On June 1, Mike Lewis wrote a compassionate, sensitive commentary on the homophobia experienced by gay priests. This is a subject of renewed widespread discussion in the Church following Pope Francis’s reputed frociaggine (“f****try”) remarks about gay seminarians last month....
If I could have one superpower, it would be the ability to speak and understand multiple languages. I am especially reminded of this when I travel abroad, for instance during my family’s brief encounter with Pope Francis back in April....
Let us consider the matter of words, specifically the terminology and argumentation used by extreme critics of Pope Francis. Words matter. Words are symbols of underlying meaning. Words set tone and establish context. What is striking is the tone of...
Since Pope Francis’s election in 2013, a feeling has emerged that Catholic discussions about moral issues are essentially now being spoken in two different languages. There is a “Franciscan” language focusing on broad issues of what social philosophers call the...
In 1945, George Orwell, who was born on this day in 1903, wrote a long essay called Politics and the English Language in which he warned of a growing modern tendency to use English vocabulary to specifically political ends—avoiding evocative...
Popular Posts