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Vacation for the Sake of Vision…
Our word ‘vacation’ comes from an interesting Latin verb that means to be idle, empty, free, or unoccupied. This gives occasion to consider an important question: why do we go ‘on vacation’ anyway? Vacations reasonably can have various purposes. But a line in the forty-sixth Psalm can point to the deeper potential of our vacations. In the Latin it says, “vacate et videte.” These are plural imperatives, and so can be translated “Be still (or unoccupied, or idle), and see…” This is a remarkable directive. In order to be able to see, we must at least sometimes stop the other things we are doing. Thomas Aquinas reflecting on this line comments that it is through rest or quiet of the mind that we come to vision—that is, especially to knowledge of higher things. Herein we have a great angle for ...
In Nigeria, Father Marcellus Nwaohuocha Freed After Torture, Hospitalized With ‘Deep Wounds on His Head’…
The kidnappers shot the parish security guard, who died on the way to the hospital. In his June 20 statement, Klaver appealed for prayers for the soul of the late security guard and for the complete healing of Nwaohuocha. “Let us pray for the full recovery of his health and for the repose of the soul of the deceased, who leaves [behind] a family [wife and children],” he said. The kidnapping and release of Nwaohuocha is the latest in a series of abductions that have targeted members of the clergy, seminarians, and other Christians in Africa’s most populous nation. On June 11, Father Jeremiah Yakubu, a priest of Kafanchan Diocese, was kidnapped and later released. On June 7, Father Charles Onomhoale Igechi, a member of the clergy of the Archdiocese of Benin City who was set to mark his...
A father’s exercise of authority is a concrete expression of his love — and an incomparable gift to his children…..
Sociologist Christopher Lasch once wrote, “Socialization makes the individual want to do what he has to do; the family is the agency to which society entrusts this complex and delicate task.” Complex and delicate indeed. But then again, it is no more complex than the reality of parental authority, the archetype of human authority. Authority names a power to give direction to another person precisely because of a responsibility to care for that person. Authority is an agency of love. Love wants true flourishing for a person, and authority directs to that flourishing. Part of the richness of human happiness or flourishing is that, in a sense, it is not optional. In Lasch’s words, it is something a person “has to do.” Not to live a certain way is for us humans to fail, or to fall short of wha...
8 books about sisters and nuns for inspiring summer reading…
(Images: Amazon.com, Ignatius.com) The astonishing discovery of Sister Wilhelmina’s incorrupt body at the Monastery of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, in Missouri ought to raise interest in—or at least questions regarding—religious life, particularly in the life of nuns and sisters. What in the world could inspire women to cast aside all natural goods, such as marriage, children, or for some, even the hugs of their parents, for the rest of their lives? Of course, the answer follows that nothing in this world could inspire such sacrifice, but only the call of deepest love from Him for Whom all souls thirst. That is all. As Jesus said to Martha, “Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.” If you would delve into this mystery, here is a selection of book...
Pope Francis Names Cardinal Ghirlanda to Succeed Cardinal Burke as Order of Malta Patron…
In 2017, Pope Francis ordered reforms of both the order’s religious life and its constitution. He approved the order’s new constitutional charter and regulations last year. Burke, a 74-year-old American cardinal, had served as the Order of Malta’s cardinal patron since 2014. However, when then-Archbishop Angelo Becciu was appointed in 2017 as the pope’s special delegate to oversee the order’s reform, he effectively supplanted the role of the order’s cardinal patron, with Burke remaining in the post only nominally. Pope Francis made Ghirlanda a cardinal in 2022, one of the few men to be given a red hat as a priest without being first a bishop. Ghirlanda was given the Jesuit Church of the Gesù as his titular church. The Italian cardinal and canon lawyer is the former rector of the Pontifical...
California lawmakers consider bill to remove kids from parents who don’t support transgenderism — state senator warns families they might have to leave state…
A California state senator told a gathered crowd of parents at the California Senate Judicial Committee to flee the state on June 13 during a hearing on a bill which would put parents who don’t affirm their child’s “gender transition” in danger of child abuse charges. Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, is one of the two lone Republicans on California’s Senate Judiciary Committee, and he has served in the California Legislature for 11 years. He was also the lone voice warning against language in AB 957, which a Democratic senator had amended on June 5 to rewrite the California Family Code to list “gender affirmation” alongside a child’s need for “health, safety, and welfare.” I’m now in year 11 in the state legislature, and all the time we’re proposing policies to protect children. After 11 ...
