A reflection on the readings for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 5, 2023. Many of us have come across the acronym “AMDG,” and wondered what it meant. These four letters are often inscribed on the walls and over the doors of Jesuit schools, and they used to be written at the...
And what is our faith like? Is it strong? Or is it at times a little like rosewater, a somewhat diluted faith? When problems arise are we brave like Peter or inclined to be lukewarm? Peter teaches us that faith is not negotiable. Among the People of God this temptation has always existed:...
Pope Francis spoke today to a group of young people and catechists as he continued his pilgrimage in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In his address, he asked those gathered to look at the five fingers on each of their hands. And for each finger, he taught an essential lesson of the...
Earlier today, Pope Francis celebrated Mass for over one million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In his homily, he returned to the theme of peace over violence that has thus far characterized this pilgrimage. In her report for Vatican News, Deborah Castellano Lubov reported: With Jesus, the Pope insisted, “evil never...
Certain political and ideological currents within the Catholic Church treat almost any contemporary exercise of magisterial teaching as cause for pessimism, suspicion, and worry. In this way of thinking any new teaching that isn’t a straightforward reiteration of previous teaching should be understood as a departure from previous teaching, and any (or almost...
On January 11th, Pope Francis began a new cycle of Wednesday Audiences by returning to one of his favorite themes: the difference between proselytism and evangelization. After commenting on the importance of evangelization in the Christian life, and reflecting on the calling of Matthew, he quoted a homily given by Pope Benedict XVI...
The Readings for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Please forgive the tardiness of this post. Since it is the fifth Sunday of the month, our regularly scheduled reflection-writers were off the hook, and I dropped the ball in finding a replacement reflection! On top of that, today is the fourth Sunday in...
I will allow a sentence of Romano Guardini to help me (…) Guardini says the Church “is not an institution conceived and built in theory… but a living reality…. She lives through the course of time, in becoming, like every living being, in undergoing change…. And yet in her nature she remains ever...
When news of the death of Pope Benedict XVI broke on December 31, the expectations of many were shattered in a corner of the Church. It was not the result of grief over the death of our pope emeritus, but because it meant future events would not occur in the way they thought...
This is the third (and hopefully final) installment in a series on the Pillar’s interview with retired Archbishop Charles Chaput, a man whose opposition to Pope Francis and his teachings appears to run deep. In my first article, I addressed Chaput’s rejection of synodality as a concept and his bizarre claim that Vatican...
Recently I attended a Catechist formation training day at a local diocesan training center and one of the keynote presenters was musician Steve Angrisano (www.steveangrisano.com). If you’ve never had the pleasure of attending one of his events or listening to him speak and perform, you don’t know what you’re missing. Over the course...
On January 10, 2021, the Holy Father Pope Francis, in a move that received little attention in US Catholicism, issued a Moto Proprio Spiritus Domini, in which he ordered that Canon 320 of the Code of Canon Law be altered to make it possible for Catholic women of good character to participate in...
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