During this season of Lent, many parishes are preparing to welcome Catechumens into full communion with the Catholic Church. What a tremendous blessing and responsibility it is to welcome new members to our faith, but we must understand that our task doesn’t end with Easter weekend. For cradle Catholics, practicing our faith is...
A reflection on the readings for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, April 2, 2023. Jesus’ Galilean ministry has come to an end and the final journey to Jerusalem has been completed. He has preached the words of the Father, healed many, raised people to life, walked the streets of Palestine, eaten what...
In the human dream of a perfect world, holiness is always visualized as untouchability by sin and evil, as something unmixed with the later; there always remains in some form or other a tendency to think in terms of black and white, a tendency to cut out and reject mercilessly the current form...
On Sunday, March 19, BBC Radio broadcast a story featuring Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Vatican’s Prefect for the Dicastery of Divine Worship. The topic of the segment, which also included comments by papal biographer Austen Ivereigh and several traditionalist Catholics, was the implementation of Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis’s motu proprio limiting the celebration...
I have written several times for Where Peter Is about issues facing Indigenous communities, including regarding the so-called “doctrine of discovery” and, in collaboration with my close friend Meredith Dawson, regarding related problems that emerged during Pope Francis’s visit to Canada last year. These are issues about which I care very much and...
Pope Francis spoke at a meeting with people attending an international conference on offering education and training for migrants and refugees in September. During this meeting, he observed that “Catholic institutions of higher learning are called to educate their own students… to a clearer understanding of the phenomenon of migration, within a perspective...
In May 2020, Pope Francis published a prayer to Our Lady for the sick. Perhaps today we can pray it in a particular way for him. (Information and updates below the prayer.) O Mary, You shine continuously on our journey as a sign of salvation and hope. We entrust ourselves to you, Health of...
“It isn’t fair!” “I never said life was fair.” This exchange took place between my father and me many times as I grew up. It always struck me as odd that my dad—a lawyer who worked incredible hours in the U.S. justice system—truly believed that life was not fair. But he did. My...
When I was in college, the leader of a young adult group told me something like, “While the particular vocation a person is called to is the best vocation for them, the priesthood and consecrated vocations are objectively greater.” At the time I was dating or engaged, so I was pretty annoyed by...
In the program’s 74th year, the Christopher Awards have once honored various books, TV shows, and movies. The Christopher Awards celebrate writers, producers, directors, authors, and illustrators whose work ‘affirms the highest values of the human spirit’ and reflects the Christopher motto, ‘It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.’...
Pope Francis is surely one of the most polarizing figures of the 21st century, and perhaps the most controversial pontiff since Blessed Pius IX. It seems that either one loves him or decries him as an enemy of the Catholic way of life. Why? In addressing the question, we need to be mindful...
A reflection on the readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 26, 2023. During my years as a high school chaplain, I would welcome the incoming freshmen with the following piece of advice: Some people look back on their high school years as the most miserable time in their lives. Whether it...
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