We are in very tumultuous times in the stock market. One day it is down 600 points and the next day it is up 1,000. But this isn’t the time to panic. After 10 years of very cheap money which has driven up asset prices, including the stock market, the Fed has been normalizing interest…
Researching the Birth Narrative of our Lord on the computer can be a source of unintentionally mordant humor. On one of the prominent encyclopedia sites, we are told in the entry for King Herod that “most scholars agree” that he was entirely capable of massacring the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem. But the same source, under…
Christians in the Indian state of Kerala are about 20% of the population. An amateur film recorded there shows some workers struggling with a power shovel to rescue a baby elephant from a ditch. I do not know if they were Christians, Hindus, Muslims or a mix, but they succeeded. The happy juvenile dashed back…
The darkening that comes with the year’s shortest hours of daylight is like the lowering of the lights in a theatre as the play is about to begin. But in the “Drama of Salvation” by which the human race is offered the promise of restoration to its original glory, “all the world’s a stage,” and…
As practicing Roman Catholics, the title may seem obvious. Of course, Jesus Christ became flesh and blood so that He could die on the Cross and save us from Original Sin. This may lead us to wonder why we celebrate this Feast of the birth of Christ with so much festivity, while the Easter Triduum…
“Why, it is asked, do no miracles occur nowadays, such as occurred in former times?” wrote Saint Augustine of Hippo, who lived from 354 to 430 A.D.. This same question asked in the early 5th century is not so different from one asked by thousands of Christians throughout the world today. People often wish they…
There could be no easier subject for comment than happiness. The best classical pagan philosophers, even if they did not believe a Creator intended that humans should share in his “delight” at what he had made, taught that we were meant to be happy. Some nineteenth-century “Utilitarians” like Jeremy Bentham, thought that this happiness meant a sense…
It was heartwarming seeing people across America saying prayers, paying respects and giving tributes during the service at the National Cathedral to the character, friendliness and love of family of George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States. It caused me to recall my personal experience with 41 in April 1981 when he…
On the morning of November 14, 1921, just outside of Mexico City, a young man by the name of Luciano Perez Carpio entered one of the most important and sacred churches in the world bearing a bouquet of flowers. This was the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the shrine on Tepeyac Hill to which…
I recently came across a new book with a title that really caught my attention. Love Your Life, Not Theirs, written by a woman named Rachel Cruze. It addresses the idea that one of the primary reasons people take on so much debt in their lives is their tendency to compare themselves to others and…
All creation emanated from the voice of God uttering: “Let there be light.” There was nothing and no one yet to hear it, only God himself. As animate creatures came into being, they were able to make sounds, and some of them are beautiful, but only human beings have the gift of being able to…
A bishop condescendingly asked John Henry Newman, “Who are the laity?” To which the great saint, and, one hopes, future Doctor of the Church, replied that the Church would look foolish without them. The same might be said of those who are consecrated in the Religious life. The difference is that most of the Church…
A mark of first-rate thinkers is their ability to make complex theories understandable. Conversely, muddled thinkers assume that obscurantism is profound. Consider, for instance, a comment made a few months ago by an Italian Jesuit and close advisor to Pope Francis, who wrote: “2 + 2 in theology can equal 5. Because it has to…
On the day after Thanksgiving, the Church rejoices in the intercessions of Pope Saint Clement of Rome. New Yorkers have a special reason to think of him, two millennia later. Clement probably was made a bishop by Saint Peter himself and became the fourth Bishop of Rome after Linus and Cletus. He was the first…
Pier 54 on the Hudson River is a short walk from our church. On display are pictures of the Titanic and the Lusitania, which is not encouraging for public relations. The Titanic was supposed to berth there, but instead the Carpathia arrived with surviving passengers. Seven years before, my grandmother had sailed on the Carpathia. The sinking of the Lusitania by a German…
Nostalgia is a selective editing of the past. For instance, there are those who wish we had today some of the architects of thirteenth-century cathedrals, but who avoid mentioning thirteenth-century dentists. In recent times, the general conceit has been the opposite of nostalgia. The philosopher Owen Barfield spoke of “chronological snobbery,” defined as the belief…
Some classical composers whose melodramatic quirks would have made life with them difficult, such as Beethoven, Wagner, Berlioz and Satie, have their opposites in such genial geniuses as Hayden, Mozart and, I would argue, Edward Elgar. Elgar was among the more modern, and had a gift for friendship. The “Enigma Variations” are musical sketches of…
A review of Sam and Gifford Keen’s Prodigal Father Wayward Son: A Roadmap to Reconciliation — Best-selling author, Sam Keen (Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man), and his son, Gifford (Gif), were estranged for many years. Sam’s story is the all too common account of a father working hard, gaining fame and then cashing…
—Homily Given on the Occasion of the Annual Red Mass for the Diocese of Dallas, Most Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, October 13, 2018 -28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year “B”— Introduction Your Excellency Bishop Burns, Your Excellency Bishop Kelly, my brother priests, dear deacons, brothers and sisters in Christ: it is a…
There are those who would not let facts get in the way of theory, and such was the English philosopher Herbert Spencer who promoted the “survival of the fittest.” This “Social Darwinism” theorized that the weak and poor would gradually die out to make way for an inevitable social progress. He was idolized by Andrew…
