One more for Vocation Awareness Week: Longtime readers know how fond I am of the Dominican Nuns of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary, in Summit, New Jersey, and it’s not just because they make fabulous hand cremes, lip balms and so forth (I note they appear to have completely “sold out” of their Christmas stock!). What I really love about these nuns is that they are utterly serious about God, about their spousal relationship to Jesus Christ... Read more
Was talking to an IT fellow about internet access-issues and the sorts of big-and-small server issues that are the everyday bane of those who make their living on the internets and he described a recent moment of angst: It is SO incredibly frustrating when you try EVERYTHING you know and most things you barely understand to fix a problem and NONE of it works. Then of course someone else looks at it and goes – “Oh there’s a password in... Read more
Quick question, here. The Layout Folk are wondering about tags and search functions, and what people use more. So I thought rather than taking an educated guess, I’d just ask: When you are looking for articles in this blog, do you use the tags at the base of the blogpost or do you go into the search box, or is it a mix of both? Thanks! Read more
Over at the Catholic Portal we have the curious circumstance (or gift) of reading about two women, both known as Marie of the Incarnation, one is a beata, and one is a saint, but both of them would be considered formidable women in any age…even our own, and both of them give lie to the notion that the Catholic church “keeps women down” or has held them back from self-actualizing and being all they could be. Frank Weathers enthusiastically introduces... Read more
Spent some time stargazing a while back, when I couldn’t sleep. No telescope, just the naked eye, a dark neighborhood and a willingness to wonder. I was digesting a bit of Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain, and it had stayed with me through evening’s pass – the sight of the stars, the early, wise writings of a monk. Does the fact that we can no longer see the stars have anything to do with our loss of wonder? These... Read more
For Vocation Awareness Week, it’s worth looking again at Pat Gohn’s excellent piece, How to Grow a Priest: Here’s something I learned a little too late in life: Faithful priests come from, well, the faithful. The call to the ministerial priesthood grows out of the common priesthood that all the baptized share, since the People of God participate in the Christ’s three offices of priest, prophet and king. And for good measure, let’s read the thoughts of one young seminarian:... Read more
I think we all get our turns in the crucible and suffer in different ways, but G. Dalrymple, writing of his experiences in Haiti, puts the complaints of day-to-day living into context: * I was approached by an elderly woman on our first day at Petionville, asking for some food. I had none to give her, so I approached a US soldier who was there and asked him about where there might be a food distribution so the woman could... Read more
If you missed the Tucson Memorial tonight, you can read President Obama’s speech here. It was a very good speech, very well delivered. I was watching it and monitoring twitter at the same time, and saw many judging the speech to be his best since the election. I think I agree with that. I recall being disappointing with Obama’s inaugural speech, and even some of Obama’s biggest supporters have complained that he sometimes seems too detached from his words or... Read more
If Michael Kelly and Tim Russert were alive today, they would be sickened and appalled to see the shambling madness that has descended upon their profession, most particularly as it manifests in the obsessive and whirling mania regarding Sarah Palin. When it gets to the point that Jonathan Chait has to marvel at his instincts to defend Palin, that’s a measure of their madness. Let’s begin at the beginning: on January 8, a madman in Arizona, listening to nothing but... Read more
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