You just can’t get Congress to be Congress anymore. A few days after the United States House of Representatives denied President Obama sweeping powers to put through the Pacific trade deal, it reversed itself and passed fast track in a separate piece of legislation. I know this sounds cynical, but that lets the good Congresspeople claim that they voted with whoever they are talking to on this measure. If they are talking to those who favor the Pacific trade agreement,... Read more
This is a re-run of a post I wrote a while back. Happy Father’s Day Daddy. I love you. I miss you. I look forward to the day when I see you again. Where I’m from, we call our fathers “Daddy.” It’s not unusual to see 60-year-old cowboys, complete with the hat, the cattle and the big belt buckle, addressing their 80-year-old fathers as “Daddy.” It’s just the way we talk. My Daddy was what pundits condescendingly refer to as... Read more
President Obama combined his grief about the shooting in South Carolina with a call for gun control. I considered just not putting this video on Public Catholic because of that. I don’t think this tragic situation is the time or place for a debate like that. I decided to go ahead and post this video of the president’s remarks because I trust in the goodness of Public Catholic’s faithful readers. Please don’t excoriate the president or go at one another... Read more
I’m pretty sure that most of the people who’ve been snarling and sniping about Pope Francis’ latest encyclical have not read it. The reason I say that is that they are angry — purple in the face, hissing and spitting angry — about things it does not say. They are also angry about things they claim it doesn’t say that it in fact does. Laudato Si has a simple underlying argument. Pope Francis reasons that our spiritual bankruptcy has led... Read more
Nine people at prayer. A young man enters the church and sits down with them. Then, after an hour, he pulls out a gun and shoots them. The murdered are African American. The murderer is white. The motive is said to be race. I don’t understand it. I mean, I really don’t. How, why, would anyone do something like this? It appears that the black people made the white guy welcome. That would be in keeping with the beautiful hospitality I... Read more
Make no mistake about it. Laudato Si is not a wimpy, tip-toe-around-and-don’t-offend-anybody encyclical. It’s a throw-the-money-changers out of the Temple revolution of an encyclical. No wonder Rush Limbaugh hates this pope. A lot of you are going to find yourself challenged by Laudato Si, precisely because Pope Francis does not give you the option of ignoring what he’s saying. You can decide to go against the pope. Or you can decide to walk with him. But you can’t pretend he... Read more
If you want a copy of the Encyclical, Laudato Si, go here. My attorney colleague Tom Zampino has already found the answer to the question a lot of Catholics were asking. Pope Francis blasts abortion, population control in new encyclical, he tells us. It’s important for those of us here at Patheos Catholic to give you that fact, since the media is likely to ignore it and go off chasing after whatever verbiage they can pull out of context to... Read more
By their agendas you shall know them. In our agenda-laden society, you can almost write the scripts ahead of time for certain groups’ reactions to Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Environment. In fact, you could have written what they are going to say six months ago, or a year ago. Stretching it a bit further, I think you could have predicted how most of these people would have responded to this situation 10 years ago. These are people who don’t... Read more
I know, I know. Everybody and his dog is going to jump right over the starting gate and make absolute pronouncements about the Encyclical tomorrow. Some folks are even promising to tweet their responses as they read; kind of like taking their own mental pulse every few minutes and tossing the numbers out there on the internet. Not me. I am not Everybody, much less his dog. I’ll try to give you a smallish, first blush look at what I... Read more
Bishops are teachers, leaders and administrators. They are also priests. When a bishop becomes so exasperated with his flock that he no longer likes them or feels love for them, it’s time for that bishop to go back to God in prayer. Bishop Tobin of Rhode Island has published a letter to is flock that is a case in point. I can’t say what Bishop Tobin feels in his heart, but various comments he’s made and things he’s done lead... Read more
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