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Rosica faces sexual assault lawsuit Skip to content Well-known media figure Fr. Thomas Rosica has been accused of sexually assaulting a younger priest during the lead up to the Church’s 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto, Canada. Fr. Thomas Rosica. Credit: Chris Adamczyk, Manager, Marketing and Communications, Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation – Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation. Wikimedia/ CC BY SA 4.0  Rosica has denied any “improper conduct” with the priest, and urged a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against him, so that allegations can be addressed in a canonical court. Rosica’s faculties for priestly ministry were withdrawn in March, after the alleged victim filed suit against him. Rosica was the principal organizer of the 2002 World Youth Day, a Vatican adviso...

“Inculturation” has been a Catholic buzzword for over a half-century. It’s not the most elegant neologism, smacking as it does of sociologese. Still, it expresses a truth of Catholic missionary practice two millennia old: the Church uses whatever appropriate materials are at hand in a given culture to make the Gospel proposal come alive in that milieu. The parables of Jesus are the biblical warrant for this method of evangelization. The Lord used the familiar cultural materials at hand to drive home key truths about the Kingdom of God breaking into history – the merchant who finds the pearl of great price, the sower of seed who waits patiently for the harvest, the mustard seed that becomes a great tree, and so forth. St. Paul was an early “inculturator” in Acts 17, where he tried to convin...

Architecture By Julia Hammond Read time: 5 minutes At one time in history, there was nothing extraordinary about a building project dragging on for many years. Places of worship could take centuries to complete. For instance, the Cologne Cathedral — once the world’s tallest building — took 632 years to finish, while construction of the Duomo in Milan was a mammoth 579-year affair. In modern times, however, it’s relatively rare for a building to take that long to erect. But there’s been one notable exception: the Sagrada Família, the crown jewel of Barcelona, Spain. Its construction is a tale of ambition, devotion, and dogged determination — and it might soon have a closing chapter. Discover the fascinating history of one of the world’s most famous cathedrals and find out when it’s finally ...

Wednesdays are always my busiest days, when it comes to life at my computer keyboard. First of all, there is my “On Religion” column deadline. That’s been carved into my calendar for almost 36 years. This is also the day when I work with the Lutheran Public Radio team to research and produce the weekly “Crossroads” podcast. We’ve been doing that for over a decade. Right now, you can toss in lots of packing for our move from Oak Ridge up to the Tri-Cities region in the mountains of Northeast Tennessee. Late last week, I reached for a book (during an online interview with Jonathan “The Anxious Generation” Haidt) and realized that I had already packed that shelf and the boxes were sitting in my future office nearly 150 miles away. Then, dang it, the same thing happened with a different book d...

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 27, 2024 A very well-informed friend sent me a link to an article on the increased numbers of young Catholic women wearing veils in Church. I have certainly noticed this among Hispanic women in my own parish, for whom this is still a tradition, and among those characterized by a kind of piety that cherishes—and I do not mean “brandishes”—external signs of devotion. But apparently it is a wider trend, and includes a generation of younger women who were not raised in veils. On balance, I regard this as a good thing, in much the same way as I like to see men using a pocket as a repository for their rosaries, and to see those rosaries coming out during times of prayer. Of course, a veil is a stronger outward sign and one with Scrip...

It should have been the best week South America had in recent memory. On March 5, 2013, the death of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan commandante of the Castro mold, was announced. A week later, the conclave began that would elect Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina on March 13 — the first-ever supreme pontiff from South America.   It turned out that Chavismo did not die with Chávez, and the successor regime of Nicolás Maduro has delivered widespread repression while pauperizing what should be a rich country. And for 11 years, the Latin American pope has been vexed by how to deal with Maduro’s Venezuela.   It has been an 11-year nightmare for the Venezuelan people — some 8 million of whom have fled the country — and an ongoing frustration for Vatican diplomacy, which has not managed...

Why Pope Francis sent a Venezuelan cardinal to a Eucharistic congress Skip to content Pope Francis appointed this weekend Cardinal Baltazar Porras, emeritus archbishop of Caracas, as the pontifical legate for the International Eucharistic Congress to be celebrated in Quito, Ecuador, between September 8 and 15 of this year. Cardinal Baltazar Porras, right, with Pope Francis. Credit: ACN via Flickr. Those kinds of appointments are often perfunctory. But this one came at an unusual time: Venezuela is in turmoil, as citizens claim President Nicolás Maduro committed election fraud — thousands of Venezuelans have been arrested, and more than two dozen have been killed. Porras, for his part, is well-known in Venezuela as a staunch opponent of Maduro’s regime, and has been particularly outspoken i...

COMMENTARY: Take a lesson from St. Augustine and St. Monica: Prayer is the single most effective answer to this problem, as it is to all problems. There is a problem with geniuses. The problem is that most people aren’t geniuses. So, when we do discover a genius every so often, we have to do our best with our ordinary minds to understand the insights of a brilliant mind. Such is the case with the genius of St. Augustine.  Augustine was not only a prolific writer, writing more than almost anyone will read in a lifetime, but his work has a tremendous depth. His training in rhetoric gave him an uncanny ability to convey profound truths in a distinctly winsome way. But then there are times when his genius seems to get in the way.  For instance, perhaps his most famous work, Confessio...

In his second letter to St. Timothy, St. Paul with great urgency reminds him to follow the pattern of the sound words he received in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus; and, guard the truth that has been entrusted to him by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.[1] This exhortation serves as a helpful backdrop to describe the nature, premise, and content of all forms of religious instruction associated with the Catholic faith. Specifically, the theme of St. Paul’s message to St. Timothy stresses the importance of adhering to a Trinitarian Christocentric methodology rooted in the Word of God and articulated in creed form.    Sacred Scripture and Catholic doctrine serve as two inseparable anchors of faith that both build and strengthen one another in providing a clear arti...

16 hours ago 16 hours ago “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you won’t be able to convince anyone to take you seriously, no matter how pious you seem or how good your works are. If people can see that you lack understanding, they won’t listen,” asserts David Paul Deavel, an Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas-Houston. Prof. Deavel is a prolific and widely published writer. In addition to his book Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, his academic work has appeared in journals such as Chesterton Review, Chicago Studies, and Faith and Reason. In his new article, which he discusses with Deacon Geoff, “Theology is Not Trivial Pursuit,” Deavel argues that “Simply knowing doctr...

Jesus puts a hard question to the Apostles, and to us, on the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B. The Church does a great job of situating his question in a context that shows exactly what is at stake: Do we want to live a one-flesh union of minds and wills with Jesus Christ — or do we want to place ourselves in servitude to his powerless opponents? It’s the final, decisive moment of Jesus’s own Eucharistic Congress — the fifth of five Sundays whose readings take a deep dive into the sixth chapter of John. “Do you also want to leave?” he asks his Apostles. And “Yes, kind of,” seems to be their answer. This is the moment when many of Jesus’s disciples walk away from the life they had found with him. And it seems as if the Twelve are a little iffy on their commitment too. Peter’s first reac...

Our Blessed Mother’s appearances and message at Tepeyac show God’s love and mercy as much to us today as she did almost 500 years ago. It is a loving appearance and message for which we all hunger and which can draw us all to the fount of life and grace in our Lord Jesus Christ. I have recently finished a new book about the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe at La Crosse, Wisconsin. The book is titled The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and is available for pre-order on August 22, the Memorial of the Queenship of Mary. It will be officially released on October 7, the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. *** The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke (Flores Mariae, 2024, 212 pages) All that my family gave to me came with me as I entered the diocesan minor seminary, Holy...