During the three middle Sundays of Lent, the Christian people welcome in a special way the Elect who are presented to Christ’s Church as those seeking full communion. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th Sundays of Lent thus provide great opportunities f … [Read more...]
Articles
Seeing as God Sees
A Catholic Approach to Pastoral Care for People Affected by Gender Incongruity
Late last December, Homiletic & Pastoral Review ran an article by Stephen Adubato titled “Understanding the Vatican’s Document on Gender Theory and Education.” The document he refers to was released by the Congregation for Catholic Educa … [Read more...]
The Charism of Priestly Celibacy
Teaching a course on Holy Orders in the seminary, which includes a unit on celibacy, has led me to reflect often on my own experience in the seminary from 1964 to 1972. During those years, everything was being questioned. Near the top of … [Read more...]
The Confessional Prudence of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor and Patron of Confessors
During my priestly training, I had the privilege of studying moral theology at a university governed by the sons of St. Alphonsus, and in this environment, I grew to know and to love this saint, a doctor of the Church and patron of … [Read more...]
The Call of the New Evangelization for Preachers
Although the new evangelization is new in several respects, its message is the timeless Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ, following St. Paul, who writes, “What we preach is Christ crucified” (I Cor 1:23). At the heart of the pre … [Read more...]
Preaching the “Story of Stories”
Of the many writings from the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, one stands out simply by virtue of its intriguing title — “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator.”[1. P. Ricoeur, “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,” in eds. M.C. Doeser and … [Read more...]
Fr. Martin, Compassion, and Immigration
The world is full of violence wielded by revolutionaries struggling to overcome unjust structures of oppression in order to introduce a new world order and by conservatives upholding traditional values against forces of chaos and … [Read more...]
What Is True Mercy?
Is mercy merely the affirmation, allowance, or clemency an authority figure extends toward a subject — in light of the subject’s understanding of an act he or she desires to engage in given a specific circumstance? Or, is mercy something muc … [Read more...]
The Trinitarian Theology of the Eucharist according to St. Catherine of Siena
A little over fifty years ago, the Second Vatican Council declared the Eucharist “the source and summit of the Christian life.” Prior to this Council, in 1902, Pope Leo XIII described the Eucharist as “the very soul of the Church” which “bri … [Read more...]
Exchanging Truth for a Lie
The Pan-Amazonian Plan to Eliminate God, the Church, and Salvation
Now that the Pan-Amazon Synod is over in Rome, we should not be surprised at the strange and unsettling things that we are seeing and hearing in relation to it. The Pre-Synodal Instrumentum Laboris (hereafter IL) forewarned us quite … [Read more...]
The Novus Ordo at 50: Loss or Gain?
A Reply to Prof. Mary Healy
The recent half-century of Pope Paul VI’s reformed (“Ordinary Form,” or OF) Mass, which came shortly after the twelfth anniversary of the liberalization of the previous (“Extraordinary Form,” or EF) form of Mass, should stimulate us to engag … [Read more...]
Accompanying, Discerning, and Integrating Weakness in Marriage
Chapter eight and its footnotes of Amoris Laetitia begins with the above title and has been pilloried extensively by much of the people of God’s thinkers due to some ambiguities in light of sacred Tradition. However, the title is a m … [Read more...]
Newman‘s Concept of Conscience in His Quest for Moral Truth
The question about truth is vividly present in the teachings of the Catholic Church throughout the ages. The discourse on truth — which resounds in the question posed to Christ, “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38) — has been heard throughout the cen … [Read more...]
Conscience as Relationship, Part II
A Dialogue through Which God Takes Us beyond Ourselves
In the second of these two articles on conscience[1. See Francis Etheredge, “Conscience as Relationship, Part I: General Principles and Personal Experience,” Homiletic & Pastoral Review (Jan 2020), hpr … [Read more...]
Running in the Bible
Its Implications for the Christian Life
In the United State of America in the early twenty-first century, running is one of the most popular forms of physical exercise. Of these, today’s runners, one might ask: how many know that running has a significant place in the Bible? Many … [Read more...]