Church
Christianity is not a private way of salvation and a guide to a pious life; it is a way of world salvation and a philosophy of total life. This makes it a sort of dynamite. So when you send missioners out to preach it, it is well to get ready for some explosions.
~Bishop James Edward Walsh, Founder of the Maryknoll Missionaries
The Two Essential Signs of a Thriving Parish
Half a century of sitting in Catholic parishes and getting assaulted by painful attempts at relevance qualifies me to reflect on what a thriving parish should actually be. Models and theories abound, but I believe […]
The Exorcistic Power of Latin in the Latin Church
A thousand causative factors have led to the present clerical abuse crisis in the Church. But I believe there is one contributing spiritual factor that holds a critical place in the rise of the clerical […]
The Terrible Effects of Eucharistic Deprivation
Padre Pio once remarked that the world could more readily exist without the sun than without the Eucharist. What a remarkable statement. It is imperative, therefore, to take account of what we gain from the […]
The Ripple Effect of an Invalid Priestly Ordination
In my recent article at Catholic Stand, “An Unexpected Refresher Course on the Sacraments,” I spoke about the invalid ordination of Fr. Matthew Hood of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Father was viewing a video […]
A Tyrant and a Saint from the Same Small Country
Mother Teresa of Calcutta was largely known for her work in India, so we tend to forget that she was born in the tiny Eastern European county of Albania. What many also may do not […]
Undoing the Knot of Clerical Scandals
The Catholic priesthood is undoubtedly experiencing a profound crisis at this moment. The vast majority of good priests are tainted by the scandals, but Our Lady, Mother of Priests, does not give up hope for […]
The Church’s First Novena
Ascension Thursday begins what we may call the Church’s first novena. It is the nine-day period between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday in which the disciples were locked in the Upper Room, united in prayer […]
Clerical Contraception – the Other Priestly Scandal
Among the many hard teachings of Christ that is deeply “offensive” to the dominant secular culture today is the Church’s age-old prohibition of the use of all forms of artificial contraception, which is a clearly-defined […]
