Archives for September 2015

Homilies for October 2015

Empowered to love 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, October 4, 2015 Purpose: God calls us to proclaim the Gospel of Marriage in ways that extend the love God to everyone. Readings: Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 128:1-2,3,4-5,6; … [Read more...]

God’s Providence

God’s Providence is a topic that gives us a fresh perspective on evil, and a correction on what many people attribute to God's will. The basic mistake in the latter is to think that everything that happens, happens according to God's will, t … [Read more...]

Catholic Higher Education: Ministry of the Head and Heart

Nelson Mandela, the world renowned South African who led the fight to end apartheid in his nation, once stated, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” But what manner of education do we seek for our stu … [Read more...]

Twelve Lessons about the Financial Future of Catholic Schools

I have spoken with several bishops recently about the Catholic schools in their dioceses. The conversations brought home to me that what I recently heard from these bishops are the same questions, and the same challenges, that I have been … [Read more...]

Economic Injustice Hidden in Plain Sight

The Church and Usury

In the modern mind, the Church’s prohibition on usury falls under her many outdated teachings. Some even use it as proof that the Church can change her teachings. What the Church taught half a millennium ago, before the rise of modern c … [Read more...]

The Family as the Cultural Revolution

A week before his pastoral visit to Cuba and the United States, and his visit to the White House, Pope Francis spoke of a civilizational shift that is occurring in our times—a pivotal moment in which the mission of Christian families will p … [Read more...]

Questions Answered

Question: At the Easter Vigil, it is sometimes the practice that protestants are received into full ecclesiastical communion, and then receive Communion. Now, neophytes are baptized at the Vigil, with all their sins forgiven, but converts … [Read more...]

The Family: Expanded Sacrament

It has become a trite truism to say that the traditional family is under attack. The sources of the onslaught may be traced back at least to the 19th century’s exaltation of Romantic infatuation and its accompanying insistence that the s … [Read more...]

Conscience, Freedom, and the “Law of Graduality” at the Synod on the Family

Ideas have consequences—we well know. My concern here is a series of problematic and closely related conceptions of conscience, human freedom, the moral qualification of human acts, and progress in moral living that might be operative in t … [Read more...]

God’s Beauty Evokes Our Joy

God’s manifestation of his beauty/glory is both a grace, expressing his self-giving generosity, and a call to his joy. Beauty, a relational aspect of created or uncreated excellence, is always the self-manifestation or communication of e … [Read more...]

How Priests Can More Effectively Evangelize Catholic Men

Though the New Evangelization has been a major effort in the Catholic Church for over forty years, it has failed to stem the disastrous losses of the faithful in the U.S. The New Evangelization is faltering: since 2000, 14 million Catholics … [Read more...]

Did Reno Get It Right?

Laudato Si in Its Centuries-Long Context

I read with enthusiasm R.R. Reno’s First Things essay “The Return of Catholic Anti-Modernism” and, as always, appreciated his many insights. He helpfully pointed out some ways in which Pope Francis’s recent papal encyclical Laudato Si embodi … [Read more...]

Does Religion Have An Essential Place in Political Society?

It is often said that religion should be a private affair. I have been told this while I was still working. It shows a distinct ignorance of the basis of religion itself. Religion is not meant to be private. It never was. Christianity, … [Read more...]