Question: Can a person who has been involved in past homosexual acts become a priest if he has overcome this tendency? Answer: This question is urgent in the culture because homosexuality is almost celebrated today. This fact has led the … [Read more...]
Priests and Penance: Confession and Confessors
December 14, 2015 by Fr. Donncha O hAodha
The Call to Confession “Let us place the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the center, once more, in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands.”[1. Francis, Bull of Indiction of the Extra … [Read more...]
Questions Answered
October 26, 2015 by Fr. Brian Mullady, OP
Question: A local priest has, on more than one occasion, preached that Jesus “became a human being.” Is that the same thing as he “became man?” Are the two terms interchangeable? Answer: This question takes up the famous issue of what the … [Read more...]
The Family: Expanded Sacrament
September 14, 2015 by Fr. John M. McDermott, SJ
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...]
The Thrill of Anticipation: Encountering God in the Eucharist
May 31, 2015 by Sr. Teresa Benedicta Block, OP
How Previous Ages have seen the Eucharist At one point during the Communist takeover in China, the Communists came to a remote village where Catholicism was lived with great vigor. They imprisoned the local priest in his own rectory, … [Read more...]
“The Indelible Mark”
Sacramental Character in Patristic and Scholastic Theology
May 12, 2015 by Nicholas Senz
The history of the development of doctrine is, in many ways, a history of language. It is a story of the perpetual struggle to adequately communicate the divine realities in human words, or at the very least, to attempt to do so without … [Read more...]
New Testament Witness
March 11, 2015 by Fr. John Navone, SJ
The faith of the early Christians in Jesus and the Kingdom of his Father constituted them as a community or Church. If it was their shared faith that formed them into a community, who and what they believed in would be the decisive factor … [Read more...]
Questions Answered
February 12, 2015 by Fr. Brian Mullady, OP
What are the arguments against giving Holy Communion to divorced Catholics who are remarried outside the Church? I have heard that the Eastern Church permits this practice. Same-sex marriage is being approved on a vast scale in many … [Read more...]
The Sacramentality of Human Love according to St. John Paul II
December 2, 2014 by Most Rev. Jean Laffitte
Vatican City, November 17, 2014 Dear Friends, It is my distinct honor and personal pleasure to be with you at this important Colloquium on the complementarity of man and woman, and to share with this august assembly the perspective of … [Read more...]
Should homilies offer systematic instruction?
June 2013 Editorial
June 21, 2013 by Fr. Kenneth Baker, SJ
...there has been, in my view, a serious neglect of instruction of the faithful in the fundamentals of the Catholic faith in a systematic way in most of our parishes. Recently a priest friend asked me, “How can we teach the faith during S … [Read more...]
The sacrament of baptism as a participation in the death of Christ
To be baptized in Christ is to be baptized into his death as well as his Resurrection.
April 1, 2011 by Owen Vyner
The Easter season is ultimately a time for rebirth, expressed most dramatically at the Easter Vigil by the life-giving waters of baptism. To impart new life, however, baptism must destroy the old life of sin and our fallen aversions to … [Read more...]
How to be a good confessor
Editorial, April 2011
April 1, 2011 by Fr. Kenneth Baker, SJ
God became man in Jesus Christ to save us from our sins. To accomplish that until his Second Coming, he established his Church with the power of the keys and animated her with the gift of the Holy Spirit. The new life of grace that he … [Read more...]
The meaning of sacrament
Editorial, April 2010
April 1, 2010 by Fr. Kenneth Baker, SJ
In October 2008 I covered the Roman Synod of Bishops for HPR. My report and summary of the synod appeared in the February 2009 issue. At a special press conference during the synod it was announced that the German publishing company, … [Read more...]
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