1. The life of St. Mark Ji Tianxiang. I wrote about this 19th century Chinese layman recently for Our Sunday Visitor. St. Mark Ji has become a symbol of hope and a patron for people who are struggling with opioid addiction, and who have lost loved ones to the disease of addiction. He struggled with opium addiction for 30 years, and was denied the Eucharist because his confessor thought he wasn’t serious about amending his life. St. Mark Ji never... Read more
Overturning Roe v. Wade has been the pro-life movement’s holy grail almost from the moment in 1973 that the U.S. Supreme Court declared abortion to be a constitutional right. And given the high court’s current conservative-majority makeup, some legal analysts believe it’s a very real possibility that the justices could be poised to strike down, or severely narrow, the court’s landmark decision on abortion. But guess what? Even if Roe is overturned, abortion will still be legal the next day... Read more
So, every week I’ll be sharing links to some of my recent articles in Our Sunday Visitor and other publications, as well as other stories in the Catholic Press that I find interesting. Click on the headlines for the original articles. 1. Pope Francis in Asia. The Holy Father will be in Thailand and Japan this week, marking the first papal visit to those Asian countries since St. Pope John Paul II traveled there in the early 1980s. I previewed... Read more
A journalist is used to seeing some off-the-wall comments underneath news stories. But one reader’s comment, underneath a column I wrote last year on immigration, really made me shake my head. “I’ll bet Brian votes for pro-abortion politicians.” Say what? The reader somehow inferred that from a column where I argued that we should treat migrants, regardless of their legal immigration status, as human beings. “But, abortion!” a friend who saw the comment later jokingly told me on Facebook. Shutterstock... Read more
Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas has been a strong voice on behalf of migrants and asylum seekers at the nation’s southern border. Earlier this year, he presented prayers cards to Pope Francis that bore the photos of migrant children who had died in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol. A few months later, he escorted a group of migrants across the U.S.-Mexican border who had previously been denied asylum, describing their plight as “an affront to human... Read more
Hi everybody. This is my first blog for Patheos, and today I’ll be writing a little bit more about a recent Pew Research Center survey on cohabitation that I wrote about this week for Our Sunday Visitor. In short, the survey documents what we all pretty much know already: most young adults in the United States have cohabitated at one point in their lives, and most Americans – including 74 percent of Catholics – see no problem with that. Any... Read more
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