My character “Brother Tarsus” from Arcātheos
THIS week, I am rejoining my companions in the realm of Lumenorus at Arcātheos as “Brother Tarsus”. It is a Catholic boys camp situated at the base of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and is unlike any boys camp I’ve ever seen.Continue reading
THE NOW WORD ON MASS READINGS
for July 22nd, 2017
Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Feast of St. Mary Magdalene
Liturgical texts here
IT is always beneath the surface, calling, beckoning, stirring, and leaving me utterly restless. It is the invitation to union with God. It leaves me restless because I know that I have not yet taken the plunge “into the deep”. I love God, but not yet with my whole heart, soul, and strength. And yet, this is what I am made for, and so… I am restless, until I rest in Him.Continue reading
Foxtail in my pasture
I received an email from a distraught reader over an article that appeared recently in Teen Vogue magazine titled: “Anal Sex: What You Need to Know”. The article went on to encourage young people to explore sodomy as if it were as physically harmless and morally benign as clipping one’s toenails. As I pondered that article—and the thousands of headlines I’ve read over the past decade or so since this writing apostolate began, articles which essentially narrate the collapse of Western civilization—a parable came to mind. The parable of my pastures…Continue reading
THE NOW WORD ON MASS READINGS
for July 19th, 2017
Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Liturgical texts here
THERE are times during the Christian journey, like Moses in today’s first reading, that you will walk through a spiritual desert, when everything seems dry, the surroundings desolate, and the soul almost dead. It is a time of testing of one’s faith and trust in God. St. Teresa of Calcutta knew it well. Continue reading
First published March 25th, 2010.
FOR decades now, as I noted in When the State Sanctions Child Abuse, Catholics have had to endure a never-ending stream of news headlines announcing scandal after scandal in the priesthood. “Priest Accused of…”, “Cover Up”, “Abuser Moved From Parish to Parish…” and on and on. It is heartbreaking, not only to the lay faithful, but to fellow-priests. It is such a profound abuse of power from the man in persona Christi—in the person of Christ—that one is often left in stunned silence, trying to comprehend how this is not just a rare case here and there, but of a much greater frequency than first imagined.
As a result, the faith as such becomes unbelievable, and the Church can no longer present herself credibly as the herald of the Lord. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Light of the World, A Conversation with Peter Seewald, p. 25
THE NOW WORD ON MASS READINGS
for July 6th, 2017
Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Opt. Memorial of St. Maria Goretti
Liturgical texts here
THERE are many things in life that can cause us to despair, but none, perhaps, as much as our own faults.Continue reading
DISCRIMINATION is evil, right? But, in truth, we discriminate against each other every day…Continue reading