Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away this evening after a long and courageous battle with cancer, wrote a wonderful piece for Medium about her love of music, especially the opera: I owe my introduction to opera to a man ahead of the times, a conductor named Dean Dixon. A child prodigy, he read notes at age three, well before he could read words. At age nine, he made his radio debut as Read more…
Lots of people don’t realize that though she was beloved since her own time and popularly declared a saint, it wasn’t until 2012, when Pope Benedict XVI prepared to name her a Doctor of the Church (only the fourth female so recognized) that Hildegard was formally proclaimed a saint. Announcing his intention to raise Hildegard to the Doctorate in October of that year, Benedict noted in May, “Hildegard was a Benedictine nun during the height Read more…
Over at the University of Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal my old Patheos colleague Sam Rocha is featured interviewing EWTN’s Gloria Purvis. It’s a long, deep and sometimes painful read, and I highly recommend it. Gloria, for any who do not know, is the host of EWTN’s “Morning Glory” radio program, and her parents named her well! She is an African American Catholic woman of bold faith who gives ready witness whenever and wherever. In Read more…
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 Read more…
I was pondering, today, the idea that once retail stores open, people will be less willing — perhaps unwilling at all — to try on clothes that others have tried on. Everything is going to change. Over at Word on Fire, I’ve written a short piece on how things might change for the Church as well, at least until a reliable vaccine has been produced to battle back and control Covid-19. Some people believe that Read more…
“These days, politics seems to dictate that if one party says, “The sky is blue,” the other party is obligated to reply, “No, it’s not, and you’re a terrible human being for thinking that.” That leaves no room for science, in which the data speak for themselves, regardless of ideology, and only when they’re ready. Unfortunately, the visceral excitement of political conflict draws far more clicks and better ratings than the methodical world of science.” Read more…
The Way of the Cross is an ancient devotion of the Church which has been used for centuries to bring the believer into deeper union with the Passion of Jesus Christ, using words, prayer, imagery and visual aids to effectively join Jesus on his walk to Calvary. This is written in the hope that, in these these meditations, people undergoing evaluation and treatment for physical or emotional illness may find companionship, understanding and even, with Read more…
It’s a time for hard questions. And hard answers. All week long, I have been pondering this piece I wrote a while back, a mediation on why, if we keep the crucifix before our eyes, it will teach us everything, and train us for the long view It’s not that I’m an egoist, so fascinated with my own words. In truth, most of the time I forget what I’ve written unless someone reminds me or Read more…
One of the great pleasures of working with the Word on Fire Team is the opportunity to contribute, as both writer and editor, to the Word on Fire Institute’s quarterly journal, Evangelization and Culture, a beautifully wrought printed journal overseen by the remarkable Tod Worner and WoF’s extremely talented graphics team. Each issue concentrates on a particularly theme: Our first issue was all about creativity and the Christian imagination. The second focused on the poor Read more…
O, Christ Jesus, help us to refine our perspective on what we call a blessing or a curse. Help us to remember that hindsight is the great bring of wisdom, by which we realize that some perceived ‘blessings’ have — because we are broken — served our weakness, while some real tragedies have fortified our strength; that we are always and forever in the midst of a great and unseen battle by which both darkness Read more…