In a wonderful article from years ago that I only recently discovered, “The Mass and the Four Most Important Lessons of Childhood,” Michael P. Foley argues that the four basic responses that parents teach their children from an early age map onto the four basic purposes of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Implicit, then,…
Last week, the display cases at my Catholic high school, which house the most recent creations of the art students, caught my attention. They contained dioramas commemorating family members and close friends who were clearly deceased. I assumed, it being the week of All Souls’ Day, that this was a project coinciding with that feast.…
The auxiliary bishop of Astana, formerly bishop of Karaganda [Kazakhstan], Athanasius Schneider, has received a verbal injunction from the Vatican asking him to reduce the frequency of his foreign trips. This measure was taken last spring; the bishop was informed in April by the Nuncio in Kazakhstan, Francis Assisi Chullikatt, of this extraordinary restriction on…
Like many Catholics who love their faith, I have struggled to find an explanation for the current crisis in the Church. Despite countless hours of research and analysis, I still find the situation deeply mysterious. It seems that the impossible has happened. It seems that the Church has lost either its visibility or its indefectibility.…
Last week, I spent day after day fighting through seemingly endless distractions in an attempt to write a piece summarizing the takeaways from the Youth Synod in Rome that lasted nearly the entire month of October. I wrote a bunch, but it just wasn’t coming together. I may take up the task again this week,…
I am a loyal son of the Church, Catholic born and raised. I studied for the priesthood for two and a half years, was loyal to the pope and reverential to my bishop, and I teach theology at a committedly Catholic high school. I was what some might style a “true believer,” until my worldview…
The time from Michaelmas until the Hallowtide, for me, has always been a time to reflect upon Hell itself. After all, as fall settles on the Northern Hemisphere, people tend to reflect upon the afterlife as the days grow shorter and darker. And didn’t Christ talk about perdition quite a bit? It used to be…
She looked up at me. Messy pigtails, marvelously intelligent brown eyes, a precocious wisp of a petite three-year-old: my boyfriend’s niece. Surrounded as I was by games and chatter, everyone thronging together for a day of fun on a Catholic family of sixteen’s farm, I stood still and looked down at her. “Will you take…
Earlier this month, U.S. attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. served the Diocese of Buffalo, New York with a subpoena, seeking documentation about cases of clerical sexual abuse – marking one of the first cases where the U.S. federal government has become involved in investigating abuse within the Catholic Church. Yesterday, 60 Minutes ran an interview…
Editor’s note: The following is an expression of hope, not certainty. Any resemblance to real people, places, or years is entirely coincidental. Remarks by Father Geoffrey Schultz after the Rite of Dedication to the Church of St. Bonaventure, in the Year of Our Lord 2082. Dominus vobiscum! The heart of the Community of St. Bonaventure…
One of the many things that has disturbed me in this ecclesial turmoil through which we are living is the simple thought: what are the abusive priests thinking? What do they think of themselves and of their victims? How can they live with themselves? Do they believe anything of the Catholic Faith? The same question…
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