By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 30, 2024 Recent observations by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle suggest that the charge that Christian missionaries are agents of colonialism has not yet been laid to rest (see Cardinal Tagle defends missionaries). In reality, this is an accusation typically made by those who are themselves “colonializing” by trying to turn the third-world poor into agents of, or supports for, Western secularism. Thomas Mirus recently called my attention to a case in point: African Archbishops: ‘They Are Sending Us Missionaries of Evil’. We have seen this again and again with the rising tide of secularization in the West over the past seventy-five years. It is always the Christian missionaries who are accused of shackling poorer populations to a se...

Readings:Isaiah 35:4–7Psalm 146:7–10James 2:1–5Mark 7:31–37 The incident in today’s Gospel is recorded only by Mark. The key line is what the crowd says at the end: “He has done all things well.” In the Greek, this echoes the creation story, recalling that God saw all the things He had done and declared them good (see Genesis 1:31). Mark also deliberately evokes Isaiah’s promise, which we hear in today’s First Reading, that God will make the deaf hear and the mute speak. He even uses a Greek word to describe the man’s condition (mogilalon = “speech impediment”) that’s only found in one other place in the Bible—in the Greek translation of today’s Isaiah passage, where the prophet describes the “dumb” singing. The crowd recognizes that Jesus is doing what the prophet had foretold. But Mark w...

The date: Sept. 20, 1918.  The place: Our Lady of Grace Chapel, the church of the Capuchin friars at San Giovanni Rotondo, located in the Italian province of Foggia.  There alone in front of a crucifix of the suffering Christ was a suffering, humble, pious friar named Francesco Forgione (1887-1968), named after St. Francis of Assisi, another suffering, humble, pious friar — who in the year 1224 first bore the wounds of Christ; that is, the stigmata.   “After celebrating the Mass,” recalled Padre Pio, as he was later known, “I stayed in the choir for the due thanksgiving prayer, when suddenly I was overtaken by a powerful trembling, then calm followed, and I saw Our Lord in the posture of someone who is on a cross … lamenting the ingratitude of men, especially those cons...

(Image: Tamarcus Brown / Unsplash.com) School is starting, and we need to keep students from curiosity. Curiosity? It sounds bad to modern ears, but ancient and medieval thinkers considered it a vice—a dangerous intellectual habit. You can hear that judgment in the old saying, “Curiosity killed the cat.” You can also see it in horror movies where people decide they must investigate the sounds coming from upstairs—even though they know of a rampaging murderer in the area! Yet apart from those examples, we usually treat curiosity as simply good. What do we mean by “curiosity” as good and healthy? What did those older thinkers mean by it as bad and dangerous morally and spiritually? In our time, we usually define it in a neutral way. The current Merriam-Webster definition ...

22nd Sunday in Ordinary TimeBy Fr. Victor Feltes Jesus said to the crowd, “Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” Jesus speaks to the Old Covenant’s rules about the ritual purity of objects and foods. With the arrival of his New Covenant those ordinances passed away. “Thus,” St. Mark writes, “he declared all foods clean.” After carefully forming his Jewish people as a unique group set apart from the world, God lifts the burden of those purity laws to open the door to true religion for all the nations. That has led to gentiles like you and me worshipping him here together this Sunday. So what substances should enter our bodies? Millions of Americans now use illegal...