On Father’s Day, Remembering a Hero Who Wore Bermuda Shorts…
My dad wasn’t a ‘Fathers Knows Best’ kind of father, but he was the only father I had, and I loved him. I’m a big fan of superhero movies. There is something so compelling about a larger-than-life figure who can run at lightning speed, deflect bullets and save innocent people from the evil machinations of the villain. When I was growing up, my father was my first glimpse of a hero. Instead of the dramatic garb of movie superheroes, however, he preferred Bermuda shorts and short-sleeved shirts to withstand the harrowing heat of Miami days. He couldn’t scale tall buildings or dodge bullets but was skilled at banishing the monsters that invaded our Miami home. They weren’t the dragons kids read about in story books, but were instead tropical flying roaches, sometimes called palmet...
While virtue can be expressed in words, it is a father’s virtuous deeds that create maps for children…..
COMMENTARY: I have spent nearly 30 years as a father. As the decades go by, I increasingly realize that while virtue can be expressed in words, it is virtuous deeds that create maps for children… Historical periods are commonly differentiated into various features that define them, such as the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, or the Age of Discovery. Our day may come to be known as the Age of Confusion. Our society may come to be defined by its refusal to define anything. The mere attempt to define words like person, baby, truth, conscience or woman often results in personal accusation and reprimand. Nevertheless, it is this society in which we fathers must raise and educate our children. Specifically, we must instruct our sons and daughters in virtue. Not only is our society confused, but ...
Is there a future for Archbishop Pierre’s synodality?
Is there a future for Archbishop Pierre’s synodality? Skip to content Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, opened the public session of the bishops’ June meeting with an address on synodality. Two years after Pope Francis inaugurated the global process for the synod on synodality, Pierre told the USCCB in Orlando, “it may be we are still struggling to understand synodality.” “Perhaps it has been hard for us to embody this ‘style of God,’” the nuncio said. “Perhaps ‘the adventure of this journey’ has made us a bit ‘fearful of the unknown,’” he suggested, quoting Pope Francis. Archbishop Christoph Pierre. Image via USCCB. Share Inviting the U.S. bishops to be more “courageous” and “humble” in their embrace of the synodal process, Pierre also repeated...
Vatican prosecutor may be biggest beneficiary of Pope’s hospitalization…
Listen to this story: ROME – From a news point of view on the Vatican beat, a pope being in the hospital is a bit like a blazing sun on a hot summer day – it shines so brightly that it tends to be blinding, and you have to squint to bring anything else into focus. Thus it was that during the nine days Pope Francis was in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital June 7-16, several other Vatican storylines were, to varying degrees, overshadowed. Some figures suffered from that neglect – consider Italian Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, for instance, who was the prime mover behind a June 10 gathering of 30 Nobel laureates in St. Peter’s Square to promote Francis’s encyclical on human fraternity, Fratelli Tutti. In the absence of the pope, Gambetti was left presiding over what the Italian newspaper Messaggero bluntly ...
Pope Francis Makes First Public Speech Since Hospitalization for Abdominal Surgery…
After praying the Angelus prayer in Latin with the crowd gathered below in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis the pope prayed for the victims of an attack in Uganda, where rebels attacked a school near the Congo border, killing at least 38 students. Pope Francis delivers his Angelus address from the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on June 18, 2023. Vatican Media The pope also expressed sadness at the sinking of a refugee ship off the coast of Greece that has left more than 500 migrants presumed drowned, according to the Associated Press. “Next Tuesday, June 20 marks the World Refugee Day promoted by the United Nations,” he said. “With great sorrow, I think of the victims of the severe shipwreck in recent days off the coast of Greece. And it seems that the sea was calm. I renew my pr...
The Holy Spirit clearly had 2023 America in mind with this Sunday’s Gospel…
The Gospel reading is a plea for help from a world that longs for the Church this Sunday, the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. You can tell the words are inspired by the Holy Spirit, because what St. Matthew wrote two millennia ago expresses precisely what is missing from parishes in America today. In the Gospel, the Holy Spirit describes for Americans the people whose homes fill our parishes. “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd,” it says. Isn’t this a description of our own neighborhoods? All around us, people are suffering and even dying due to precisely the problems we have powerful answers to. Sex and personal identity issues are at crisis levels. STDs are at record highs. Gi...
