Last week was powerful for me. The Pope’s visit helped to stoke my passion for the gospel and renewed the sense of urgency that I feel about working to address many of the issues of injustice we are facing. I can think of few times I felt more proud of my Catholic faith then listening to the Pope address congress. I was brought to tears by his message. He spoke with conviction and boldness but also with an openness to... Read more

I have been a longtime fan of Stephen Colbert. He’s helped me to laugh through many of the most difficult and frustrating times of our nation’s history over the past 15 years or so (first on the Daily Show, and later in his own political comedy satire). Now Colbert is about to take the reins of the Late Show. I think he’ll do a great job. As the new show’s launch approaches Colbert was profiled this week by GQ. The profile touches... Read more

This week my wife almost bought me a tie. She’s visiting Ireland with my kids and her mom and they went to see the Book of Kells which is a beautiful illuminated Latin text of the Gospels. It’s 1200 years old and very cool. I was jealous. On their way out they stopped in the gift shop and found that the whole store seemed to be devoted to me. At least at first blush. My initials “BK” are the same as the... Read more

This week I was fascinated with the National Geographic look at the pontificate of Francis so far. They give a glimpse at how Francis is working within and without the traditional structures of the Vatican. It’s worth a read. One thing I found fascinating was the summary of how Francis differs from Benedict in matter of diplomacy. It was offered by Federico Lombardi, the longtime Vatican communications official. Here’s an excerpt from the article: After meeting with a world leader, the former pope [Benedict]... Read more

I will never forget the night my journey to understand the sacraments began. It was 1999 and I was meeting with a small with my Lutheran church. I had recently had a strong personal encounter with Jesus Christ and had begun going to meetings in the Church with a passion and fire to learn and share about Jesus. Then the leader, Byron, said something unexpected. He stated that we received the grace of God in the sacraments. This shocked and... Read more

As pravoslavie.ru reports: The reason of the break-off is the dispute on the canonical jurisdiction of Qatar territories, to which both Local Churches have claims This break has been on the horizon for a couple of years now, and it breaks my heart. Antioch and Jerusalem are among the very earliest Churches and most ancient patriarchates. Although neither of these Churches are in communion with Rome, it’s still very sad to see something, which appears to me as a glorified pissing match, turn... Read more

One of my pet peeves is going to a church where people pressure you to take your kids to a nursery to to children’s church. This was actually a big issue when I was a protestant. It is less of an issue in the Catholic Church. The reason I was bothered by it was because I feared that separating kids from worship would be detrimental to both the spiritual life of the children as well as to the broader life... Read more