Michael Gerson writes: Many in our country have lost the simple confidence that better days are ahead, for a variety of understandable reasons. There are the coronavirus’s false dawns, followed by new fears. There are rising prices and empty store shelves, as if in Soviet Romania. There is Afghanistan, descending into man-made catastrophe. There are… Read More Christmas Hope in a Time of Despair

via the Vatican: Here man first became conscious of being “a political animal” (cf. ARISTOTLE, Politics, I, 2) and, as members of the community, began to see others not subjects but as fellow citizens, with whom to work together in organizing the polis. Here democracy was born. That cradle, thousands of years later, was to… Read More Pope Francis on How We Can Respond to the Retreat from Democracy

via the Vatican: I want to say to you and to everyone here: don’t be afraid of doubts, because they are not a sign of the lack of faith. Don’t be afraid of doubts. On the contrary, doubts are “vitamins of faith”: they help strengthen faith and make it more robust. They enable faith to… Read More Pope Francis: Don’t Be Afraid of Doubts

Millennial Catholic Jonathan Lewis writes: Waiting can be painful, especially when it feels forced upon us due to COVID-19. The spiritual writer Father Henri Nouwen speaks into this pandemic moment, pointing out that “increasingly in our society we feel we have less and less influence on the decisions that affect our own existence. Therefore it… Read More Advent Lessons on Patience from Henri Nouwen

Michael Gerson writes: During last week’s budget negotiations, and as America prepared for the full-scale arrival of the omicron coronavirus variant, every present Senate Republican voted to “defund” the federal vaccine mandate on businesses, the military and the federal workforce. This indicated a political party now so intimidated by its liberty caucus that senators such… Read More The Consistent Ethic of Death Within the Republican Party

via CNS: The beatitudes were created by Italian Archbishop Mimmo Battaglia of Naples, who was dubbed “Bergoglio of the South” while he was a bishop of another southern Italian diocese and continued his work as a “street priest,” especially in aiding those with drug dependencies. The archbishop, 58, presented the beatitudes during a homily ordaining three new… Read More 8 Beatitudes for Bishops to be Good Shepherds

via the Vatican: Baptism makes each one of us a full-fledged member of the Church community, so that all of us, without exclusion or discrimination, can say: “I am Church!” The Church is truly your home! We, all of us together, are Church, because Jesus chose to be our friend. The Church – and this… Read More Pope Francis: Every Baptized Person Can Say They Are The Church