VIEWS

Many people have morning rituals. Mine include stretching, prayer, a good cup of tea and catching up with on-line news I missed during the night.

When Pope Francis stepped out onto the central loggia of St. Peter’s on the night of March 13, I thought of the man I had met in his Buenos Aires office 10 months before.

Recently we have been looking at eight tasks Catholics need to be about in order effectively to bear witness to Christ at this time in America. Today, we shall look at two more: Make Sunday the center of our life and defend the life and dignity of all persons.

I didn’t realize there was a moon-landing Bible verse until my pastor mentioned it a few weeks ago. It seems that while returning from...

Another season of assigning priests to new ministries is afoot in our diocese. Those newly ordained receive their first long-term assignment in priestly ministry, and our older priests enter into a euphemistic retirement, continuing some kind of ministry free of the administrative burdens which can accompany it.

The truth is we’re facing a heart problem. Our heart is not beating in sync with God’s heart. Let us rededicate ourselves to love and serving others, to being good neighbors and parishioners, involved in our communities, seeking out the lost.

“Give me liberty or give me death,” Patrick Henry’s famous cry, at our nation’s birth, continues to stir hearts today; the struggle for freedom is no less urgent now, as evidenced in rallies and fortnights throughout our country protesting against the HHS mandates and other threats to religious liberty.

A hundred years ago, on the 13th day of every month from May through October of 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three children near Fatima in Portugal, bringing them an urgent message, calling for repentance and prayer, a message that has no less urgency today.

Members of consecrated life receive special charisms, not so much for their own good as for the good of others, to be integrated into the whole Body of Christ, the Church, and to be channeled into an evangelizing impulse at the service of the Lord. I pray that this may be one of the fruits of the Year of Consecrated Life.

Hell is one of the least popular of all Christian doctrines. Many people have trouble reconciling the existence of hell with the truth that God is all good and all loving.