Parents, PLEASE: My seventh grade religious ed students do not know the ‘Our Father’ November 3, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Marriage & Family Life Creating Christians who are whole human beings is all of our jobs. But it’s yours first.
Evidence of mercy amid the madness October 13, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Gun Violence Thanks to the availability of instantaneous, global communication and our addiction to it, 21st century humans are permitted — perhaps condemned is a better word — to witness daily episodes of brutality and violence and, particularly over the past few months, horrendous killings.
England’s house afire amid the limitations on free speech September 14, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Religious Freedom Stopping difficult, controversial or “hateful” words before they are uttered may leave some feelings unhurt, but the price of insult-free living will be the destruction of authentic engagement between people. It will mean more social distrust, loneliness and isolation which are already an epidemic.
Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarutska and the conversations we need to have September 11, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Gun Violence Assassination is a tragedy for our country and for humanity. In this case it raises the flame beneath a pot that had already been simmering and is now dangerously close to boiling over. We must pray for peace, and for a reckoning that rids us of senseless violence once and for all.
Why Mary’s assumption makes total scientific sense August 19, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Marian Devotion When we argue that Mary, as the Ark of the New Covenant, would have been spared the stain of original sin, the knowledge that Christ not only availed himself of her flesh, but would continually reside therein, only further supports that well reasoned belief.
Children of Abraham: Let us find another way to peace August 6, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Conflict in the Middle East These brothers, Arabs and Jews alike, must face the fact that as they spill each other’s blood and destroy their own family they’re perpetuating the age-old curse of rootless dispossession down the decades. They must admit their culpability for miseries, past and present.
Artificial Intelligence, wholeism and prayer July 24, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary Through our human brokenness we carry our imperfect comprehensions into every part of that wholeism. So, if we permit our understanding of authentic love to be messed with, we will participate in the shattering of our own foundations.
St. Paul and discovering that sin is ‘missing the mark’ July 3, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary Utterly life-changing was the day I learned that the Hebrew word most frequently used for “sin” (hhatah) is understood by scholars to mean “missing the mark.”
God is real and balanced; he gets us in darkness and light June 4, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary A god to be feared but not loved would be a god who dealt in negatives, but we know that there are no negatives in God, that Creation came into being with the “yes” of his intention, and it is sustained to this very second by that continued affirmation.
My church, myself: Motherhood, mystery and mercy May 14, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary In its exposition of the lifelong depths of concern, nurturing, love, puzzlement, understanding, clemency and prayerful accompaniment, this is a description of motherhood that anyone who has experienced it, physically or spiritually, will recognize. It is also a beautifully stated, convincing argument that the Catholic Church is, indeed, mother to all the baptized.
Laying odds on papabili, and our ‘vulgar’ church April 29, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia Filed Under: 2025 Conclave, Commentary A tidy church would be a dead church, so we may as well just keep to our ugly, vulgar and unseemly ways, remembering that (somehow) we, as church, have birthed so much wisdom and beauty century after tawdry human century!
How we have known Pope Francis since 2013 April 23, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Remembering Pope Francis As we absorb the news of Francis’ death and anticipate his funeral and then the conclave gathering to elect a new pontiff, here is a quick look at how we have come to know Jorge Bergoglio over these past 12 years.
