Many Jesuits these days have found themselves challenged and made slightly uncomfortable by the lifestyle of Pope Francis. I feel free to mention this fact because it includes myself. His practice as cardinal of not going out to eat at expensive restaurants but only soup kitchens is a challenge not only to any university president or high school president, but also to any well-like scholastic in regency. He will find himself wined and dined by doting and appreciative parents, and... Read more
English Catholic priest Fr. Michael Murphy, commenting in The Tablet following the US Senate’s rejection of bipartisan gun control legislation, has observed a disconnect between second-amendment maximalism and our national claim to trust in God. While the people of the United States hold their Constitution and its Amendments as sacred, they do so also with their nation’s motto, ‘In God we trust.’ There appears, at this time, to be a conflict between the interpretation of the Second Amendment and the motto.... Read more
I have lived in this country for almost twenty years . It is my home. And yet, even after so long, there are certain things that I cannot understand and will never be able to understand. Put the gun culture on the top of that list. Aquinas defined the law as an ordinance of reason for the common good, and it is simply reasonable that with so many deaths caused by guns, the authorities would step in to regulate the... Read more
A recent episode of Salt + Light Television’s Vatican Connections offers a refreshingly balanced and informative report on Pope Francis’ recent creation of an advisory panel consisting of eight cardinals from around the world to advise him on church governance and particularly curial reform. One easily overlooked point given mention here is that “the idea to put together an advisory panel was one of the topics that was discussed during the general congregation meetings just before the conclave.” This... Read more
Over the past year, since I was dismissed from the diaconate formation program in my diocese, I have been thinking about the way the program was structured. Part of this was selfish: there were pedagogical issues that contributed, I think, to my dismissal. (To date I have never gotten a coherent explanation for why I was dismissed, but that is another story and not relevant to the topic at hand.) But I am also a teacher by profession, and the... Read more
In the United States, there is a lot of emphasis on the rights of Catholic employers to be exempt from any mandate to provide health insurance plans including contraception. But of course, we know that the Catholic understanding of right differs from the standard liberal one – in the former, you have a right to something so you can discharge a corresponding duty, whereas in the latter, you have a right not be coerced as long as it doesn’t bump up against... Read more
John Henry Newman on the organic nature of renewal and reform affected by Benedictine monasticism of old. “When the bodily frame receives an injury, or is seized with some sudden malady, nature may be expected to set right the evil, if left to itself, but she requires time; science comes to shorten the process, and is violent that it may be certain. This may be taken to illustrate St. Benedict’s mode of counteracting the miseries of life. He found the... Read more
So they left … rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name. –Acts 5:41 I have recently gotten to know a remarkable Iraqi priest and scholar who is working to preserve the deeply rooted heritage of his country’s embattled Christian population. Though now a member of the Dominican Order, Fr. Najeeb originates from Iraq’s very ancient Chaldean Catholic Church, which is now a severely persecuted minority, despite a presence that far predates the very... Read more
Please pray for the people of Boston – for those who were killed and wounded, for those who love them, and also for those worried and waiting for word about their loved ones. Read more
There is a lot of hand-wringing going on about the refusal of the media to report on the abortion shop-of-horrors case involving Kermitt Gosnell. This is a truly horrific case, stomach turning in its intensity. Just consider some of the language in the grand jury report: “When you perform late-term “abortions” by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not... Read more
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