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Columnists and contributors
Msgr. James P. Moroney
The collects of Easter: The Seventh Sunday
Posted: 5/18/2012
The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated on different days in different places throughout the world. Sometimes it is celebrated on the fortieth day after Easter, the Thursday before the Seventh Sunday of the Easter Season. In other places it is transferred to the Sunday following "Ascension Thursday."
Debbie Rambo
Thanking those who support the mission
Posted: 5/18/2012
During the spring fundraising event season, Catholic Charities is not only provided with the incredible opportunity to gather and celebrate the work we do and the clients we serve across Eastern Massachusetts -- we are also provided with an opportunity to thank those who help us achieve our mission of building a just and compassionate society rooted in the dignity of all people.
George Weigel
Biblical illiteracy and Bible Babel
Posted: 5/18/2012
One of the disappointments of the post-Vatican II period has been the glacial pace of the growth in Catholic biblical literacy the Council hoped to inspire. Why the slow-down? Several reasons suggest themselves.
Clark Booth
End of an era?
Posted: 5/18/2012
Mothers' Day is ludicrously early to be proclaiming anything definitive about the baseball season let alone where teams will finish and how they'll get there. Yet being no stranger to ridiculous premises or ill-advised ventures into the unfathomable, your host will gleefully take the plunge.
Clark Booth
Meandering the world of sport
Posted: 5/11/2012
We have here some stray items looking for a place to land. It's a bit of "disa and data," as the long-gone but unforgettable Bud Gillooly used to term the stuff back when he was the lead sports columnist for the irascible Record-American. It seems like only yesterday.
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk
Powerlessness, or the hidden power in our suffering?
Posted: 5/11/2012
In a 1999 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, patients with serious illness were asked to identify what was most important to them during the dying process. Many indicated they wanted to achieve a "sense of control." This is understandable. Most of us fear our powerlessness in the face of illness and death. We would like to retain an element of control, even though we realize that dying often involves the very opposite: a total loss of control, over our muscles, our emotions, our minds, our bowels and our very lives, as our human framework succumbs to powerful disintegrative forces.
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe
Glory in the cross
Posted: 5/11/2012
It's hard to believe that 10 years have passed since we brought Juliana home from Russia. Then, just a few weeks short of her third birthday, Juliana weighed a mere 22 pounds. She had difficulty digesting proteins, falling asleep, and walking without bumping into walls. Time and a full pantry took care of the food issues. Music and a night light made falling asleep a bit better. And thick glasses kept her from bumping into things. That was the easy stuff.
To live each day with dignity -- Part I
Posted: 5/4/2012
Massachusetts voters are expected to vote next November on a ballot initiative that, if approved, will legalize physician-assisted suicide in the Commonwealth.
Clark Booth
Farewell to Lord Stanley's Cup
Posted: 5/4/2012
Bye, bye Stanley. We hardly got to know ye again. Let's hope it's not another four decades before we re-new acquaintances.
Msgr. James P. Moroney
The collects of Easter: The Fifth Sunday
Posted: 5/4/2012
Almighty ever-living God,
constantly accomplish the Paschal Mystery within us,
that those you were pleased to make new in Holy Baptism may, under your protective care,
Dale O'Leary
There must be heresies
Posted: 5/4/2012
When I was an agnostic/atheist college student and very much on the outside looking in, I took a course on early Christian thought. Although I was not converted (that came later), I came away convinced that the Church had in the early centuries been challenged by a series of potentially destructive heresies and had each time some how been able to get it right. After I converted, I found that G.K. Chesterton had long before me discovered the same miracle. He pointed out how, when attacked from the right and from the left, the Church had not come to some compromise, some gray middle ground, but had rather wondrously, divinely, reconciled the extremes by embracing them both.
Michael Pakaluk
Thomism and Friday fish
Posted: 5/4/2012
There are lessons in fish. Consider: Do you, as a Catholic, abstain from meat on Fridays? If not, you would probably tell me that practice was abandoned by Vatican II. Indeed, but I would say that your reply is a half truth. Before Vatican II, Catholics abstained from meat, and ate fish instead, as a very slight penance, to remember the day of the Lord's Passion. After Vatican II, Catholics are still supposed to do penance on Friday and remember the Passion, only the specific penance need not be fish.
