Center

I found out about the bomb down the street by text message on Tuesday at 4:22 p.m., just as I was locking my bike outside our son’s preschool. It was a screengrab, actually: My wife had passed on a tweet from the Berlin police department with a photo of a huge archaeological excavation and construction site that we can see from our balcony in the center of the city. “A World War II bomb was found today at about 11:30 during construction work on the corner of Grunerstr. and Juedenstr. Our colleagues have blocked off the area, the bomb squad technicians are on the scene.” What, my wife wanted to know, were we going to do? This question is not as unusual as one might think, at least in German cities and others hit hard during the war. Between 1940 and 1945, Allied forces dropped 2.7 million t...

The adoration ministry will begin praying for 16 hours daily next month January 24, 2020 3:44 PM Posted: January 24, 2020 3:44 PM Updated: January 24, 2020 5:59 PM Mary of the Angels Chapel LA CROSSE, Wis. (WKBT)- Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (FSPA), beginning next month, will no longer pray 24 hours, seven days a week. After 23 years of including prayer partners in its adoration ministry and following 12 years of careful study of the future of the practice, FSPA will pray daily 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. beginning February 26, 2020. The congregation has prayed 24/7 in their chapel since August 1, 1878. “FSPA remains devoted to the spirit of our long-standing tradition. Our thoughtful study over the years has included a growing understanding of a modern way to live in adoration through...

Editor’s Note: At a recent faculty meeting day, a lunch conversation about how to divide and name different periods of history led to Lucas Lopes, Freshman Core teacher, inviting Lionel Yaceczko to give the following talk to his class as they were studying the period between the Roman Empire and Medieval Christendom. In the second century of the Christian Aera, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved ...

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio – articles – email ) | Jan 23, 2020 Catholic parishes, dioceses, and the entire Church are pro-life. We love life, or so we say. Yet it is common for some (priests and laity) to warn priests to avoid preaching about abortion because “the people already know what the Church teaches” and “you’re preaching to the choir.” So in evading this hot-button issue, what should priests emphasize? “The love of God” is the most common reply. But don’t Catholics also know that God loves them? Others argue that abortion is a political issue and priests have no business dabbling in politics. Of course, wise churchmen respect the rights of the laity to make their own prudential judgments in the political arena. After all, beyond their citizen status, the clergy usuall...

For various reasons, people we know and love will either walk away from the Catholic faith, or have never been given the fullness of the truth in the first place. In either case, our hearts might ache that this person has not embraced the saving power of Jesus’ love and compassion. While we should do all that we can to provide an inspiring example for them to follow, sometimes all we can do is pray and hope that God will lead them home. Here is a prayer from a manual of prayers published in 1851 that beautifully represents our desires and cries out to God for help. O divine and adorable Savior, thou who art the way, the truth, and the life, I beseech thee to have mercy upon N., and bring him [or her] to the knowledge and love of thy truth. Thou, O Lord, knowest all his darkness, his weakne...

In these early weeks of “ordinary” time, we are being introduced to Jesus and the beginnings of His public ministry. Matthew’s Gospel today describes how Jesus began His public ministry in the wake of the arrest of John the Baptist. Matthew tells us four things about Jesus’ ministry: its context, its content, its call, and its comprehensiveness. Let’s look at each in turn. The CONTEXT – When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what had been said through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled: Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, on those dwel...

“This is it for me,” she declared in the pages of New York magazine just seven years ago. “I am a free spirit. I do not know any other way to be. No one else seems to live as I do. In a world gone wrong, a pure heart is dangerous.” Elizabeth Wurtzel died last week, of cancer. She was only 52. She’d come to fame at 27, writing the story of her struggles with depression in the big best-seller Prozac Nation. She continued writing confessional articles and books. She spoke openly about her problems, but in a way that revealed she didn’t really know what her problems were. Chief among them was her idea, her silly, cheap, foolish idea, that she was a free spirit with a pure heart, and that made everything all right. A One-Night Stand of a Life Hers was a typical delusion of our age. One few...

When Joseph Heinrichs fled Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in Germany, he thought he was escaping persecution. He didn’t know that shortly after being ordained a Franciscan priest and taking the religious name Leo, he would be shot because of one man’s hatred for the Catholic faith. Fr. Leo Heinrichs initially served at various places in New York and New Jersey, but in 1907 he was assigned to St. Elizabeth’s parish in Denver, Colorado. According to the parish website, “When Fr. Leo Heinrichs, O.F.M., became pastor of St. Elizabeth’s on September 23rd, 1907, Denver’s poor learned they had a friend in the pastor of St. Elizabeth’s, and every morning a line formed at the friary gate.” He was a holy priest, a shepherd who cared deeply about the people he served, especially the poor and working...

A small but intense drama unfolded last week in the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Virginia. Thanks largely to the graciousness of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, the matter was resolved in the least painful way possible. Even so, it warrants a few words of reflection. The Episcopal diocese was seeking a large, convenient venue for the upcoming consecration of Rev. Susan Haynes as bishop. The diocese asked for permission to use the spacious parish of St. Bede Catholic Church in Williamsburg for the rites. The parish pastor and the Catholic bishop of Richmond, Barry Knestout, granted permission. This sparked a backlash from many lay Catholics, who were distraught by the news that a Catholic parish planned to host the consecration of an Episcopalian bishop (a woman, as it happened...

California has been at the vanguard of family change in America. Culturally and legally—from the Human Potential Movement to the passage of no-fault divorce under then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, from Hollywood movies and shows like “The Graduate” and “Friends”—the Golden State has played a central role in pioneering and representing the cultural attitudes that have transformed marriage and family life across the nation. Indeed, because of Hollywood’s, and now Silicon Valley’s, outsized influence on the global stage, California has amplified values and virtues like expressive individualism, personal fulfillment, and tolerance across the world. These liberal values and virtues can be valuable in the public square, yet they often stand in tension with stable, married family life. In fact, scholars h...

Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2020 / 04:53 pm (CNA).- U.S. President Donald Trump will address the national March for Life in person on Friday, making him the first president in the event’s 47-year history to do so, organizers announced. “See you on Friday…Big Crowd!” the president said Wednesday in a retweet of a video from last year’s march, posted by the national March for Life account. Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, said in a statement that the organizers of the Washington, D.C., event are “deeply honored” to welcome Trump to the march. “He will be the first president in history to attend and we are so excited for him to experience in person how passionate our marchers are about life and protecting the unborn,” she said. She also praised the efforts Trump and his adminis...