Yesterday, I went to a talk at Georgetown by Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, one of the leading experts in Catholic social teaching. His talk did not disappoint. Echoing the thought of the current pope, Cardinal Marx talked about how Christians are tasked with changing the world and making it better. When we die, he noted, we will be asked to account for how we tried to make the world a better place. This is really unique to Christianity, as most of... Read more
I always get nervous when Church holidays and national holidays fall too near each other. There is too great a temptation to fuse the two, sometimes with idolatrous results. (For example, the parish choir I was part of two years ago, when July 4 happened to fall on a Sunday, would have added “God Bless America” as a communion hymn if I had not balked at the suggestion.) I’m squeamish even about calling these celebrations by a common term that... Read more
On this anniversary of the 1527 martyrdom of Swiss Anabaptist leader Michael Sattler, his witness is being commemorated in a new way: not for the heroism or heresy (depending on who you ask) of breaking with the Catholic Church, but for his uncompromised commitment to social justice and nonviolence that now serves as a rich foundation for bridging the Anabaptist Mennonite and Catholic Benedictine traditions. This commemoration is a milestone in the nascent project of my dear friends and mentors Ivan... Read more
Franciscan University of Steubenville is in the news this week for all the wrong reasons, a perfect emblem of the depravity of latter-day American neoconservative Catholicism. (more…) Read more
My good friend Jim Keane has written a stirring encomium to the religious sisters who are members of the LCWR at In All Things. The pastor at my parish this morning referenced the tremendous motherly role that many of those sisters have played in our lives. On this Mother’s Day we do well to remember them. Yet the pastor also reprimanded the Vatican for its importunate “attack” on those same sisters, as he called it. Also on this Mother’s Day, I think... Read more
Passing by St Patrick’s An old church downtown By glass and steel surrounded I reached out my hand and touched the stone and brick My companion from Italy Said “it is a beautiful church” And I said, “Yes, it is.” We agreed, not on the building But the Body. Read more
Despite my overall misgivings about the translation principles involved, I have been making a gradual, uneasy peace with the new Missal. But one thing has been increasingly bothering me that I had not anticipated: the more frequent appearance of the memorial acclamation that says, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again.” Wait – what happened to the resurrection? This acclamation was there before, but I guess the reduction... Read more
We’ve all heard about it by now: the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has done it again, issuing a hotly contested critique of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States. Hopefully, we’ve all cooled down enough after the initial explosion to begin a more nuanced discussion of the matter (although my frequent frustrations with ecclesial polemics lead me to fear that this may be hoping for too much). Nathan O’Halloran has given us a helpful... Read more
So Obama is now in favor of gay marriage. I can’t say I was surprised. But what did surprise me was the wall-to-wall adulation on sites like Talking Points Memo. This issue is being cast as a huge deal, a watershed moment, a historical turning point. (more…) Read more
With the Republican party becoming completely unacceptable as a valid electoral choice, this initiative assumes greater importance than ever. Please sign, and please pass on! The idea is to support the following language in the Democratic platform: “We respect the conscience of each American and recognize that members of our Party have deeply held and sometimes differing positions on issues of personal conscience, like abortion and the death penalty. We recognize the diversity of views as a source of strength and... Read more
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