What is our deepest centre? Normally we take that to mean the deepest part of our heart, the deepest part of our soul, our affective centre, our moral centre, that place inside of us which Thomas Merton called le pointe vierge. And that is a good way of imagining it. But there’s another. John of…
Q: Where exactly in the Catechism of the Catholic Church does it say we can receive Communion by intinction? Our parish has started doing this recently, and people love it! But other parishes’ priests say this is not ‘legal’ according to Church doctrine. I have looked in the catechism and cannot find exactly where it…
Heraldry is an omnipresent but little understood aspect of Catholic symbolism, writes Michael Heinlein Ecclesiastical heraldry is both familiar and mysterious. Frequently seen in one form or another, coats of arms pervade our Catholic culture in numerous ways: on letters and newspapers, diocesan websites and social media pages, in Roman churches and diocesan cathedrals. Most…
Carl Olson Pop quiz: How many commandments did Jesus give? It’s a tricky question, since we know Jesus made clear he came to fulfil the law and that his teaching and actions were aimed at the completion – not the abolition – of the commandments (cf. Mt 5:17-20). But what commandments did he give? What…
Sr Alicia Torres Who am I? This question lurks at the core of every human heart. So often the real answer is blurred by responses we so readily grasp after, and yet time and again fail to satisfy. One response in particular, I think, gnaws at so many of us today: “I am important.” Of…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: In the past few weeks, due to extreme weather, I’ve missed Mass a couple of times. My parish has a Facebook channel, so I watched the services there instead. I wasn’t able to receive Communion. In talking to the priest, though, he said that in such situations, a person can receive…
God behaves in the psalms in ways that God is not allowed to behave in theology. That quip comes from Sebastian Moore and should be highlighted at a time when fewer people want to use the psalms in prayer because they feel offended by what they sometimes find there. More and more, we see people…
Deacon Greg Kandra Gn 9:8-15 Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 1 Pt 3:18-22 Mk 1:12-15 Was that it? This weekend, the first Sunday of Lent, we hear Mark’s account of Jesus going into the desert before he begins his earthly ministry. But Mark doesn’t tell us very much. He mentions Satan and angels, temptations and wild…
This American author ought to be on the Faithful’s radar, writes Russell Shaw Flannery O’Connor was not an evangelist. She was an artist, one of the most gifted American fiction writers of the 20th Century. But a profoundly Catholic theological vision informs her art, giving her stories resonance and depth that sound deep – and…
What happens to us when we experience a dark night of the soul? What’s happening and what’s to be our response? There are libraries of literature on this, each book or article making its own point, but here I want to share a rather unique and highly insightful take on this by Constance FitzGerald, a…
Fr Ronald Rolheiser