July 29, 2017
Special to the Catholic Business Journal— Registration for this year’s Napa Institute topped 550 people. The Meritage Hotel, where the annual conference is held, will soon be doubling its size and able to accommodate many more in 2018. Best-selling author Patrick Lencioni spoke on behalf of “The Amazing Parish.’ He has learned through his work that parishes are hungry. Lencioni...
July 29, 2017
NAPA, CA—Special to the Catholic Business Journal. Archbishop Charles Chaput opened this year’s Napa Institute with a provocative talk on how Catholics can live in these rapidly changing times. He began by culling from a recent Pew study that highlighted many disturbing trends in today’s culture: 33% of American men and 40% of women have an anxiety disorder 70% of...
July 17, 2017
In the nineteenth century, the poet Adam Mickiewicz dramatized the theme of his suffering Poland as the “Christ of Nations” and, in an image used by many others, Poland was crucified in the twentieth century between the two thieves of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. It was not the West’s proudest moment when President Roosevelt complained to Stalin at the...
July 2, 2017
The film Cabaret is better known these days than the novel The Berlin Stories on which its screenplay is based. Christopher Isherwood described the dissolute culture of a demoralized people, which gave rise to the National Socialists. Heroes in the German Church defied the Nazi outrages, and thousands became martyrs. Bishops who honored the apostolic witness included Felhauber, Galen, Preysing...
June 26, 2017
Pat and I have just returned from a week-long trip with two high school graduate grandsons – Trey and Patrick Von Dohlen. Both graduated with academic recognition. We went to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. It was very unusual to be in snow on June 15 and the Snake River was raging from the snow melt. We were able...
View Articles If you’ve met Tim, you know that his life was shaped by good values that were imparted to him by his parents and he...
June 12, 2017
The Feast of the Holy Trinity follows Pentecost because it is only by the inspiration of the Third Person of the Trinity, who leads into all truth, that the mystery of the Trinity can be known. Human intelligence needs God’s help to apprehend the inner reality of God. Certainly, human reason can employ natural analysis to some extent to describe...
May 22, 2017
It was a great Lenten season. Aided by the suggestions in the book 40 Days, 40 Ways by Marcellino D’Ambrosio, Pat and I selected the ways we were going to participate daily and throughout Lent. What was unusual was that we had planned a trip to South America that had us away on Easter. We were in Trevelin, Argentina on...
View Articles If you’ve met Tim, you know that his life was shaped by good values that were imparted to him by his parents and he...
May 14, 2017
A few blocks north of our church, at 1664 Broadway in the old Warners’ Theatre which was demolished in 1952, the first Vitaphone talking film, The Jazz Singer, opened on October 6, 1927. I have been astonished that some of our bright young parishioners never heard of Al Jolson, but history records, as did Vitaphone, his words, “You ain’t heard...
April 30, 2017
Rare is the obituary that can match that of Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart (1880-1963) who died as the most decorated soldier in the British Army. He was born to a Belgian father and Irish mother, though reputed to be an illegitimate son of Leopold II, King of the Belgians. His mother died when he was six, and his English...
April 27, 2017
You know that feeling when you discover something that seems too good to be true, and you have a hard time convincing someone of it? People listen to you and begin to wonder, what’s the catch? That’s how I feel about organizational health. See, I am convinced that making a dysfunctional organization healthy is the best thing a leader can...
April 2, 2017
When the original and lamented Pennsylvania Station designed by McKim, Mead & White was under construction in the first decade of the last century, our parish was not in a salutary area. The New York Tribune described it as a “whirlpool of slime, muck, wheels, hoofs, and destruction . . . a waterfront as squalid and dirty and ill smelling...
March 26, 2017
Laetare Sunday is a relaxation from what, in our culture, are usually the not-too-rigorous rigors of this penitential season. Thoughts of the Heavenly Jerusalem occasioned the hymn “Jerusalem the Golden.” (Click here for choir, here for words) Ours is a translation by the Victorian classicist, John Mason Neale. The hymn is the fourth part of a poem by Bernard of...
March 24, 2017
Having just returned from Washington, D. C. with our special friends Judy and Dick Ames, Pat and I were lucky to get out before the late winter blizzard hit the East Coast. It was a combination of work, sightseeing and visits to the Hill to obtain and share information. Attempting to follow Dr. Italy’s (Marcellino D. Having just returned from...
View Articles If you’ve met Tim, you know that his life was shaped by good values that were imparted to him by his parents and he...
March 21, 2017
In an age of moral confusion, there are those who would suggest that the word “not” has been interpolated in several of the Commandments. It is easy to make words mean what one wants them to mean: in fiction, Humpty Dumpty did that in Wonderland and, in fact, the Anti-Christ did that in the Wilderness. Satan is clever at quoting...
March 13, 2017
Since no one was with our Lord during the forty days he spent in the wilderness, it is obvious that he later related it to his disciples. Perhaps this was among the secret things he revealed during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension. His three temptations: hedonism, materialism, and egoism, are the sum of all kinds of...
February 27, 2017
There is nothing new in being told that we are dust and shall return to dust. We hear it every year. Ezekiel pondered that when he saw a valley of dry bones. The answer came when God breathed, and the bones came alive again, “an exceedingly great army” (Ezekiel 37:10). One of the longest discussed, and often most harshly argued,...
February 20, 2017
An oral tradition holds that in the course of a reception during the Constitutional Convention, the hearty Gouverneur Morris on a wager, after bowing to George Washington, patted him on the shoulder. Washington cast an icy glare at Morris, and the room fell silent. A man of grace and tact, Washington nonetheless had no patience for what he considered boorishness....
February 13, 2017
Europe and its contiguous lands were in a chaotic condition in 1240: the Mongols were destroying Kiev, the Novgorod army virtually wiped out the Swedes along the Neva River, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, was pillaging the Papal States using Islamic Saracens as his mercenaries. Pope Gregory IX’s attempt to rally a Crusade against the invaders failed, and...
January 24, 2017
During these days of transition in government, temperance in expectations is a wise policy based on experience. Calvin Coolidge said, "It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man." The Yankee farmer was frugal with words, but they were not cheap. No...
January 17, 2017
We do not need Einstein to tell us that time is variable, or can “bend.” A half hour having a tooth pulled is much longer than a half hour having a drink with friends. Here in New York on New Year’s Day, the Q line extension on Second Avenue was opened, saving subway commuters a couple of minutes to travel...