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 Genuine health care reform ‘remains a moral imperative’NOVEMBER 3, 2009 | During the past several months, the U.S. bishops have not only followed the health care debate; but, we — like other citizens interested in the common good — have also tried to shape it. For years, the body of U.S. Catholic bishops has supported health care reform. Like many other Americans regardless of party affiliation, we hold that the status quo is ultimately unsustainable. • • • Through God’s grace, commitment to love can endureOCTOBER 23, 2009 | We were created in the image and likeness of this God who is love. Understanding that we are made in the image and likeness of God can help us then to understand why God put into the humanity of man and woman the vocation – and thus the capacity and the responsibility – of love and communion. • • • The rosary is a way to ‘gaze upon Jesus through the eyes of Mary’OCTOBER 9, 2009 | Since the time of Pope Leo XIII, the month of October is dedicated to the holy rosary. For generations, the recitation of the rosary was an integral part of their Catholic piety. The famous “Rosary Priest,” Father Patrick Peyton, encouraged families to pray the rosary together at home by telling them that the family that prays together stays together. • • • ‘Angels are servants and messengers of God’SEPTEMBER 25, 2009 | On Sept. 29, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. These three angels in particular are singled out for the role they played in Salvation History. • • • Genuine health care reform that protects life and dignity is a moral imperativeSEPTEMBER 11, 2009 | Last month found the nation engaged in an intensive, if not divisive, national debate over health care insurance reform. The debates, unfortunately, have generated much heat and little light. There is wide consensus that the status quo is inequitable and ultimately unsustainable. However, while the White House has championed “reform” it has been less than clear on the details. • • • ‘The Church in Cuba … a witness to hope’AUGUST 28, 2009 | I have been visiting Cuba on Church-related matters for more than a decade. And in mid-August, I visited again – along with Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and Bishop Oscar Cantu, auxiliary bishop of San Antonio. We met briefly with Cuban government officials as well as the head of the American Interests Section in Havana. The main purpose of the visit, however, was to meet with Church officials to express to them our solidarity and to offer them our support as they continue to seek to expand the space in which the Church operates in a society whose government still adheres to communist ideology and practice. • • • Globalization makes us neighbors, but ‘love in truth’ makes us brothers and sistersAUGUST 14, 2009 | Pope Benedict XVI has written his third encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (Charity in Truth). The long-awaited encyclical (it underwent revisions in the light of the present economic crisis) commemorates the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s “Populorum Progressio” (“On the Progress of Peoples”); but, it stands in continuity with the social teachings developed by popes since Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” in 1891. • • • Judeo-Christian tradition calls for ‘humane treatment of prisoners’JULY 17, 2009 | Earlier this year, a federal court found conditions in California prisons so overcrowded and inhumane that it ordered that state to reduce its prison population by one-third. But these conditions are by no means unique to California. As a nation, we incarcerate more of our population than any other Western country, more than even the Soviet Union did. Today, the United States has more than 2.2 million people in prison on any given day – and in the course of a year some 13.5 million passed through our correctional institutions. • • • Mass attendance and vacationJULY 3, 2009 | When I was a young seminarian, the rector before dismissing us for our summer break would admonish us: Remember, guys, there’s no vacation from a vocation. This was certainly wise advice – we were after all still seminarians even when away from the structured environment of the seminary with its fixed times for prayer and daily Mass. And I think this is wise counsel to all of us Catholics even as we plan for vacations that take us away from our homes and parishes. There can be no vacation from our fundamental Christian vocation to holiness. Fidelity to weekly Mass attendance is inextricably linked to that vocation. • • • Moment of truth on immigrationJUNE 19, 2009 | The stakes are high as President Obama and congressional leaders plan to meet to discuss immigration reform. President Obama pledged during the campaign that immigration would be a top priority of his administration and that he would push to enact it in the first year of his term. The White House has framed the meeting as an attempt to ascertain whether immigration reform is politically possible this year and to begin a process toward achieving that goal. • • • 150th anniversary of ‘Curé d’ Ars’ opens worldwide Year for PriestsJUNE 05, 2009 | On Friday, June 19, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Catholic Church will begin – at the request of Pope Benedict XVI – a yearlong observance dedicated to the priesthood. This Year for Priests will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of the famous Curé d’Ars, St. John Marie Vianney. • • • Humans find deepest fulfillment in ‘participation in intimacy with God’MAY 22, 2009 | G. K. Chesterton, a man who could turn a pithy phrase long before the “sound bite” was