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Date Set For Canonizations . . . Monsignor Reflects On The Legacies Of Two Saintly Popes

October 3, 2013 Frontpage Comments Off on Date Set For Canonizations . . . Monsignor Reflects On The Legacies Of Two Saintly Popes

By ANN SCHNEIBLE ROME (ZENIT) — The Vatican has confirmed that John XXIII and John Paul II will be canonized in the same ceremony on April 27, 2014. The date, which had been hinted at by Pope Francis, was confirmed by the Holy Father during a consistory held September 30 in the Apostolic Palace. According to a statement released by the Vatican, Pope Francis “decreed that Blesseds John XXIII and John Paul II will be enrolled among the saints on April 27, 2014, the Second Sunday of Easter, of the Divine Mercy.” This past July, the Pope approved the second miracle in the cause for John Paul II’s canonization: A Costa Rican woman was healed of a terminal brain aneurysm…Continue Reading

The Truth About Human Love

September 11, 2013 Frontpage Comments Off on The Truth About Human Love

Readers of Shakespeare’s famous love story have generally interpreted the play in three major ways. One common view portrays the lovers as victims of fate or fickle fortune, as “star-crossed” because of the strange accidents and uncontrollable forces that control the destiny of their love — the family feud between the Capulets and the Montagues, Romeo’s sudden banishment, and the delay of Friar Lawrence’s letter that explains that Juliet is not dead but under a sleeping potion. This interpretation minimizes the lovers’ responsibility in causing their own tragedy by their hasty marriage, impatience, impetuosity, and despair. A second view of the tragedy idealizes the love of Romeo and Juliet as beautifully romantic and transcendent, above criticism and moral culpability —…Continue Reading

Dead Souls Of A Cultural Revolution

September 11, 2013 Frontpage Comments Off on Dead Souls Of A Cultural Revolution

On Friday, August 16, Christopher Lane, a 22-year-old Australian here on a baseball scholarship, was shot and killed while jogging in Duncan, Okla., population 23,000. He died where he fell. Police have three suspects, two black and one white. The latter said they were bored and decided to shoot Lane for “the fun of it.” As Lane was white and the shooter black, racism has surfaced as a motive. On August 22 came reports that killing a white man may have been an initiation rite for the black teens in joining some offshoot of the Crips or Bloods. What happened in Oklahoma and the reaction, or lack of reaction to it, tells us much about America in 2013, not much of it good. Teenagers who can shoot and kill a man out of summertime boredom are…Continue Reading

The Dawning Of A Rebirth Of Tradition

September 11, 2013 Frontpage Comments Off on The Dawning Of A Rebirth Of Tradition

When I attended St. Hedwig Parish elementary school in Chicago from 1974 through 1981, the nuns there were angry. A kind of collective restlessness and uncertainty would cause several of them to lash out at the only people they could lash out at — us children. As a child, I could not have ever imagined what kind of challenges nuns were facing in the newly upturned, post-Vatican II era, but their lack of peace certainly manifested itself in ways I’d like to forget. Reading Sisters in Crisis: Revisited — From Unraveling to Reform and Renewal sure helped me understand why some of these sisters may have been in a bewildering place and time, not really knowing where the Church or their orders were headed. 

The New Orders Of Nuns Are Classic

September 11, 2013 Frontpage Comments Off on The New Orders Of Nuns Are Classic

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Ann Carey, author of the popular Sisters in Crisis and her updated edition, Sisters in Crisis: Revisited — From Unraveling  to Reform and Renewal, and ask her a few questions about why she felt the need to revisit the situation with the sisters. Q. Why now? What motivated you to revisit this topic?  A. Well, the original book cameout 16 years ago, and a lot has happened since with women religious. For one thing, the newer orders that I call classic — that is, the newer orders that are following a classic model of religious life by living together in community regularly and following a corporate apostolate, maintaining close fidelity and ties to the Church. Some of those new communities and some of the old communities that renewed themselves are attracting new vocations and many…Continue Reading