From the always amusing Garrison Keillor Each life is a work of art but these days I live a very small life, more an etching than a mural. My friends are thinking large thoughts about the EU and Hong Kong and the future of American democracy, and I am thinking about these organic blueberries I…
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Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings believe their plan can still work
From Jenni Russell in THE TIMES, 5 September 2019 The country is being played on a grand scale by the men in Downing Street. Nothing is as it seems. Boris Johnson wanted and intended to lose his historic vote. The headlines declaring he has lost control are only half right. Johnson and his chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, deliberately…
Homily, 22nd Sunday (C) 2019
Most of us here at Mass today will return to homes that have a fridge. There we store perishable foods – meat products, ready-to-eat salads etc - that if not stored at 5C or lower will quickly go off. Now in Jesus’ time and climate in Palestine there was no refrigeration, let alone refrigeration. So…
Divorce, Annulment & Communion – An Orthodox Theologian Weighs In
By David Bentley Hart in 'Commonweal' (USA), 26 August 2019 As I am not a Roman Catholic, I cannot pretend to have any stake in—or, for that matter, any particular right to an opinion regarding—the controversy surrounding Amoris laetitia. From the vantage of Eastern Orthodoxy, there is nothing particularly scandalous in the document—certainly nothing repugnant…
Homily, 21st Sunday C
Eight panels under the half dome in the sanctuary at Holy Name bear images of saints popular when this church was built in 90 years ago. They are, from left to right, Thomas Becket, Thomas More, Margaret Clitherow, the Angel Gabriel, George, Margaret of Scotland, John Fisher and Cuthbert. (Along with the four panels in…
Homily, 20th Sunday of the Year C, 2019
Today Jesus makes very strong statements which seem to be at odds with what we think of his message of peace and reconciliation. How are we to reconcile the Jesus who preaches nonviolence in the Sermon on the Mount with the Jesus who says in today’s Gospel Do you think that I have come to…
Don’t shoot the messenger, Your Eminence
From The Editor, THE TABLET, 17 August 2019 The gross evil of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy would have gone unexposed had it not been for three principal agencies, all secular. In the lead were the media, both electronic and print. They were followed by the police and other statutory agencies; and then came…
Tackle clericalism first when attempting priesthood reform
By Fr Peter Daly in The National Catholic Reporter, 13 August 2019 If the priesthood is to be reformed, we must tackle the disease of clericalism. It won't be easy. Clericalism is so deeply ingrained in our structures and way of thinking that we almost can't imagine how things could be otherwise. In his 2018…
Homily, 19th Sunday of the Year C, 2019
In The Brothers Karamazov, the Russian novelist Feodor Dostoyevsky tells the tale of a guardian angel who wept before God because the woman in his charge had been so wicked that she was stuck in hell. When God asked if she had ever done anything good, the angel said she had once given an onion to…
Pew survey shows majority of Catholics don’t believe in ‘Real Presence’
by Mark Pattison, Catholic News Service in The National Catholic Reporter, 8 August 2019 WASHINGTON — A new study about the level of Catholic belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist showed that a majority of Catholics do not believe that the bread and wine used at Mass become the body and blood of Christ. The…
