The Justifying Power of Mercy Some years ago, I read about this incident at a middle school: a boy, who was about ten years old, was suspected of stealing. One day, at the end of class, his teacher called him over and asked him if he would run an errand for her. He...
Anyone who has spent enough time around the Catholic Church knows the type: they are variously stigmatists, exorcists, end-times prophets, levitating, bilocating, breathing forth the odor of sanctity – sometimes all at once. They claim knowledge not vouchsafed any other mortal before or since. On them and on their unique and unprecedented intimate...
On June 1, Mike Lewis wrote a compassionate, sensitive commentary on the homophobia experienced by gay priests. This is a subject of renewed widespread discussion in the Church following Pope Francis’s reputed frociaggine (“f****try”) remarks about gay seminarians last month. I highly recommend Mike’s essay. I’d like to write on the subject, however,...
A reflection for the feast of Corpus Christi At the core of our Catholic faith is the belief in the real presence of Christ – body, soul, and divinity – in the Eucharistic Bread and Wine. Take this belief out of Catholicism and you have a totally different religion. The sacramental life would...
At the moment, the most income-generating investments are weapons manufacturing and contraceptives. One destroys life; the other prevents life. And these are the most profitable investments. What future can we expect? It is bad. The matter is complex, but this cannot and must not become an alibi for not addressing it. There is...
I remember an article I came across more than two decades ago written by a man, Dennis, about Father Mike, a popular local priest with whom he shared a decade-long friendship. Father Mike had died suddenly some months before, and Dennis was beginning to hear rumors circulating about the priest that disturbed him...
America magazine ran this interesting take on Kansas City Chiefs player Harrison Butker’s immensely controversial Benedictine College commencment speech.I’d like to recommend it to readers of Where Peter Is to supplement other perspectives on Butker’s speech in the Catholic press, especially to supplement ones that are (rightly) criticial or condemnatory. The author, David...
Sometimes the most unusual of circumstances produce the most extraordinary people, and this includes those who achieve sainthood. The story of young Carlo Acutis is one that has captured the hearts and admiration of people young and old all over the world, and recent news that the young millennial will soon join the...
It was always a lot of fun teaching philosophy and showing students how human reason is able to demonstrate the existence of God, just through deductive reasoning alone, especially Leibniz’ proof: “If the Necessary being is possible, then it exists.” However, what human reason is able to know about God in the end...
At a funeral a few years back, the family wanted me to share something the deceased man wrote. His name was Dennis. I would like begin my reflection with his words: “It is good to slow down and see the beauty in life I don’t think most people ever do! There is truly...
A reflection on the readings for May 26, 2024, Trinity Sunday. “And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the essence, for there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy...
But where does temptation come from? How does it act within us? The Apostle tells us that sin does not come from God but from our passions, from our inner weaknesses, from the wounds that original sin has left within us. That is where temptation comes from, from those passions. Interestingly enough, temptation...
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