“Woman, you are a gift!”

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

That’s how Pat Gohn begins her sensationally good reflection, published online at today’s Washington Post: There’s no mistaking biology. Womanly bodies are wonderfully made, and purposefully created with an empty space of a womb carried under her heart. A woman’s womb, her uterus, signals that she is made for something and someone more than herself. This reality touches a woman at her very core — physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The womb’s raison d’etre illuminates this gift that welcomes and receives the life... Read more

Lutherans becoming Catholic? “Unthinkable”

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

Looks like the idea of a Lutheran Ordinariate isn’t going very far. From Reuters: Two leading Lutheran clerics have rejected suggestions from the Vatican that it could create a subdivision for converted Lutherans similar to its structures for Anglicans who join the Roman Catholic Church. The dispute, concerning tiny numbers of believers but major issues in ecumenical relations, comes as the churches mark the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity this week. Rev Martin Junge, the Chilean-born secretary general... Read more

In the E-mail: “The priest had his finger up his nose…”

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

A reader writes: Holy hands are not always CLEAN hands. As I have observed men in rest rooms, 3 or 4 out of 10 wash their hands and women about the same, says my wife. Why don’t all who handle the Eucharist wash hands just before handling the host? Is it that they— including the priest— have no respect for the Eucharist or the people they serve? My wife and I were at a service where another priest was sitting at the altar waiting to... Read more

Bombshell: Los Angeles church records reveal efforts to conceal abuse

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

People knew this was coming, and here it is, from the Los Angeles Times: Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday. The archdiocese’s failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J.... Read more

The benediction for the inauguration

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

Elizabeth Tenety at the Washington Post notes: The Rev. Luis Leon gave the benediction at President Obama’s inauguration Monday, praying that “with your blessing, we can see each other created in your image, a unit of God’s grace, unprecedented, irrepeatable (sic) and irreplaceable.” Leon also included a reference to ‘gay or straight’ Americans as created in God’s image, contrasting with the controversial words on homosexuality spoken by Louie Giglio, who was first chosen to give the benediction but withdrew after scrutiny over his attitude... Read more

Blanco’s poem: a whiff of Whitman at the inauguration

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

I detected a little of Walt Whitman in Richard Blanco’s poem this afternoon. He hears America singing: Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom, buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días in the language my mother taught me — in every language spoken into one wind carrying our lives without prejudice, as these words break from my lips. One sky: since the Appalachians... Read more

So, Max, how was your first Latin Mass?

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

My blog neighbor Max Lindenman decided to see what all the fuss was about, and took in his first Mass in the Extraordinary Form. He writes: A Mass in the Extraordinary Form does not have to be cold, bombastic, or decked in glitz like Liberace’s bathroom. It’s always seemed to me that trads like to plug all these qualities as a package deal under the label “reverence,” “majesty,” or “transcendence” Eavesdrop on the wrong Internet debates, and you’ll come away thinking... Read more

At Biden swearing in: “Walk humbly with your God…”

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

For those who may have missed it: the prayer delivered by Rev. Kevin O’Brien, S.J. at yesterday’s swearing-in of Vice President Joseph Biden. See below. Read more

Condoleeza Rice joins CBS News

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

Quite a coup for the network: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has joined CBS News as a contributor — just in time for inauguration coverage. Rice, who served as secretary of state during President George W. Bush’s second term, made her debut on the network’s “Face the Nation” program Sunday and will be included in inauguration coverage on Monday. CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager and president David Rhodes made the announcement Sunday, saying Rice “will use her insight and vast experience... Read more

I’ll drink to that: new pubs pledge profits to charity

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:00 pm By Deacon Greg Kandra

A very cool trend worth noting, from the New York Times: Ask a bartender exactly how much profit was collected from that pint of beer you just drank, and the answer is likely to be as murky as a barrel-aged bourbon stout. The economics of alcohol, like the calorie count, are usually about the last things purveyors want their customers focused on. But now a new generation of beer halls dedicated to something beyond the cash register is cropping up... Read more