Modern life is increasingly an experience of being alone. Modern social media has supplanted face-to-face interaction with online interaction, alone in front of a computer screen or smartphone. Our friends who used to call, now just post on Facebook or…
Being Alone
Answering the Question: “Do We Become Angels?”
“Do we become angels when we die?” The short answer is “no.” But in this article I want to explore not only the answer, but how the answer should be given. A common misconception about human life is that when…
True Love Leads to Loving Truth
There are days when it feels like no one is listening. Part of this is the fact that I am getting older and the world I used to know is slipping away. All people begin to feel this way with…
Strangers and Social Media
A key difference between modern social media and earlier forms of media is that the modern sort makes it far easier for us to connect with strangers personally. This can be a good thing: strangers so often are friends we…
Jesus, Race, and the Syrophoenician Woman
A little while ago, a video on Tik Tok went a little viral that accused Jesus of being a racist. The proof of this was Our Lord’s interaction with the Syrophoenician woman. She is a non-Jewish person who comes to…
We Are an Easter People
The most common image in most Catholic churches is the crucifix. It is displayed prominently, usually above the altar as a focal point of the congregation. Catholics have a long tradition emphasizing the Passion in our relationship with Jesus. For…
Sacramental Matters
Recently I had a student ask the perennially controversial question “Why can’t women be ordained priests?” Even though this has been declared as a closed question by Pope St. John Paul II, it still recurs over and over. There are…
Patience
One of the things that make life complicated is that sometimes the right thing to do is to wait, to choose to endure, to put up with things as they are instead of as they should be. This is the…
Reflections on Veronica’s Veil
The sixth Station of the Cross is Veronica wiping the face of Jesus. While this story does not appear in any of the Gospel accounts of the Passion, it has become an important source of meditation when thinking about the…
Are the Gospels Historical?
Christianity is an historical religion. We make claims of history. Unlike other religions from the ancient world, the central story of our faith is based in fact, not myth. If you were to ask an ancient Roman about when Hercules…