LISBON, August 2, 2023 — World Youth Day (WYD) is featuring a new model of catechesis: the Rise Up Encounters. During a press conference held yesterday, Fr. Nuno Amador, the Pastoral Director of WYD 2023, listed these Rise Up Encounters...
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...
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 few items of interest today. The first is that I was quoted in a Washington Post article yesterday by Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli about the continuing opposition to Pope Francis from within the Church. Published under the headline...
Anyone who has played youth baseball or softball has seen a backstop, a large structure made of chain-link fencing that is erected behind home plate to serve as a barrier in case a wild pitch or errant throw gets past...
November is the month of All Souls. It is a time when we Catholics remember and pray for those who have died. The Church sets aside this month especially for prayer on behalf of the souls of those in Purgatory....
Editor’s note: This is the eighth and final article in “Combat For Contemplative Life,” a series about the responses — inside and outside the cloister — to Pope Francis’s reforms for women religious in contemplative communities. Part one, by Mike...
In Pope Francis’s 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, he expressed his desire for a renewed missionary impulse throughout the entire Church. Francis called for the Church to become more mission-oriented by making “ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive...
In the United States, a pervasive intellectualism continues its stranglehold on Catholics, thwarting our flourishing. Again and again, we hear the need for “doctrinal clarity,” or about how Pope Francis is “confusing.” Many seem to believe that being clear-minded and...
Faith is the miraculous gift of God. In faith, we are reborn. Through faith, we are sustained by God’s grace. But how do we nurture faith? In a recent Wednesday catechesis, Pope Francis said, “We grow in faith inasmuch as...
How are people chosen to lead catechesis? Too often it is an appointment made without much forethought and typically a knee-jerk response by the parish priest when he realizes the First Holy Communion program is beginning shortly and he’s struggling...
The Church often asks, “Why are young people leaving?” But it usually comes up with the wrong answers. “They left because they did not take the trouble to learn about their faith,” or, “secular society drew them away.” However, one...
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