Elizabeth Scalia You have no idea how many of my columns have begun as a germ of a thought – usually an annoyed question – scribbled on a scrap of paper. This one reflects my late, rather curmudgeonly, “wish list” of what I’d like to see happen within Catholicism in 2024. Indulge me, please. Let…
Fr Patrick Briscoe OP In August 2022, when Transformers star Shia LaBeouf revealed during a conversation with Bishop Robert Barron that he had experienced a conversion and begun to attend Mass, I wrote that LaBeouf seemed to me to have undergone a genuine change of heart. He spoke regretfully of the pain and harm he…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: I always thought the end of the Christmas season came with Epiphany and the arrival of the Magi. A priest recently said the season doesn’t end until a week later with the Baptism of the Lord. What has the Baptism of the adult Jesus got to do with Bethlehem? If…
A sound theology and a sound science will both recognise that the law of gravity and the Holy Spirit are one in the same principle. There isn’t a different spirit undergirding the physical than the spiritual. There’s one spirit that’s speaking through both the law of gravity and the Sermon on the Mount. If we…
Deacon Greg Kandra Jon 3:1-5, 10 Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 1 Cor 7:29-31 Mk 1:14-20 Do you hear it? Jonah did. So did the brothers Simon and Andrew, and then James and John. It’s the insistent invitation to drop everything, change direction and follow where God is leading. It can take you where you don’t…
The liturgical calendar is a spiritually transformative tool of the Church, writes Chene Heady The liturgical calendar is omnipresent in Catholic life. Many parish bulletins list the liturgical days of the week and corresponding Scripture readings. In December, tables in the narthex may be piled high with free calendars that identify the principal feasts of…
Gretchen Crowe Our sweetest not-such-a-baby anymore turns 20 months old this month. Like any proud mama, I could write an entire column on John Francis’s adorable qualities, like his propensity to silly dance anytime he catches a whiff of a beat, or how he quacks at anything that has wings, including, lately, the angels in…
Sr Hosea Rupprecht The week before Christmas, I encountered airport crowds waiting to board their flights, but spilling out of the gate area and hampering the rest of us trying to get where we were going. I got stuck behind a guy dragging his bag but laser-focused on his phone. His bag kept hitting people…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: What is the Church currently teaching about the Real Presence in other denominations? I thought that at one time we recognised both the Lutherans and the Anglicans as having the Real Presence. Does that still hold true? Others? A: For context, let us recall that the Catholic teaching on the “real…
Piety is the enemy of humour, at least whenever something less than piety is masquerading as piety. Here’s an example: I once lived in community with an overly serious man who, after someone would tell a colourful joke, would bring us back to earth with the question, “Would you tell a joke like that in…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser