Fr Eric Banecker When we speak about the Incarnation, the reality of the second person of the Trinity taking on human nature, we can fall into two bad habits. One is to resort to technical language, which, though necessary at times, can serve to obscure the sublime truth of this dogma. The other tendency is…
Gretchen Crowe For almost two years, the Church has been actively engaged in a process of listening and discernment. Maybe you participated in synod conversations at your parish, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you chatted about topics with friends or colleagues, maybe you didn’t. But very soon, this Synod on Synodality, which opened October 18, 2021,…
It can help to have a plan of action for parish closure in these trying times, writes Susan Erschen Fewer priestly vocations. Shrinking Catholic populations. An influx of immigrants bringing with them different religious traditions. Aging Church structures that need cost-prohibitive repairs. These are just a few of the reasons parishes throughout the western world…
David Mills You want to start a vigorous discussion among Catholics, make a definitive statement about what ‘good worship’ is. Be as specific as possible. Every level of detail will double the emotional investment other Catholics will be feeling. Arguments Which is to say: Don’t do that. It won’t get you anywhere, it won’t change…
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe With all the talk about ChatGPT, and Pope Francis’ ongoing criticism of bad preaching, a dark question crossed my mind: What if the homilies we heard at Mass were composed by artificial intelligence? Would they be better than what the average Catholic hears in the average parish every Sunday, or somehow, even…
The beatification of an unborn baby has raised interesting questions for theologians, writes Maria Wiering When the Ulma family was beatified September 10 as martyrs who gave their lives to protect Jews during the Holocaust, it may be the first time the Catholic Church has beatified an entire, specific family together, as well as the first beatification…
David Mills A friend of Dorothy Day’s told her that her children had called Peter Maurin “ragged and unkempt”. They were sure “that he never bathed, and he seemed to sleep in his clothes”. When Day asked him why he didn’t try to look better, he told her, “So as not to excite envy”. Maurin,…
Silvio Cuellar In today’s world, we are surrounded by constant noise and distractions. At home, we are always connected to media such as smartphones, computers, television and tablets. In the car, we are also saturated by noise and radio programs with commentary often inappropriate for our children’s ears. How do we bring some peace into…
St John Henry Newman knew that the Catholic Church was the Church of the earliest Christians, writes Mike Aquilina At the heart of St John Henry Newman’s conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism was his study of the early Christians, the fathers of the Church. As an Anglican clergyman, he believed that they held the answer…
You cannot will yourself to faithfulness, writes Bert Ghezzi I gave up ‘trying’ to pray daily many years ago. I discovered that if I did not build praying into my routine, then I routinely replaced it with lesser priorities. Willpower does not account for my faithfulness. My will is not strong enough to get me…