invented, once said: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” The recent public fall from grace of Miami’s photogenic TV and radio celebrity, Padre Alberto (Father Alberto Cutié), as well as the recently published memoir of retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee has reignited in the secular media the tired debates about celibacy, which the Latin Church requires of those who would serve as priests. • • • ‘Eternal life is the real … wealth that Jesus promises’ to faithfulMAY 8, 2009 | After he had fed the crowds with the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, Jesus rebukes them not for following him, but for following him for the wrong reasons (cf., Jn:16). And people, then as now, often do seek Christ for the wrong reasons. • • • Honoring those who honor our beliefs, not those who fight themAPRIL 24, 2009 | In the Church, the greatest title or “honor” anyone can receive is that of the name “Christian.” That title is conferred in Baptism. To be called Christian is both a gift and a task: We must aspire to become what we already are in Baptism; namely, Children of God and coheirs with Christ to the promises of the Kingdom. • • • Being obedient to God’s will for usAPRIL 10, 2009 | The “no” which is the inheritance of original sin, the “nos” that are the sum total of our personal sins had to be substituted by the “yes” of Jesus. He is the only Son of God who became our brother – a man like us in all things but sin. He became our brother so that in him through the gift of his Holy Spirit we might become children of his Eternal Father. • • • Standing to protect conscienceMARCH 27, 2009 | Last week, Cardinal Francis George – the Archbishop of Chicago and the current president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – met with President Barack Obama at the White House. While the meeting was “private” and, according to protocol, such meetings are described as “cordial,” there is no doubt that the cardinal forthrightly discussed with the president the grave concerns that he and his brother bishops have expressed with the direction of the Obama administration in the 50-plus days since the inauguration. • • • ‘Desire for a child cannot justify the “production” of offspring’MARCH 13, 2009 | In the early 1800s, a young woman author, Mary Shelly, wrote perhaps one of the most famous works of science fiction about a mad scientist who in his quest to create life never stopped to consider the consequences of his actions. This gothic novel, “Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus,” was a warning against the overreaching of modern man in the Age of the Industrial Revolution. Two centuries later, science reality is stranger than science fiction: While scientists have not learned to “create” life, they have learned to manipulate life with various reproductive “technologies.” • • • Lent offers Catholics a chance for ‘spiritual recovery’FEBRUARY 27, 2009 | On Feb. 17, President Barack Obama signed into law his “stimulus” package. We pray that it might help more than it could harm. And, of course, the verdict on whether or not the “Federal Economic Recovery Package” is the “stimulus” that our now globalized economy needs will not be in for quite a while yet. However, most people understand that there is no “quick fix” to the world’s very complex economic and financial systems. • • • Learning true compassion from Our Blessed MotherFEBRUARY 13, 2009 | On Feb. 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, we observed once again the “World Day of Prayer for the Sick.” Illness – our own or that of a loved one, in whatever form and at whatever age – is a real challenge to all, for through illness we are reminded of our own mortality. • • • We give for the ‘greater glory of God’JANUARY 30, 2009 | When I was a student in my parish school, Sacred Heart in Lake Worth, Fla., the sisters taught us to write at the top of every paper, every homework assignment “J.M.J.,” which stood for Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It was a way of making even schoolwork a prayer – a lifting up of our minds and hearts to God. Under these initials, we also wrote “A.M.D.G.,” an abbreviation of the Latin phrase, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloria,” which means “For the greater glory of God.” • • • Stewardship of God’s gifts: protecting the environment and human ecologyJANUARY 16, 2009 | The freezing temperatures in much of the country over Christmas seemingly give the lie to the preoccupation that many feel about the threat of global warming. Nevertheless, there is broad consensus among scientists that climate change presents real threats to human flourishing on this planet. The Church cannot be indifferent to these threats. As Pope Benedict recently said, because we believe in the Creator, the Church “has a responsibility with creation and has to fulfill this responsibility in public.” • • • National Migration Week recognizes the ‘dramatic realities of human mobility’JANUARY 2, 2009 | “Renewing Hope, Seeking Justice” is the theme of the New Year’s National Migration Week celebrated Jan. 4-10. The Church in the United States for more than a quarter-century has associated this special observance that calls attention to the dramatic realities of human mobility with the liturgical observance of the Solemnity of the Epiphany. The Magi’s visit to the Christ Child underscores the fact that Jesus came as Savior to all the nations: The Church he was to found to continue his mission of salvation is necessarily “Catholic,” i.e., universal – embracing men and women of all nations and all cultures. |
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