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.
Worn out before God by the noisy, tiresome digital age April 8, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, social media God is good and full of mercy, with plans for us — plans of fullness, not of harm. Increasingly I feel called to serve that reality, to quiet down and let the frenzied world turn its terrible ways while in the grips of a chaos magic that has been increasing in its scope for many decades.
The tomb of Christ and the atomic moment March 24, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Lent We stand before Christ, transcending time, awaiting the moment when the energy of light and life — unleashed at creation, and subsumed (just once) into the quiescence of a grace-filled womb — flares through that enshrouded body, reanimating, resurrecting.
Fasting through Mom’s Lenten meals March 7, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Lent In retrospect, all these meals were as awful as they sound, but — whether intentionally or not — they delivered a message that our fasting and our abstinences were meant to be taken seriously and not subverted through technicalities.
Pope Francis: ‘The church is not an NGO but a love story’ February 21, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Catholic Social Teaching, Commentary The ongoing lesson of the crucifix is that sometimes disturbing things are permitted so that something great might be enabled to occur.
You have my permission to cry and shout February 3, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary How many of us are walking around with broken hearts because we won’t permit ourselves the medicine of weeping and fully feeling the things we’ve determinedly repressed because we want that illusion of strength?
Being human: The challenging task of 2025 January 6, 2025By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary We enter 2025 after a careening, mad season of confusion, hate, deceit and instability. The sense that things are vastly off-kilter and that centers are not holding is almost palpable.
At year’s end: Of wish lists and funeral plans December 30, 2024By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary Thoughtfulness is slow-going, though, and other parts of my “wish list” seem stuck in a stifling inertia of bureaucracy, material reluctance or perhaps (to be charitable) indecision.
Family and friends, the 2024 election and Thanksgiving November 21, 2024By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: 2024 Election, Commentary 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!’ November 8, 2024By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Synodality 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 October 10, 2024By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Commentary 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 September 4, 2024By Elizabeth Scalia OSV News Filed Under: Child & Youth Protection, Commentary 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.
