My wife and I are one month away from being homeless…at least we thought we might be until yesterday. We are currently in the process of buying a house, and everything was moving along smoothly until the inspector discovered an abandoned oil tank under the driveway. If it turned out that the tank had leaks,… Read More We Are All Refugees…Some of Us Just Don’t Know It
President Donald Trump recently announced that refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries would be denied entry into the United States. As a white, American-born school teacher in a Midwest Catholic school, I didn’t anticipate that this would change my day-to-day life very much. Then a student’s prayer stopped me in my tracks. In my theology… Read More Burritos, Microwaves, and Walls—Lessons in Adulting from High Schoolers
As a certain group of right-wing American Catholics continues to promote free market fundamentalism—sometimes very amiably with rhetorical commitments to a (diminished) social safety net and maybe even with a nod to an increase in the earned income tax credit—Pope Francis has once again affirmed the Church’s fundamental opposition to this ideology (however cleverly marketed)… Read More Pope Francis Challenges Profit-Obsessed Capitalism and Our Complacency
During the last presidential election, it was not unusual for commentators to reference Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as a counter-narrative to the rise of Donald Trump. The story of an immigrant, who was integrally involved in the American experiment, who was concerned about the dangers of populist politics in particular, resonated with many across the political… Read More A Politics of Memory and Hope: The Catholic Political Ethos of In the Heights
At last month’s Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies conference on erroneous autonomy, Bishop Robert McElroy warned of “the growing imperialism of market mechanisms,” the technocratic paradigm, and populist nationalism. Bishop McElroy took a few minutes away from the conference to answer some questions from Millennial writer Daniel Petri on his speech and his… Read More Millennial’s Interview with Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego
The world you inhabit has suddenly become dark. You are seeing things you had, until this point, only read about in books. The brand of Christianity that you adhered to–that you wanted to lay it on the line for–has started to unravel under the weight of injustice. You will begin to shed layer after layer… Read More A Letter to My Younger Disillusioned Self, In a Time of Similar Upheaval
We witnessed to the right to life of children in the womb on Friday, and we witnessed to the right to life of refugees yesterday. I have been reflecting on the simple truth behind both actions. Every single person is created with intrinsic dignity. Every single person is a reflection of eternity, a little glimpse… Read More Why We are Resisting
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