Pastors often make the mistake of romanticizing their first parish. Nothing ever again matches the depth of faith encountered, nor the affirmation of pastoral effort as happens in the first parish. That is if it was a good experience. If it wasn’t, the pastor is apt to drop out of parish ministry within the first five years of ordination, or take another call and repeat the same bad experience… . Continue Reading »
As a movement firmly planted in the revivalist tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, global Pentecostalism emerged from a number of “revival” centers scattered throughout the world. Historians generally agree that events like the Welsh revival led … Continue Reading »
Shortly after the end of World War II, Ernest Hemingway was traveling through Paris and attempted to visit his old acquaintance, Pablo Picasso. On learning that the artist was out, Hemingway decided to leave him a present. He went to his car and returned with a case of grenades, on which he wrote, “To Picasso from Hemingway.” … Continue Reading »
The recent controversy over the termination of a pregnancy at Phoenix’s St. Joseph’s Hospital, which Phoenix bishop Thomas Olmstead determined to have been a direct abortion and thus a grave moral evil, has generated a secondary controversy over the meaning of the Church’s traditional moral principle of “double effect.” … Continue Reading »
Father Augustin Escobar, associate pastor at St. Norbert’s Church in Orange, California, invited a Presbyterian minister to concelebrate Mass, partake of the Holy Eucharist, and distribute the sacrament to the faithful. Bishop Tod Brown of the Diocese of Orange, California put Father Escobar on leave while an investigation ensues… . Continue Reading »
On this President’s Day, we offer selections from three articles we’ve published on Abraham Lincoln, all dealing in some way with his attempts to balance principle with practice, or rather to achieve his principles by understanding the situation, including the limits and restraints, in which he had to act, and acting accordingly. The value of his example is obvious… . Continue Reading »
John Henry Newman, Oxford scholar and famous English convert to Catholicism (1801“1890), whose birthday we celebrate today, is acknowledged by most for his English prose, his lofty ideas on university education and his writings on development of Christian doctrine. We often put Newman forward as an example for the Catholic intellectual but rarely consider what he has to say to the average person striving to live a Christian life in a secular world… . Continue Reading »
An interesting and significant online discussions between Hadley Arkes and Matthew O’Brien on the content of moral judgment has recently played out in the pages of Public Discourse. What made this exchange so remarkable was that O’Brien and Arkes are in close agreement on the great moral issues of our day”both recognize the evils of abortion and racism, for example… . Continue Reading »
It was a bad day for a funeral; name a day that isn’t. But this one came in a period of family turmoil in the middle of last month. My mother just admitted to a nursing home and exhibiting severe dementia; my father lost without her; and me at Day 6 in a ten-day course of antibiotics for a sinus infection that had knocked me flat for the first four days… . Continue Reading »
Playfully invoking the 1896 papal bull declaring Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void,” the English Catholic writer William Oddie has declared the third round of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission’s talks will be “utterly futile, an absolute and total waste of time.” … Continue Reading »
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