Stories help us incorporate memories and traditions into our family. They help us know who we are.
Commentary
Scatter the darkness
As the days grow darker, both cosmically and metaphorically, the encouragement of the Holy Spirit shines forth with renewed clarity.
Still try to make converts?/ Does Mass need a congregation?
Father Kenneth Doyle fields questions about proselytism and how frequently a priest is required to celebrate Mass.
Have you ever experienced a “thin place”?
This is the season when the Catholic world celebrates the feast of All Saints’ Day, followed by All Souls’ Day. The night before All Saints’ Day, the cultural world celebrates Halloween, literally the eve of All Hallows.
Tuning in to our souls and nourishing them
We communicate with the dead when we pray to the saints, canonized or not. So it is not a far stretch to believe that souls are close by and in touch.
The ideological hijacking of Pope St. John XXIII
The dying parts of the Church are those still misreading John XXIII.
“We are better than this!”
I grew to know him as a friend, a fervent advocate for the poor, and as a quintessential leader and civil rights icon who fought for justice and equality for all, especially those he served.
A prayer for Pietro
How is it people and young adults grow up Catholic, experience all there is taught to us about the Trinity through religion classes, nuns and priests’ instruction, get baptized, make first holy Communion, confess young sins in first reconciliation, invite a sponsor to touch our shoulder during Confirmation, take vows in matrimony … and then don’t have faith in God any longer?
Don’t let Halloween scare you
Memo to handwringing adults: Ghouls and goblins and various ghostly apparitions don’t exist, but lust, greed, pride, envy and anger most certainly do. And they are far more frightening.
Prayers for the sick
I’ve been thinking lately about prayers for the sick.
Accompanied by angels
We want to believe the sun will rise tomorrow and we’ll embrace the fullness of another day. We must live life with that hope. There is no other way.
What kind of “believers”?
Catholicism is dying in the German-speaking world, not because the Gospel has been proclaimed and found incredible or hard, but because it hasn’t been proclaimed with joy, confidence, and zeal.