Thanks to the folks at Daily Gospel Online, here is a meditation by Blessed Charles de Foucauld that seems particularly timely as we draw closer to Lent. I found his turn of phrase “a little good will” evocative and reassuring: he makes salvation seem easy to reach, and it makes the Ash Wednesday call to “turn away from sin and believe the Gospel” less daunting. God has not made salvation depend on knowledge, intelligence, wealth, long experience, special gifts that... Read more
For the past two weeks I have been in Europe on business. The first weekend I was there I went to a Sunday night mass at a Jesuit parish in Granada: the Church of the Sacred Heart. It was unremarkable, and I refer you to a previous post where I discussed going to mass in Spain. On the second weekend I was in Rome, and the choices of where to go to mass were overwhelming. I ended up ruling out... Read more
Today is the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita and the first International Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking, which Pope Francis observed following the traditional Sunday Angelus prayer. We are all invited to join the observance with this moving prayer: O God, when we hear of children and adults deceived and taken to unknown places for purposes of sexual exploitation, forced labor, and organ ‘harvesting’, our hearts are saddened and our spirits angry that their dignity and rights... Read more
It was a bright, sunny day in April 2005. Weeks away from my college graduation, I paid a visit to the office of a staff member who over the course of four years had become very dear to me. A scholar of Latin American liberation theology, Irene had organized some of the most memorable experiences of my university years. Thanks to her, I had spent time teaching ESL to recent Latin American immigrants in the New York City area, and... Read more
The Catholic Transcript, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Hartford, has started a new feature: a monthly column on bioethics by Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a priest from Fall River, MA and director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. Fr. Pacholczyk’s column this month was on physician assisted suicide, a topic of considerable interest here in Connecticut: it has been raised a couple times in the state assembly, and supporters will probably attempt to bring it up... Read more
MONDAY WAS THE 86TH ANNIVERSARY of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., so I thought I would share some thoughts about his life and legacy. My first encounter with Dr. King’s reputation as a public figure was as a student at my predominantly black elementary school in Richmond, California. I was 6 years old in 1968, and watched a replacement for Pullman Elementary rising from an immense patch of dirt in a cordoned-off corner of the school yard.... Read more
Like Bertrand Russell, I have always kind of felt that, while I can’t directly refute Anselm’s famous ontological argument for the existence of God, I am also not convinced by it. It feels to me like I am being subtly manipulated with words. Nevertheless, I find the God that the ontological argument leads to, i.e., one who is not any greater even with all of creation added to it, very appealing for much work in theology because it keeps God... Read more
In response to a question from a French journalist on the plane from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, Pope Francis said something that may sound shocking to those of us from liberal societies. I’m using the word “liberal” here in a classical sense; that is, not merely in reference to the political left, but to the over-arching social ideal of personal choice and autonomy as being among the highest goods, based on an implicit definition of freedom as essentially the right... Read more
Pope Francis, speaking at the University of Manila in response to a 12 year old girl describing her life on the street: There are some realities that you can only see through eyes that have been cleansed by tears. I pray for the daily grace of such tears. Update: further context for this remarkable quote is given by an article at Crux. Read more
Updated 01/17/2015 I have a quick question on divorce and excommunication: was it ever the case in the United States that Catholics who obtained a civil divorce were excommunicated? I am not talking about barring from communion those who are divorced and then remarry outside the Church. Rather, was the act of getting a civil divorce itself ever grounds for being barred from communion? This seems to be a simple question, but I have wasted a large chunk of the... Read more
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