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The Archdiocese of New Orleans gives us gives us this lovely portrait of Venerable Pierre Toussaint, whose cause for sainthood has been languishing for too long.I recall telling my son, when he was in the third grade, that Toussaint might “soon be a saint.” My son is 35 years old now, and we are still waiting for further investigation into this great layman and philanthropist — whose heart seemed to understand a great deal more about the brokenness of humanity and who might well be credited as the creator of what we now think of as Catholic Charities. I suspect that issues of money and perhaps the times are getting in the way — that perhaps some might have a problem with the peaceful way he worked within the unjust, short-sighted systems of his time to create real change. But that’s the th...

It is in a way providential that the Feast of Pentecost arrives this year just as our country is going through a convulsive social crisis. For the Holy Spirit, whose coming we celebrate on Pentecost, is a power meant to transform the world, or in the language of Psalm 104, “to renew the face of the earth.” Pentecost, accordingly, is never simply for the Church; it is for the world by means of the Church. One of the principal biblical metaphors for the Spirit is the wind, and indeed, on Pentecost morning, the Apostles heard what sounded like a strong driving wind as the Spirit arrived. But the wind, elusive and unpredictable, is never really known in itself, but only through its effects. On the scriptural reading, the first effect of the Holy Spirit is the formation of an ekklesia (a church...

CNA Staff, May 27, 2020 / 09:19 am MT (CNA).- Bishop George Murry of Youngstown, Ohio has submitted his resignation to Pope Francis, due to a recurrence of leukemia, the diocese has announced. The bishop is 71 years old, four years younger than standard retirement age for bishops. In April 2018, Bishop Murry was diagnosed with leukemia. He underwent a month of intensive chemotherapy treatment at the Cleveland Clinic, and was released in late May of that year. He doctors said he responded well to the treatment, and the leukemia cells had been suppressed, although he would need to return to the clinic weekly for monitoring. “In July of 2019 he reentered the Cleveland Clinic for a reoccurrence of leukemia. At that time tests confirmed that he was in remission and that doctors were not recomme...

Steven D. Greydanus “Her whole life was an attempt to tell her real story. That never really happened. I hope it can posthumously.” So laments Protestant minister Rob Schenck, a onetime pro-life leader with Operation Rescue and one of three pastors who co-officiated the 2017 funeral of Norma McCorvey, along with his former colleague Flip Benham, who baptized McCorvey in a swimming pool in 1995, and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, who received her into the Catholic Church in 1998. The lament appears almost at the end of Nick Sweeney’s documentary AKA Jane Roe, following heavy-handedly after a clip from McCorvey’s funeral with her daughter Melissa talking about McCorvey participating in this very documentary “to show who she was in the end.” Sweeney couldn’t be more explicit in clai...

ROME – “Zero tolerance” for sexual abuse has become one of those notoriously elastic phrases, such as “change,” “hope” and “progress,” which everyone claims to be for but no one seems to define in exactly the same way. In American Catholic parlance, however, the term “zero tolerance” does have a fairly precise meaning, derived from the US bishops’ 2002 Dallas charter and norms: Permanent removal from ministry, and, in most cases, laicization, for even one justified allegation of sexual abuse of a minor. In that sense, “zero tolerance” remains a contested point. To this day, a central plank in the indictment of many abuse survivors and their advocates is that the Vatican has not imposed a universal “zero tolerance” policy everywhere in the world, which is often taken as a sign of reluctance...

United States Supreme Court. (Unsplash.) The decision responded to an emergency appeal from the South Bay United Pentecostal Church and its senior pastor Bishop Arthur Hodges III, who had challenged California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order limiting churches to 25% of their normal maximum capacity, with 100 people maximum at any service. WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court ruled in favor of California’s limits on the number of people who may attend a church service, in a decision that saw justices debating whether religious services were being treated more strictly than similar gatherings under restrictions aimed to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. Chief Justice John Roberts, a President George W. Bush appointee, joined four Democrat-appointed justices in the 5-4 majority Friday. His...

When it comes to religious media, there is nothing like the Catholic press. Spanning the doctrinal spectrum, there are 600 Catholic-based news websites and newspapers in the United States and Canada alone. In the past few years, the diversity of the Catholic press has provided a wealth of information and insights to readers and to mainstream journalists. Like secular news outlets, Catholic media also face financial hardships created by the pandemic. This is a trend that has, of course, affected all news media and across many other industries, such as hospitality and tourism to name just two. Secular news outlets, particularly local newspapers, faced an uphill battle before the coronavirus. They face an even tougher battle now that advertising has dried up amid an ever-worsening economy. Ov...

“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.”  It’s a line we proclaim during the Nicene Creed, a prayer that is still very much a part of Mass whether online or with social distancing measures, in 2020.  Don’t we need life, and don’t we need the presence of its Giver more than ever right now? So many of us have experienced an abrupt change in our lives. Many of us have lost loved ones, jobs, or even homes. The source and summit of our Christian lives, the Eucharist, has been transmitted through a screen, that place where so much of our lives has been increasingly conducted, connecting us and yet isolating us, too, even creating a seemingly unnecessary epidemic of loneliness and despair. Some of that truly present sacramental life is being restored with new protoc...

Another indelible image. Or rather a series of them: night fires, masked faces running in and out of burned storefronts, a wheelchair overturned; the burned uniforms, the white teenagers in parodies of revolutionary attire photographing themselves, the journalists arrested; and, simultaneously at the edge and the center of memory, a vivid nightmare: the snuff film of a man held down by the most grimly appropriate choice of appendage until he could breathe only with difficulty and then not at all. The curiously relaxed face of the officer. Intoxicated, but not with authority; a child who smashes a bird’s nest or stomps upon a turtle does not have authority: he has power, brutally and thoughtlessly wielded for its own sake. I cannot be the only observer for whom the killing of George F...

I miss the human face…don’t you? Isn’t it interesting how that is? Did you think you would ever miss the human face? Who would ever have guessed it? What is about the face that is so important? I suppose it’s the mouth and the cheeks and the chin. It really is difficult to communicate with other people who do not have a mouth or cheeks or a chin. What is it exactly? Obviously, it is difficult to communicate with someone who has no mouth or an obstructed mouth. I have never been quite so conscious of the extent to which I myself communicate with more than my voice. Jokes or any kind of irony become impossible without a face! Imagine what Owen Wister’s “The Virginian” would have done if this jerk did not have a face?! [embedded content] Normal, ordinary human communication requires a face. S...

Back in April, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York excluded the possibility that God had anything to do with the dropping numbers of COVID-19 in New York State (emphasis mine): During a press conference on April 13, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo contended that God has nothing to do with the notable decrease in COVID-19 cases across the state. “The number is down because we brought the number down,” he told reporters. “God did not do that. Faith did not do that. Destiny did not do that.” “A lot of pain and suffering did that,” Cuomo, a professing Catholic, continued. “That’s how it works. It’s math.” … In recent days, the number of hospitalizations and fatalities from the virus have decreased significantly, suggesting that New York City has crested “the curve” and is now on the downhill pat...

The pandemic has suddenly thrown our affluent and seemingly secure and safe lives into a tailspin. In fact, the security and certainty was always an illusion, and in East Coker T.S. Eliot ponders life’s shifting uncertainty: And every moment is a new and shockingValuation of all we have been. We are only undeceivedOf that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.In the middle, not only in the middle of the wayBut all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,Risking enchantment. Do not let me hearOf the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God. The line that always catches my imagination is, “On th...