Lieryn Barnett sometimes is so depressed, all she wants to do is sleep, she said. Other times, she’s so full of energy, she’ll be up in the middle of the night, singing or playing guitar. Or her mind will race at the same time her body won’t have the energy to do anything. All are Read more
In his own time people loved being in Jesus’ company, and sometimes spent days on end with him, even going hungry. How they felt about him gives us a window on the kind of Person he was – and a window on how we would have felt if we had been there! That’s why we Read more
Franciscan Clarist Congregation, a 130-year-old indigenous congregation in India, a month ago dismissed Sr. Lucy Kalappura, a member, for violating the vows of poverty and obedience. It gave her 10 days to appeal to the Vatican against the order, which she did. Kalappura says she was being punished for using media outlets to obtain justice Read more
The archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion, was an oil executive who helped run a major corporation before he became a parish priest. The latter job was unquestionably the most stressful he ever had, Justin Welby has said. “It was isolated, insatiably demanding, and I was, on Read more
I recently heard of a senior U.S. bishop who regularly prays that his civic leader, his president may suffer a mild heart-attack. Not so severe as to threaten his life or his capacity for conversion, but severe enough to require his permanent retirement from office. I wonder how many similar prayers are offered, from the Read more
In my hometown, there is a lifesaving parish called St. William. Every week, the single Sunday liturgy in the modest church building in an impoverished neighborhood is filled to capacity with a passionate mix of young and old; black, white, and brown; and religious and lay from dozens of zip codes. St. William is a Read more
Have you ever met someone who said, “I really don’t want to be happy. Happiness may be good for some people, but it isn’t really good for me”? Most people, deep down inside, want to be happy. It’s even in the US Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men Read more
Millennials don’t value patriotism, family and religion as passionately as previous generations, according to a new survey. “The values that Americans say define the national character are changing, as younger generations rate patriotism, religion and having children as less important to them than did young people two decades ago,” Wall Street Journal reporter Chad Day Read more
I have a modest proposal for the U.S. bishops’ conference. They should scrap their entire agenda for the upcoming November plenary and address a single question: To what degree are the seeds of a de facto schism being sown within the U.S. church? Last week, a friend called my attention to a website called “Faithful Read more
There are going to be some very special moments in your life. They will be the kind of experiences that point beyond themselves to something more. For example, something wonderful in nature that leaves you feeling you are part of something much bigger than your own life-time. Or, the sudden feeling that even the good Read more