There is a growing realization that Christians need community. As Pope Francis wrote in Fratelli Tutti: “No one can face life in isolation… We need a community that supports and helps us, in which we can help one another to keep looking ahead. How important it is to dream together.” By itself, natural...
A few years ago, author and philosophy professor Edward Feser wrote an essay criticizing Catholic teaching on the death penalty. His piece centers on the following question: Does Pope Francis’s teaching on capital punishment amount to a doctrinal change or merely a prudential judgment? The thrust of his argument is this: either Pope...
I first met Monica in 2017. At the time I was the Director of Religious Education at my parish and I attended a retreat for catechists and DREs that my diocese was hosting. The retreat was called Kerygma Encounter. Monica was one of the presenters and writers of the retreat. I can honestly say...
A reflection on the readings of April 23, 3023 — The Third Sunday of Easter Almost one thousand years ago, St. Anselm of Canterbury penned his famous ontological argument for the existence of God. This philosophical proof has been debated, refuted, upheld, and studied for centuries. It has become a staple of introduction...
Likewise inseparable are Christ and the Church – because the Church and Mary are always together and this is precisely the mystery of womanhood in the ecclesial community – and the salvation accomplished by Jesus cannot be understood without appreciating the motherhood of the Church. To separate Jesus from the Church would introduce...
Do you know what white meat is? Of course you do! It’s the edible flesh that comes from poultry. At least, that’s what it means in modern English. If you were to travel back to England the 1400s, however, “white meat” would have a very different meaning. In that stage of the English...
In this week’s episode of The Debrief, Dominic De Souza and I discuss three recent debates in the Church. First, we look at the controversial decision by Cardinal Blase Cupich to limit the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament when a cross-country Eucharistic procession passes through the Archdiocese of Chicago. How does he justify...
A few years ago, a family friend went to confession for the first time in over three decades. She was an otherwise practicing Catholic, but had a great fear of returning to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. My mom was still living at the time, and had been “working on her” for a while...
There is often a double standard in many Catholic spaces in how gay and straight Catholics are perceived to engage in sexual sin. Many commentators seem to treat being or identifying as gay as being inherently unchaste or as presenting a uniquely strong or even insurmountable obstacle to chastity. Chastity itself then becomes...
Recently, Michael Sean Winters published an article entitled “How will a synodal church embody the virtue of obedience?” He shows that the Paschal mystery is accomplished through the obedience of Jesus, and indeed, the Church itself exists in through the obedience of its members, beginning with Mary’s reply to the angel, “Behold, the...
Before the advent of “gifted and talented” coursework at the high school level, my classmates and I were among the original “trailblazers.” By the time we reached senior year, we had either taken classes at neighboring colleges in math and science or had exhausted the options at our own school and needed to...
In late July 2021, I attended Mass at Our Lady of Peace Parish in Santa Clara, California, with my teenage family members. I literally and figuratively grew up at that church as my mom worked as a secretary there for twenty-three years before retiring in 2010. I spent a lot of time there...
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