Category: Columns

On
Fr. Robert Barron

‘It doesn’t matter what you believe . . .’

A team of sociologists, led by Catholic University professor William D’Antonio, published a survey a few years ago that received quite a bit of media attention, for it showed that many Catholics disagree with core doctrines of the Church and still consider themselves “good Catholics.”

Forty percent of the respondents said that belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is not essential to being a faithful Catholic. Perhaps the most startling statistic is this: 88 percent of those surveyed said “how a person lives is more important than whether he or she is a Catholic.”

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Jean Mueller

Making plans for care of disabled daughter

Q From the past columns I have read, my situation is different. I am the 79-year-old mother of a disabled daughter.

My health is pretty good, but I realize I will not be around forever. I have taken care of “Nancy” all my life, and she and I are very close.

I have not made any plans for her and wonder where to begin. She is my only child, and the thought of any other distant relatives caring for her is out of the question.

(From a mother in Monroe)

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On
Sr. Constance Veit, For the Catholic Herald

Cultivating ‘spirituality of encounter’ this Advent

Guest Column

In September, Pope Francis celebrated “the blessing of long life” with thousands of senior citizens and their families.

In his homily that day, he spoke about the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, calling it “a Gospel of encounter.”

The pope encouraged those present — and through them, all of us — to follow Mary’s example and re-establish a covenant between the young and the old.

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On
Kevin Wondrash

Revisiting the argument from desire

One of the classical demonstrations of God’s existence is the so-called argument from desire.

It can be stated in a very succinct manner as follows. Every innate or natural desire corresponds to some objective state of affairs that fulfills it.

We all have an innate or natural desire for ultimate fulfillment, ultimate joy, which nothing in this world can possibly satisfy. Therefore there must exist objectively a supernatural condition that grounds perfect fulfillment and happiness, which people generally refer to as “God.”

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On
Kevin Wondrash

Reduction to a ‘singleton’ baby

In my capacity as theologian, teacher, and culture commentator, I’ve been reading articles on ethical matters for years and have grown relatively inured to the expression of even the most outrageous points of view.

But a few years ago, I came across a piece that was so shocking that I was compelled, as I read it, to put the magazine down several times and just shake my head in disbelief.

‘Reducing’ a pregnancy

It was an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine called “The Two Minus One Pregnancy,” dealing with the phenomenon of “reducing” (love the Orwellian language) a pregnancy from two children to one.

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On
Kevin Wondrash

A thankful attitude helps us appreciate our blessings

Sometimes we appreciate more fully what we have when we see what others don’t have; yet, they are more thankful than us who have much more.

Matt Hasselbeck learned this the hard way. He was a Boston College sophomore who was going nowhere in football. Worse yet, he got in his coaches’ doghouse when he volunteered for the missions in Jamaica during spring break.

Gratitude amidst poverty

When Matt saw the poverty in the missions, he experienced cultural shock. At a prayer meeting, he heard someone enthusiastically thank God for his blessings. The person was George McVee, a leper who was so disfigured that Matt avoided him. He wondered what George had to be thankful for. He had no money, nose, feet, or hands; yet, he was thankful. His gratitude helped Matt to appreciate his cornucopia of blessings.

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Fr. Robert Barron

Revisiting spiritual welfare

In the sixth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel, we find the account of Jesus sending out the Twelve, two by two, on mission.

The first thing he gave them, Mark tells us, was “authority over unclean spirits.” And the first pastoral act that they performed was to “drive out many demons.”

The reality of evil spirits

When I was coming of age in the ’60s and ’70s, it was common, even in seminaries, to dismiss such talk as primitive superstition — or perhaps to modernize it and make it a literary device using symbolic language evocative of the struggle with evil in the abstract.

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On
Fr. Robert Barron

John Henry Newman at the synod

Controversies surrounding the recent Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family have put me in mind of Blessed John Henry Newman, the greatest Catholic churchman of the 19th century.

Newman wrote eloquently on many topics, but the arguments around the synod compel us to look at his work regarding the evolution of doctrine.

The development of doctrine

When he was at mid-career and in the process of converting from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, Newman penned a masterpiece entitled On the Development of Christian Doctrine.

 

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