This essay is one I have wanted to write for a long time, and one I have been thinking about for many months, if not years. One of the silver linings of COVID has been increased attention to the mental…
Henri Nouwen’s poetic image of the “wounded healer” has been falling out of fashion in recent times, especially as both Church and State desperately try to forget the real persons who, though flawed, were the boast of their particular eras.…
Since the Industrial Revolution, mankind has invented thousands, or perhaps even millions of labor-saving devices. We travel faster than ever before imagined over land, sea and air. Most of the world, even in the most impoverished areas, has a quality…
It may strike some as strange that a Catholic Priest in his blog has, to date, only done one In Memoriam, and that was for Billy Graham. Some may even call it a manifestation of religious indifferentism, which I wholeheartedly…
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in…
One of the marvels of nature is how tremendous beauty, diversity and harmony are built on some of the most elementary building blocks. Mankind, with his genius, by means of technology and art, has made what Dante once called the…
As the month of June begins, and the post-Pentecost festivals unfold, it’s hard for me not to see in the Church an abundance of supernatural vitality, and she revels in it in her Liturgy. We hold up the Sacred Heart…
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), one of the greatest of Irish poets, was also a staunch nationalist. So much of the impetus for the establishment of an Irish Free State apart from British hegemony was a long cultural memory of oppression and…
One of my lifelong hobbies includes old manuscripts, especially Medieval ones. There is almost an Indiana Jones adventure quality I feel to looking at these texts which were made with such artistic flair and serious labor. Call me weird, but…
For many devout Catholics who join together to pray the current Pentecost Novena, a popular theme is that of the Nine Gifts of the Holy Spirit, as listed by Saint Paul: “…love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and…