“Baruch ata Adonai…” recites my grandmother in Hebrew, as she lights the Passover candles. Her son, my Jewish father, sits to my left. My Catholic mother is at the other end of the room. About 15 friends and relatives are crammed around my parents’ dining room table, where I sat every Sunday night for CCD during middle… Read More Passover, Fatherhood, and the Power of Names
Every Christmas morning, my friend Sean’s parents would load their three sons into the family car and head to a local soup kitchen. Sean and his brothers would help out by putting napkins and flatware on the tables, then a hot meal would be served and gifts distributed to the patrons. Sean’s dad sometimes dressed… Read More Social Justice Lessons of Christmas
In his unforgettable essay “Federer as Religious Experience,” which appeared in the New York Times’ tragically short-lived Play Magazine in 2006, David Foster Wallace reflects on watching the all-time great Roger Federer play tennis. “Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be… Read More Stephen Curry’s Beautiful Basketball and the Catholic Sacramental Imagination
Pope Francis’ much-anticipated apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia, does not disappoint. It is an incredible work that is full of good advice for both families and church leaders, delivered with theological richness and pastoral sensitivity. Do read the whole thing if you can. A lot has already been written on many of the key elements… Read More Amoris Laetitia and Social Justice: Ten Quotes from Pope Francis’ Exhortation
In a recent column for Religion News Service, Marcia Pally, who describes herself as “emphatically pro-life,” argues that all of the legal efforts to regulate or ban abortion over the past 40 years are “hokum.” She writes “Laws limiting abortion don’t pay for sonograms or day care, and they don’t feed or educate children.” If the… Read More To Protect Life and Promote Justice, Laws Matter
A lot has already been written about Laudato Si’: On Care of Our Common Home, Pope Francis’ new encyclical on ecology. Most reactions have focused on the politics, the economics, or the science in it — all good, important perspectives. But the document is truly beautiful. There are passages that made me stop in my tracks and savor.… Read More Five Quotes from Pope Francis’ Laudato Si: Beauty Will Save the World
In his modern spiritual classic Tattoos on the Heart, Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ, writes about the gang-intervention ministry he runs in Los Angeles called Homeboy Industries. Frequently, Fr. Greg says Mass at juvenile detention camps, and he shares the story of a meeting with one of the teenagers there. After Mass one day, a kid… Read More Seeking Christ in the Poor and Vulnerable
Millennial 