This week, someone sent me a link to Scott Hahn’s Facebook page, where the prominent Catholic professor, author, and speaker shared Bishop Joseph Strickland’s latest pastoral letter, writing, “I am grateful for Bishop Strickland’s inspiring words.” Later, another reader mentioned...
I work with homeless and at-risk youth. I’ve been doing it for 42 years, the first few decades in or around New York City but for the last 20 years in Vermont. I’m an executive director, a role which entails...
Bishop Robert Barron of Word on Fire has taken the trouble to respond to my Commonweal article on World Youth Day in Lisbon, which we were both at, in order to dispel my “confusions” over the distinction between evangelization and...
A reflection on the readings for July 16, 2023, the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time While browsing the paper online this past week, I was introduced to the somewhat arresting term “hellstrip” in an article from gardener and writer Tovah...
Lent invites us to conversion, and the call to conversation can be painful. Worse, it can be embarrassing, especially when it comes from an unlikely source. I’ve recently experienced this myself, regarding a vice I barely even knew I had,...
Reflection on the readings of January 8, 2023 — The Epiphany of the Lord It seems that everyone is searching for a way to become a star. With the internet and social media, everyone can have a public platform. Twitter,...
Advent is a time of preparation, a time of celebration, and a time of reflection. If our minds and hearts are truly focused on the season as a time of preparation for the birth of Christ, then we must enter...
In 1989, a youth minister named Janie Tinklenberg read a book authored by Topeka minister Charles M. Sheldon entitled In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? In the book, Sheldon challenged his readers to consider how Jesus would respond when...
Much has been made in recent weeks of actor Shia LaBeouf’s reported conversion to Roman Catholicism. To label Mr. LeBeouf, who was reared in a household he has characterized as “hippie Jewish,” a true convert to the ways of the...
In our increasingly secular world, one would not expect a religious conversion to necessarily be breaking news. Yet when actor Shia LaBeouf shared in an interview with Bishop Robert Barron that he had decided to enter the Catholic Church after...
Listen on: Apple | Google | Spotify “It was in that silence, while we were in the crypt church of the cathedral during adoration with the monstrance exposed, that I had an experience that I could only call a mystical experience where I was— all...
A reflection on the Readings for March 20, 2022 — the Third Sunday of Lent (Year C) Over the last few years, I have offered adult faith-formation series based on some of the great saints of the Church. Thus far...
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