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A Blessed Smartphone?
A blessed smartphone or tablet? Yes. Parishioners at St. Matthew’s Church in Marsala (Sicily) were asked by Fr. Alessandro Palermo, a 30-year-old parish priest, to bring their smartphones and tablets...
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Is Faith in Propositions or in God?
I started reading Pope Francis’ new Apostolic Constitution, Veritatis Gaudium (“On ecclesiastical universities and faculties”) and – honestly – got stuck on the first part of the second sentence: “For...
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Home Free
In an April 2nd column I wrote about my pending “battle” with cancer. I wrote then that I didn’t consider myself engaged in conflict against the disease: If I had sorcerers instead of physicians, and...
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2018: As the New Synod Opens
There was a time when Synods were blessedly boring affairs. Priests, bishops, cardinals, even popes would catch up on their sleep, or correspondence. It’s said that Pope John Paul II even sketched out...
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Our Critically Disappearing National Consensus
A few weeks ago I wrote on the great divisions troubling American society at the moment and the possibility of a second civil war. The concluding paragraph of that column included this: “I console...
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The True Season of Advent
Recent events in the Church, and a lack of countervailing action, have produced intense confusion and anger among the People of God. Many are feeling frustrated and helpless. Ordinary believers are...
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The Child Is Born
In the midwinter and the turning of the year to new things, Christendom has fixed the Mass of the Incarnation: of the divine birth, the renewal, the recovery of mankind. Those who sneer at our origins...
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They Also Serve
An intelligent woman who has studied iconography with another intelligent woman (who happens to be my wife) was recently in Florence. An art historian by training, she was lecturing on and revisiting...
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Beauty and Providence
God declares His creation “good” seven times in the first chapter of Genesis. On the seventh occasion (seven being the number of perfection or fulfillment), He calls the work “very good.” Yet sin has...
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In Praise of – Real – Fasting
A pamphlet at my local parish caught my eye recently. It was offering innovative suggestions for Lenten resolutions. Parts of it were attributed to Pope Francis, but other parts surely were written by...
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