While I suspect that Julian Guthrie, author of Alpha Girls: The women who took on Silicon Valley’s male culture and made the deals of a lifetime, intended to show how four women “broke through” the “glass ceiling” in elite Silicon Valley venture firms and disrupted its “boys network,” I found the value of this book…
I knew an elderly Scotswoman who read the Bible each night by the light of a candle. It had become a kind of ritual, for everyone needs a rite, including those reared in the stark Calvinist kind of worship of her homeland Kirk. While she did all of her other reading by electric light, the…
Prophets proclaim the truth, and they predict the future only in a derivative sense of cautioning about the consequences of denying the truth. Thus, the Church distinguishes between holy prophesying and sinful fortune-telling. There is a “psychic” near our rectory, who will tell your future for $10, but you have to ring the bell first,…
Christine Watkins is a remarkable woman who has become one of today’s most important Catholic authors. “The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience” is her seventh book and is a top bestseller in Mysticism and Catholic Theology. Her primary interest is spiritual transformation, which is rooted in her own transformation, a story…
Who the “Wise Men” were is a recurring question for inventive debate, but the point is that these sophisticated scholars were from “a foreign country.” Here in Manhattan, tourists can be annoying when they stop suddenly to look at a novel sight. But they also do us the favor of noticing what we take for…
January 6, 2020
This article was originally posted December 29, 2015 yet it is especially relevant today after recent (Sunday, December 27, 2020) kidnapping at gunpoint of Bishop Moses Chikwe, Auxiliary Bishop of Nigeria’s Archdiocese of Owerri, and his driver, both of whom were released two days ago by Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. 12/29/15—Nigerian Bishop Oliver Dashe…
I have long been of the opinion that preachers should avoid allusions to the painting “The Light of the World” by William Holman Hunt. This is not because it is inferior in any way. It is a tour de force of an artist’s craft and a prime example of the Pre-Raphaelite school that he began…
CNA—Bishop James Conley announced Friday that he is taking a medical leave of absence from his ministry as Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. “I have been medically diagnosed with depression and anxiety, along with chronic insomnia and debilitating tinnitus, which is a constant ringing of the ears,” Conley wrote in a Dec. 13 letter to Catholics…
Christmas is my favorite holiday and season of the year. Music adds so much to the magic of Christmas. We know that the first Christmas was the miracle of Christ’s birth to the Virgin Mary for the salvation of souls – God’s gift to the whole world of His only son Jesus Christ. Music lifts…
Gaudete!—Rejoice!—is the name for the Third Sunday of Advent. The rubrics say the Advent penances and discipline are somewhat mitigated on this day. Gaudete Sunday is a respite, rather like one of those “film trailers” that give a tantalizing glimpse of what is to come. Even so, the sonorous hymns and rose colors of Gaudete…
As a rather observant child, I made a mental note of the fact that my maternal grandmother would ask me to “make a light” instead of asking me to switch it on. When she was a child, no one switched lights on. At night, light was not had without effort, not in her English town nor…
If you ask my family what I’m like during the holidays, they’ll tell you that I tend to go a little overboard. The get-togethers, the gifts, the good times with loved ones and treasured friends — I can’t get or give enough during this special season. My wife and kids make fun of me for…
Fifteen years ago, in 1999, Pope St. John Paul II declared that the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe would be celebrated in every Church in the Americas, because, he said, she is the Patroness, the Evangelizer, and the Mother of the Americas. John Paul said that through her intercession, the new evangelization in America…
I am writing this note almost exactly one year, to the minute, since one of the most wonderful and powerful moments in my life. A year ago, I was in Maryland at a hotel located along one of the many bays in the region. After a client event, I had an extra day to write…
Given the many theatres that are or have been within walking distance of our church on 34th Street, it is not possible to count the number of times stage curtains have come down on a final act. One block away from us is the theatre built by Oscar Hammerstein, to compete with the old Metropolitan…
If from time to time you have a sense that all things held dear in both Church and State seem to be collapsing, you might find a comrade in the Irish poet William Butler Yeats: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and…
In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, directly over the very spot where our Lord’s Cross stood, right where our Savior died for our salvation, there stands a Greek altar. Directly next to it stands a Latin altar. In between the two altars hangs an icon of the Mother of God. Right at…
Most of our Founding Fathers were not deeply informed about Catholicism, but they appreciated moral integrity when they saw it. When John Dubois, eventually the first resident Bishop of New York, fled the French Revolution, he lived for a while in the home of James Monroe. Patrick Henry taught him English, and Thomas Jefferson arranged for…
In my last article we looked at forming and accomplishing your vision, more on that later, and not worrying about being a people-pleaser. This month we look at someone whose actions demonstrate she cares more about the truth and doing what is right rather than worrying about what someone will think or say about her…
Scientists say that diamonds need more than 350 tons of pressure per square inch and heat levels above 2200 degrees Fahrenheit to form within the earth. And since we know that God’s own inner order and life imprint themselves on all of creation, this simple scientific fact has something to teach us about spiritual reality. …
