J.W. (Terry) Freiberg, social psychologist turned lawyer, explores what St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) called “The most terrible poverty” in his trilogy of books on loneliness – Four Seasons of Loneliness: A Lawyer’s Case Stories (2016), Growing Up Lonely: Disconnection and Misconnection in the Lives of our Children (2019), Surrounded by Others and Yet So…
Archbishop Michael Miller of Vancouver expressed disappointment with the government’s decision to ban religious services as part of a plan to curb the pandemic in British Columbia. During Sunday Mass at Holy Rosary Cathedral in Vancouver, Miller said religious institutions are not being treated fairly compared to the other establishments. “As I mentioned in the…
CNA—For one Catholic businessman in New York City, Thanksgiving has long been a time of sacrifice and generosity. For each of the past four years, Alphonse Catanese and his wife have donated hundreds of turkeys to needy families in the city. This year, amid the toll of the coronavirus pandemic, the Cataneses have stepped up…
A close friend of mine who grew up in Poland under Communism called me on the phone in March of this year. She told me to sit down. She was going to tell me something I would not believe. OK. I sat down and listened. She was voting for Trump. WHAT?!!! Even she couldn’t believe…
The coronavirus pandemic has forced us all to rethink our daily lives. From the personal to the professional to the spiritual, the habits and rituals that we have come to rely on have been upended. It’s been difficult, to say the least. But it’s also a good time for us to ask: How can we…
The increasing outsourcing of health-care policy to medical bureaucrats during the COVID-19 crisis illustrates the dangerous temptation to remove control over policy from democratic deliberation in favor of a technocracy, i.e., rule by “experts.” In health care, such a system would be particularly perilous since the experts placed in charge of policy would be “bioethicists”…
CNA—The beatification of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the former Primate of Poland who heroically resisted Communism, has been postponed because of the coronavirus. Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz said April 28 that the beatification would no longer take place as planned in Warsaw’s Piłsudski Square on June 7. “A pandemic threatening the health and life of people makes…
National Review—We’re not just living through an earthshaking pandemic. We’re living through a new crisis in which a highly virulent virus arrives at the very moment when ubiquitous media coverage, global interconnectivity, and a certain amount of scientific conformity amplify everything. All of this has combined to create an unprecedented public-policy response. For the first…
CNA, Diocese of Brooklyn—Fr. Brendan Buckley, OFM. Cap., had never heard of the Zoom before this past March and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. After his home in the Diocese of Brooklyn became a center of COVID-19 illness in the United States, he learned. With the help of two parish employees, he has now…
Writing on his Facebook page, Rev. Jerome Zeiler, O.P. , offers the following poignant dialogue about some of the many ways Our Lord is at work during this time of ubiquitous closures and social distancing. Fr.Jerome writes: Satan: “I will cause anxiety, fear, and panic. I will cause the churches to lock their doors. I…
