Category: Columns

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Bishop Robert Barron

Lady Bird and the breakthrough of grace

Spoiler Alert! This column reveals details of a newly released film.

Greta Gerwig’s new film, Lady Bird, has taken the critics by storm. It is the most reviewed movie in the history of the website Rotten Tomatoes to have sustained a 100 percent positive rating, and it is receiving serious Oscar buzz for best picture, best director, and best actress.

Having seen the coming attractions, I knew it would be a quirky, offbeat comedy, but I had no idea that Lady Bird would be of considerable religious interest as well.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Advent: become a witness of waiting

This column is the second part of Bishop Robert Barron’s essay on Advent anticipation.

So when I’m told that waiting seems to belong to the heart of the spiritual life, I’m not pleased, for here, too, I want answers, direction, clarity — and I want them pronto. I desire to feel happy and to know what God is up to; I need my life to make sense — now.

I’m pleased to live a spiritual life, but I want to be in charge of it and to make it unfold according to my schedule: Run Barron Run. All of this is profoundly antipathetic to the mood and spirit of Advent.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Advent and the many faces of anticipation

This article is the first of two parts from Bishop Robert Barron.

Advent is the liturgical season of vigilance or, to put it more mundanely, of waiting. During the four weeks prior to Christmas, we light the candles of our Advent wreaths and put ourselves in the spiritual space of the Israelite people who, through many long centuries, waited for the coming of the Messiah (“How long, O Lord?”).

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Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk

Assisted suicide: destroying my freedom in the name of freedom?

In an August 2015 column in The Washington Post, George F. Will argued in favor of physician-assisted suicide, summing up his perspective this way: “There is nobility in . . . affirming at the end the distinctive human dignity of autonomous choice.”

His conclusion, however, raises several important questions: Shouldn’t death-dealing actions directed against ourselves be seen as a deep repudiation of our autonomy, insofar as suicide eliminates our personal freedom once and for all?

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Fr. Donald Lange

Prepare for the coming of Christ by listening

The word Advent comes from the Latin Adventus which means coming.

From the first Sunday of Advent to December 17, we focus upon the second coming of Jesus so that when he comes in glory, he will find us ready to meet him.

From December 17 to Christmas Eve, we prepare to celebrate Christ’s coming at Christmas. We also prepare for the comings of Christ in daily life.

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Steve Grunow

What the Immaculate Conception means

Word on Fire
Fr. Steve Grunow

In December, the Church celebrates a mysterious and miraculous event of such importance to God’s plan for our salvation in Christ that it happened in a manner that went virtually undetected.

This event is the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Not to be confused with another mysterious and miraculous event, the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus, the Immaculate Conception is about how God acted in an extraordinary way in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that from even the first moment of her own conception, she was rescued from the power of original sin.

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Bishop Robert Barron

Black Elk and the call for catechists

I write these words as the annual November meeting of the United States bishops comes to a close. We bishops discussed many significant matters — from racism and immigration to the liturgy for the baptism of children.

But I would like to emphasize one theme in particular that came up frequently in our conversations, namely, the catechesis of our young people. I have a rather intense personal interest in the topic since, at the conclusion of this gathering, I officially became chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis.

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