Scott Richert A decade or more ago, I went to Confession one Saturday afternoon. Like many other priests, the particular confessor who heard my confession that day frequently defaulted to three Hail Marys as the standard penance that he assigned. But not that day. Whether led by something I had confessed or by his own…
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe How we live our lives is substantially different from how our parents and grandparents lived theirs. We no longer need to wait a whole week for the next episode of a favourite TV show; we can watch all five seasons in a single binge. We don’t have to buy tickets or drive…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: My new parish priest’s wife died before he became a priest. He sometimes even talks about his grandchildren during the homily. Why is this allowed? He obviously wasn’t always celibate, and I thought priests had to be celibate? A: Latin (a.k.a. “Roman”) Catholic priests are indeed expected to be celibate.…
A colleague of mine, a clinical therapist, shares this story: A woman came to him in considerable distress. Her husband had recently died of a heart attack. His death had been sudden and at a most inept time. They’d been happily married for 30 years and, during all those years, had never had a major…
Jem Sullivan August 27 Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 22:19-23 Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8 Rom 11:33-36 Mt 16:13-20 Artificial intelligence and language processing tools like ChatGPT are changing the face of education today. Teachers are finding new ways to evaluate what their students truly know. Instead of superficial questions that can be answered easily by…
St Pope John Paul II’s insightful encyclical has yet to be studied and implemented as it should be, writes Carl Olson August 6 marked the 30th anniversary of St John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor (“The Splendour of Truth”). It is the first and only papal encyclical focused on moral theology. Its continued importance cannot…
Fr Patrick Briscoe OP As I stood at the bars of the chilling confines of St Maximilian Kolbe‘s cell within the walls of Auschwitz, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by an inexplicable mix of emotions. The gravity of the place and the memory it held were inescapable. And yet, at the same time, a…
Daria Sockey During his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI said that there was one prayer that he wished all Catholics would learn to use. Can you guess what it is? Guess again – not the rosary. Nope. Not the Divine Mercy Chaplet either. Here are some hints. This prayer is nearly as old as the…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: I’m reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church and have a question about ccc 460. Can you please fully explain the lines: “For the son of God became man so that we might become God” and “… might make men gods.” I am to become God? That doesn’t seem right.…
Andrew Greeley once suggested that we might profitably meditate on the following vision of heaven: The condition of physical ecstasy and emotional satisfaction which results from sexual intercourse between two people who are deeply in love is the best anticipation currently available to us of our permanent condition in the resurrected state. “The powerful inspirational…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser