Who is the Holy Spirit? In December of 2016, Papal preacher Father Raniero Cantalamassa preached his first Advent sermon on the second “post-concilior” period. With the passage of fifty years since Vatican ll, we’ve ended a period “characterized by problems with reception” of the litiurgical changes and entered, the Franciscan Capuchin theologian declared, “new innovation […]
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The shock, awe and banality of evil Secular, Christian and Catholic media are filled with the shock, awe and banality of evil of late. In this case, the inability to name anti-semitism as evil…or even a violation of conduct. After weeks of demonstrations on college American campuses supporting the terrorist group Hamas, Congress not only
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Joseph Ratzinger and the Divine Project “And in this He [Christ] showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, “What may this
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The world: The Great Yes and the Great No It’s a cryptic but arresting phrase, isn’t it: The great yes and the great no? I tripped on it while searching for something online a couple of weeks ago. After listening twice to a ten-year-old homily of Bishop Barron’s called—you guessed it—The Great Yes and the
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Newman Centers-Lighthouses of grace “My name is Matthew, and I am a senior at Cal Poly. Four years ago, when I arrived at the college, I found the ‘freedom’ of being away from home intoxicating…too much so, in fact.” Newman centers-lighthouses of grace. The good-looking Hispanic young man looked out at the parishioners at St. Patrick’s
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Be Safe and be holy My friend Meg’s salutation on the update of her life I requested since we last spoke keeps ringing in my head: “Be safe and be holy.” That phrase, “Be safe,” has become endemic since the arrival of the corona virus and, to me, connotes the obsessive cleaning, masking and endless
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Leaning into crazy: dealing with impossible people “Man, go ahead, beat me up! Shoot me! You’d be doing me a favor, please come over and hit me.” Imagine saying that to this irate driver who looks like he wants to shoot you? A response like this one not only calmed the raging driver down but
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We should kneel down in gratitude! McCoullough’s comment, “We should kneel down in gratitude!” applies, of course, to more than the personage of George Washington. Still, after watching and listening to McCoullough talk about our first president, I read 1776 a second time. It’s an astounding read. The book reads like a novel as it reveals the
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The movie Freedom: the heroic story of slavery in America and England. Once again, the article I’d written for today sits in draft form waiting completion. A good thing since I’ve still got a couple of books and articles to finish before finishing the piece. So why did my watching the movie Freedom eclipse what
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A little spark gives way to a great flame. I’ve known forever that I should read Dante’s Divine Comedy. After all, it’s one of the most famed of all literary writings. Hence we should all have at least a nodding acquaintance with the Inferno and Purgatoria, perhaps even Paradisio, right? But yet I managed to avoid reading
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