Discover

Joshua Wong is a young Chinese human rights activist, recently sentenced to 13 and a half months in prison on the Orwellian charge of “incitement to knowingly take part in an unauthorized assembly” – meaning, in Chinese Newspeak, urging others to protest peacefully the tyranny now throttling Hong Kong. In his first letter from prison, the uncowed Mr. Wong wrote, “Cages cannot lock up souls.” Indeed, they cannot. But the failure to defend the caged by standing in solidarity with them can do the gravest damage to evangelization. Jimmy Lai, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent Catholic defenders of religious freedom and other basic human rights, was back in jail in early December; his bail in a civil lease dispute was revoked on the grounds that he might flee and is a national security risk to b...

By Tom Hoopes, December 17, 2020 On the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B, the Gospel has direct application to our lives as we prepare, not just to celebrate Christmas, but to become a dwelling place for the Son of God who wants to make us his adopted sons and daughters. In the final week of Advent, God asks each of us directly: Will you allow yourself to be remade in the image of Jesus Christ? He wants a thoughtful, honest, affirmative reply. We can well imagine what Mary and Joseph were doing on the original Fourth Sunday of Advent. It would take about a week to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. So the last week of the original “Advent Season” was a strong push to the end, to find Jesus a place to be born. It was one final week in preparations Mary had started making months earlier,...

“We’ve gotten stuck in the summer mode, in chronic summer… In fall and winter we should move into a new mode, a contractive and restorative mode… like coming home at the end of the day… with a sense of settling, of slowing down, of peace, of belonging, of gratitude and of generosity… being more vulnerable, more present with fewer people who mean more to us.”Dallas Hartwig (my paraphrase from an interview with Caroline Leaf) The plan of nature for the good human life has much nuance. As Hesiod saw and expressed in Works and Days, this plan includes the gift of seasons, and how they can channel our lives into nourishing and fruitful rhythms. What I found most arresting in what I heard from Dallas Hartwig was the diagnosis that we are stuck in chronic summer. The summer mode is characterized ...

In recent days, several vaccines for COVID have reached the final approval process. The USCCB indicated that Catholics can morally take the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. At least 28 other US bishops have issued concurring statements. There is a concern about remote material cooperation in evil. The USCCB notes it in their statement. However, some have thought this so grave that Catholics should not get vaccinated. Receiving these vaccines is so remote that in our everyday lives we do things that are more proximate cooperation in evil. At a certain degree of remoteness, cooperation in evil is unavoidable living in modern society. I will point out first how remote this is in the case of COVID vaccination, then 12 other things that are less remote. On top of these being less remote, the proport...

A few years back, a friend gave me the book, Drinking with the Saints – The Sinner’s Guide to a Holy Happy Hour written by Michael P. Foley. This friend knew that I enjoyed the Catholic method of drinking and that I have loved the Lives of the Saints, so he bought this book for me as a gift and knew that I would appreciate it and use it.   In the book, Michael Foley lays out humorous antidotes and creative directions on how to consume the correct beverages that correspond with different liturgical seasons, feasts, solemnities, and saint’s days during the Church’s yearly calendar. There are more than 300 recipes, a manual on beer, spirits, and wine, and even tips on how to give a proper toast. Over the years, I have tried some of the cocktails in this book, but for the month of Decembe...