The Saga of the Door the Cardinal Didn’t Close When He Wasn’t Even in the Country Never mind the Cathedral continues, with another protest planned later in the month. Headlines have suggested that Cardinal Dolan told people they were unwelcome in St. Patrick’s Cathedral last Sunday. But he wasn’t even in the country — and the director of operations of the cathedral simply tried to keep a protest from disturbing the Mass. (I wrote about this here and here.) One... Read more
Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God! There is something about that Deo gratias at the end of Mass, isn’t there? We are a missionary people, going out into the world, sanctified by the indwelling of our God! What overwhelming consolation. What overwhelming responsibility. What desire to stay with this. What gratitude for the love of the Incarnation. The Passion and Death. The Resurrection. And that it is not all past tense. In the collect... Read more
From the Catholic News Agency’s report on Tuesday morning Mass with Pope Francis: Reflecting on how St. Paul endured pain for Christ, Pope Francis said that good Christians do not complain about their trials but endure them with patient silence because their hearts are at peace. A Christian “who constantly complains, fails to be a good Christian: they become Mr. or Mrs. Whiner, no? Because they always complain about everything, right?” the Pope remarked in his May 7 homily at... Read more
There was a protest outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue yesterday; I write about here. In a statement, Joe Zwilling, the communications director for the Archdiocese of New York, says about the incident: Yesterday, prior to the 10:15 a.m. Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, a small group of individuals approached the Cathedral with blackened hands, as a form of protest in response to Cardinal Dolan’s blog post, “All Are Welcome.” Although organizers have attempted to call yesterday’s events by... Read more
The bishop of Harrisburg, Bishop Joseph P. McFadden, died suddenly and sacramentally on Thursday. In one of his last conversations, he radiated gratitude: I love the people and the priests of Harrisburg. God has been very good to me. I have accepted four students into the seminary and I have seven more to interview. God is really blessing us with vocations. He asked for absolution from the priest who was driving him to an E.R. and died before they got... Read more
This is the right, this is our lives: There’s nothing soft-focus or saccharine about real Christianity. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for the brave; not the complacent, and not cowards. The world and its beauty give glory to God; but we live in it with divided hearts, and so the world is also a field of conflict. God’s son died on a cross and rose from the dead to deliver us from our sins. He didn’t take away our... Read more
Oh my goodness, the continuity, and the Spirit unleashed! That’s my continued experience of Pope Francis. This morning’s homily is no exception. He talked about that when we, members of the Body of Christ in the Church, become of the world, we cannot transmit the Gospel to others. Isn’t this so much of the problem? We succumb to pressures and desires, discouragement, despair –- we stop praying, we stop seeing the hand of God, we don’t hear Him, we don’t... Read more
After Jorge Cardinal Bergolio was elected pope, on the morning of his installation Mass, Timothy Cardinal Dolan passed right by me as I was doing an interview with the NET-TV outside St. Peter’s Basilica, on his way up to an interview with The Today Show. In his interview, Cardinal Dolan talked with enthusiasm and gratitude for Pope Francis and his early words as pontiff. (NET-TV is a project of the Diocese of Brooklyn, now famous for its Jesus “Hipster” ad.)... Read more
“Abandon yourself for Him, learning from this Jesus who in order to give you the life of grace gave up his bodily life,” Saint Catherine of Siena says. “And as a sign of his generosity he opened up his whole self by creating a bath within his open side after he died, to show us his love,” she continued. Here’s a question: “Do you want to live in security?” Does anyone answer anything but an emphatic yes! to that? “Then... Read more
There are so many chilling aspects of the new Live Action video from a Bronx, N.Y., clinic. I write some about it here. One is where, after advising flushing a dead baby down a toilet if it came to it, a clinic worker assures the undercover reporter that abortions on women at 23 weeks happen “every day.” So much for “rare.” Do these women know they have options? Read more
Kathryn Lopez
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