Pope Emeritus has a positive opinion about the reigning pontiff. So, imagine my contentment when, just the week after I published that series, a letter from Benedict was made...
“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one...
First, an apology is in order. When we launched this site, one of our stated intentions was to let stories unfold in their entirety before posting our commentary. When the original story of Benedict’s letter was published, I jumped the gun and posted my analysis of the contents that were publicly available as...
What I am about to propose, for those of you who might be interested in a plausible explanation, is a hypothetical scenario that might explain the missing paragraph from the original news reports on Pope Emeritus Benedict’s letter, as well as the deliberately blurred text in the accompanying photograph. If you’re reading this,...
“There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world.” — quote attributed to St. Teresa of Avilla Shortly after Pope Francis’ election, an awful meme went viral on social media, probably done by uneducated folk who don’t...
For a long time, Pope John Paull II was the only pope I knew. He was the pope of my childhood, and I was married with four kids by the time he died. But his death, the funeral, and the conclave, they all unleashed a torrent of grace over the Church. It was...
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