The shrug also helps us to remember that good people may disagree and still be good people, and that most of us are doing the best we can, by such light as we are given.
‘Empowering’ Female Catholics? ‘We’ll get back to you girls!’
Service is about willingness, not worthiness; the church needs to be willing to actually sit down and create a plan for the creation of formal lay ministries, and then do it.
A Mass of hope and sadness, and the necessary thing
Muscular evangelization is not helped by a plethora of crumbling church buildings and sacraments going unbestowed amid dying congregations; evangelization requires energy, and bringing young, enthusiastic believers into community together begets exactly the happy vigor needed to effectively share the faith.
Nose to ground: Identifying the ‘root cause’ of sexual abuse in the church
Fingers pointing at materialism and media must ultimately point to the church’s own miserable failures of leadership and its inability to inspire trust and confidence within a laity that may generously be described as “disappointed” or “disillusioned” with her efforts on many fronts, but especially on the issue of sexual abuse.
Supernaturalism: The natural state of faith-infused living
I passionately advocate for acknowledging the profound supernaturalism of the Catholic Church, where bread and wine, consecrated through prayer and ritual, bring into our space the very presence of the incarnate Lord, who feeds us, entering into our very veins and sinews, so we might become his vessels, bringing the light, the concern, the Body of Christ into the world.
The world says ‘jump!’; Jesus says otherwise
Jesus wants us to love each other — to recognize the God-borne humanity in each person that comes before us and — before reacting, deciding or judging — loving them for it.
Of faith and finances, churches, charity and change
Salvation has never been about one’s worthiness, but about one’s willingness.
‘We’re all mad, here!’: ‘Diabolical disorientation’ and the church
We are left to ponder the notion of “diabolical disorientation” while being forced to remind church leaders that art — even the greatest works of artistic expression — can never be more important than people.
The little way to pray all day, even if you have no time to spare!
For many the idea of “finding time for real prayer” seems daunting as they imagine adding an hour to their already crammed schedules and then begin to consider all the things they will “need” to really get going: a prayer corner, with icons and statues and Bibles and breviaries.
A refuge for parents? Find it deep within the Sacred Heart
The Sacred Heart is rather like the Cabinet of Curiosity featured in several of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books — a mysterious structure no one fully understands yet everyone instinctively knows is vital to the proper functioning of, well, all things.
Four days in May reveal one deadly but unifying factor in the Catholic Church
Thanks to both social and mainstream media, these four days exposed a striking, ungodly amount of noisy Christian infighting to the rest of the world.
Meeting Jesus at midnight or in the wee small hours
One need no longer hold a cold and lonely vigil at a locked door because — thanks to what used to be called “new media” — monasteries and diocesan adoration chapels from all over the world maintain live streams of the Blessed Sacrament for remote adoration, whereby the energy of the Christ is transmitted through energy both housed and in the ether, to encounter our own.