If you’re free from about 4PM Eastern you might want to turn your online radio dial to Ed Morrissey’s daily show, where I will join Ed and Kathryn Jean Lopez in discussing today’s startling news out of the Vatican: The Ed Morrissey Show and its dynamic chatroom can be seen on the permanent TEMS page. Be sure to join us, and don’t forget to keep up with the debate on my Facebook page, too! What’s a plug among friends. Check... Read more
(photo source) In the Pope’s most recent tweet, our dear Papa had this to say to us: We must trust in the mighty power of God’s mercy. We are all sinners, but His grace transforms us and makes us new. And today, on the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, Pope Benedict XVI has announced that he will retire in just a few weeks. He’s been looking very tired for a while — he is 86 years old. Funnily enough,... Read more
I really love thew way Matt Archbold writes about his kids, but this piece on a school talent show, and what he learned from it is a hilarious,insightful and touching keeper that really resonated with me, for all the nights I’ve lain away regretting a too-hasty answer, and for all the times — like the day pictured above — that I let a kid surprise me: She dropped to her knees in the living room, put her hands on her... Read more
Originally posted October 2006 and 2011 Yesterday Buster had an early morning appointment with a sports medicine guy; afterwards I took him out to breakfast. We went to a little local restaurant that is always mobbed for breakfast and lunch, and I didn’t look closely at the menu but saw “baked oatmeal” which I ordered believing it would be a basic bowl of oatmeal, only baked for some reason. Came to the table a steaming bowl of something slightly crusty... Read more
The nation is already accustomed to watching “reality shows” where ordinary folk — their foibles and failures — are served up as entertainment. And we’re already comfortable with an idea of separate standards for the elite folk who fly private jets to global warming conferences and the rest of us, who are meant to stay home and hang out the wash. So, these two headlines crawling across my twitter timeline, one right behind the other, did not surprise me at... Read more
Yesterday, I posted some thoughts on how the book of Genesis seems, so frequently to mirror John’s Gospel, at least in the beginning, and assigned myself the task of spending Lent prayerfully reading both books, “side-by-side”, so to speak. Then I read our tireless, ever-working Pope Benedict’s splendid remarks to his general audience, this morning, and it seems Papa is looking deeply at Genesis this week, too! And he has some wonderful things to say to us about creation, freedom,... Read more
Hmmmm, one of those weird, “cue the Theme from the Twilight Zone” moments. Maybe this is something everyone else already knows, but I didn’t know it. In fact, I just figured it out for myself. So, I’m either a genius, or just so unstudied that to further remark would be pathetic. I’m figuring the latter. But it occurred to me this morning that we Christians take great refuge in John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave... Read more
Today’s Gospel reading (Mark 5:21-43) tells us of Jairus’ plea to Jesus, that he go to his sick little girl, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” Oh, that spoke to me; on a snowy, cold morning, with the arthritis screaming, I read that and thought, “me too, that I may move!” Along the way to Jairus’ home, we read what is (for me, anyway)... Read more
Time is flying. People will soon be getting their March/April issue of The Catholic Answer, and in it you’ll find a column that might inspire the question in you: Vice or Victory? Carousel or Roller Coaster? Here was a woman swinging between excesses and defects of pride with pit stops at vanity, gluttony and sloth; here was someone excessive over “work” gifts and defective in appreciation of familial ones; a person deciding that while God and family may offer forgiveness,... Read more
(Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com) Over on Facebook, our friend James Martin, SJ noted that the National Catholic Reporter, in a long editorial, applauds Archbishop Jose Gomez for his public disciplining of Cardinal Roger Mahony: Gomez’s words are a direct contradiction of the weak defense that Mahony has advanced for years . . “Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem,” Mahony wrote. In studying for his master’s degree in social work, he said,... Read more
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