Although he’s not very well known in the U.S., save among members of the Sant’Egidio community (of which he’s the founding father), Andrea Riccardi is a major figure in the Catholic Church in Italy: a historian of the papacy, a commentator on all things Catholic, and a player in various ecclesiastical dramas. Most recently, according to Vatican reporter Sandro Magister, Riccardi has taken to defending the Italian character of the Roman Curia, which, after a period of internationalization, has become more pronounced over the past decade… . Continue Reading»
Looking is an act of salvation, of compassion, and it is the path Father Paul Anel has taken in his vocation as a Catholic priest and photographer. His new exhibition, Walls and Light, opening at the First Things gallery this week, brings together ten photographs by Fr. Paul that shed light on the beauty and mystery of ordinary and ephemeral moments in life and nature. Shifting reflections, quiet shadows, moving streams and passing clouds appear as timeless markers of a transient world caught between the infinite and finite, the personal and the universal… . Continue Reading»
I am told in some of my email that when writing about the future of the church or about the future of America, I tend toward the cynical and the pessimistic, and that these qualities are unhelpful to and unwanted by readers who”for reasons that defy comprehension”log on to the internet expecting to be soothed, reassured, and entertained. While reading the news. The news is not good, and it is not good on any front. Europe is, to put it mildly, in disarray… . Continue Reading»
Remember the constant outcry against President George W. Bush’s embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) federal funding restrictions? Even though his administration issued more than $600 million in NIH grants for human ESCR, and much more than that for animal studies, Bush was castigated widely for preventing selfless scientists from creating a robust regenerative medical sector that, the critics claimed, possessed virtually unlimited potential to ameliorate suffering and cure disease… . Continue Reading»
Referendum? No referendum? A special parliamentary vote? A unity government? Greek prime minister George Papandreou doesn’t know what to do. Which is not surprising. The Greek debt crisis now exposes the fundamental weakness of the European Union”its democratic deficit. From its beginnings in the early 1950s as a common market of coal and steel, post-war efforts to unify Europe have been based on the presumption that interlocking economic interests would lead to a new and harmonious international system… . Continue Reading»
Sixteen years ago, Stanley Hauerwas began his Reformation sermon this way: I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure… . Continue Reading»
In the October 2011 issue of First Things, editor R. R. Reno ponders why it is so difficult for our culture “to identify a real difference between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples.” Relaxed sexual mores and the erosion of traditional male-female roles have destabilized marriage. So, Reno emphasized, has the decoupling of sex from fertility. It is especially here that an effective defense of marriage today requires not only political effort, but “a renewal of our moral and social imaginations.” … Continue Reading»
Is the fight to protect the unborn as misguided”and ultimately as passing”as the push for Prohibition? So suggested David Frum in a recent column for CNN. After I objected to his column, Frum said that I, along with all pro-life advocates, should be willing to accept a regime where abortion is safe, legal and rare … Continue Reading»
“It is not good that the man should be alone,” the Lord said when looking upon the first man. “I will make him a helper fit for him. I had probably read that verse hundreds of times without grasping its full significance. Almost every time, I read my own preconceived meaning into the text, rather than trying to grasp what is actually said. Now it seems rather clear, even obvious. Adam didn’t need a “soulmate,” for he already had the most perfect lover of his soul already in his Creator. What he needed was a “helper,” someone like himself who could share his burdens, his joys, his humanity… . Continue Reading»
The long-awaited introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal on Nov. 27, the first Sunday of Advent, offers the Church in the Anglophere an opportunity to reflect on the riches of the liturgy, its biblical vocabulary, and its virtually inexhaustible storehouse of images. Much of that vocabulary, and a great many of those images, were lost under the “dynamic equivalence” theory of translation; they have now been restored under the “formal equivalence” method of translating. Over the next years and decades, the Catholic Church will be reminded of just what a treasure-house of wonders the liturgy is… . Continue Reading»