George Weigel
Pugin at 200
Posted: 5/4/2012
The prospect of "redecorating," or any other form of "home improvement," generally gets me thinking, quickly, about a lengthy research trip abroad. Yet I can, and recently did, spend several pleasant hours contemplating ceramics, furniture, and--would you believe it?--wallpaper. But not at Home Depot, I quickly add; rather, in a book--"Pugin: A Gothic Passion," published in 1994 by Yale University Press in association with London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
Clark Booth
Opening the local Centennial
Posted: 4/27/2012
In its first salvos the Red Sox have regaled us with their "modest" observance of the 100th birthday of their "lyric little bandbox of a ball yard." For better or worse, we are assured the hosannas have only just begun, although whatever else they intend to cook up will have trouble competing with the opening number.
Susan Abbott
Faith Formation during vacation
Posted: 4/27/2012
As the end of another academic year approaches, all of us at the Archdiocese of Boston's Office of Religious Education celebrate the successes and accomplishments of the past school year. With more than 112,000 young people participating in parish-based religious education programs, our responsibility to hand on the Catholic faith is a large and holy undertaking. We are indebted to pastors, parish catechetical leaders, and thousands of volunteer catechists who carry out this sacred duty.
Dwight G. Duncan
Service in leadership
Posted: 4/27/2012
Thank God for the nuns! Most of the canonized saints of this country have been women, and all of those were religious women, founders and pioneering leaders of their orders. The first American citizen to be canonized was St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, right after World War II. The first native-born American to be canonized was St. Elizabeth Anne Seton, in 1975. (Indeed, the two Americans who will be canonized this year were both religious women, soon-to-be St. Marianne Cope and soon-to-be St. Kateri Tekakwitha.)
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe
A much needed rain
Posted: 4/27/2012
When it rains, it pours. What I mean to say is that there are times when even a master multi-tasker like me doesn't know how I'm going to manage to keep all the balls in the air. Frankly, there's way too much juggling going on. We're both working more than one job, shuttling kids to their jobs and activities, desperately trying to keep up with whatever must be done, then whatever should be done, then whatever can be done. For the most part, we don't have the time, money, or energy to even think about whatever we'd like to get done.
Msgr. James P. Moroney
The collects of Easter: The Third Sunday
Posted: 4/20/2012
May your people exult forever, O God,
in renewed youthfulness of spirit,
so that, rejoicing now in the restored glory of our adoption,
Debbie Rambo
Marathoners with a mission
Posted: 4/20/2012
Inspiration is all around us at Catholic Charities. We are blessed not only by staff that go above and beyond to meet a need, but also by the individual achievements of clients, as well as supporters' gifts of time, talent and treasure.
Kevin and Marilyn Ryan
A kiss is not a kiss
Posted: 4/20/2012
How often have you heard people say something like, "I'm sure glad I'm not part of today's dating scene. What a terrible way to find a life-time mate." Or, "Who wants all this 'new freedom' and the sexual expectations that come with it?"
George Weigel
Jimmy Carter, biblical scholar and theologian
Posted: 4/20/2012
Given the specter of James Buchanan, the question of whether Jimmy Carter was the worst president in the history of the Republic must remain unresolved; yet there is no doubt that Carter is the worst ex-president ever. Having failed to convince his countrymen to re-elect him, he has spent his post-presidency explaining to the world what is wrong with his countrymen, and his country, in a pathetic attempt at self-vindication. In the course of this endless kow-towing to the gods of political correctness, the little engine of self-esteem from Plains has interfered with the nation's diplomacy, misrepresented the just war tradition, and described Israeli policy in the West Bank as a "system of apartheid."
Clark Booth
In court, on links, at the Heights
Posted: 4/20/2012
In court in DC
Come along, please, as we round the bases of the sporting scene. Beginning in Washington, DC where the circus is returning to town although to the consternation of certain wise guys that has nothing to do with the sitting of the Congress.
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