Blog of the Archdiocese of Washington
I want to discuss a very alarming new study that indicates that over 40% of children are born outside of marriage in this country. This situation is growing very serious and needs to be addressed in our parishes and homes. Here is a brief excerpt of the article: The number of children born outside marriage …
Continue reading “Growing Crisis: Over 40 Percent of Babies Are Born Outside of Marriage in the US”
There is a text in Luke’s Gospel that I meant to cover back in Holy Week but things slipped by. It is a rather extraordinary thing that Jesus said on his way to the cross. He said it to women who had gathered to lament him: Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead …
Continue reading “A More Awful Thing. A Lament on the Culture of Death”
There was a good article in the Washington Post today By Marc Thiessen entitled Bringing Humanity Back to the Abortion Debate. The article is an op-ed piece reflecting on the recent action of Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska in signing into law the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Obviously the Nebraska law will be challenged …
Continue reading “On Fetal Pain and the Humanizing of the Abortion Debate”
One of the struggles that many Christians experience is that the needs around us are so great and yet we are limited both in personal strength and in resources. And, lurking in the back of our mind, is a notion that what ever the problem, Jesus would help and so should we. It is a …
The Last Supper could never be called a disaster since the Lord Jesus was there. But in terms of everyone else and their behavior it was nothing short of a disaster. Indeed it was so awful that one could hardly have faulted the Lord for saying, “That’s it Father, I’ve had it with them, I’m …
Reviewing Lent With my apologies to the Marine Corps and their excellent “Earned-Never Given” motto, I want to share the Easter Homily of St. John Chrysostom. You may wonder if I am breezing by the passion and death to get to the resurrection. I offer the homily now because this is the time in which in …
Hope is one of those words (like love) that has to be rescued from a world that has overused and misused it for so long that its original meaning is almost lost. Hope has come to mean something amounting to a vague wish for something or a substitute for the word “maybe.” For example a …
Early in my priesthood I began to feel a bit embarrassed that there were certain things I did not know more thoroughly and had not committed to memory. Among these things were the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Gift of the Holy Spirit. Priests are like doctors. Imagine going to a doctor who was …
Continue reading “The Seven Deadly Sins: Memorize and Understand Them”