My father and I heard on the radio the unexpected news that Rwanda’s Catholic bishops apologized for the Church’s complicity in the planning, aiding, and abetting of the 1994 genocide that claimed more than a million lives. This initiative, however, drew strong criticism from the government who found the apology “profoundly inadequate” and called instead… Read More An Important Step: the Catholic Church’s Apology over Role in Rwandan Genocide

“I can’t wait for 2016 to end.” I have heard numerous people utter these words lately, and I know what they mean. 2016 brought the fifth anniversary of an atrocious war in Syria, Brexit, the election of a self-professed murderer to the presidency of the Philippines, not to mention another slew of shootings on US… Read More The Significance of Christmas for a Troubled America

If there has been one overused line in the past few weeks, it’s the trope: “The election taught us…” We didn’t need this election to teach us that our country is polarized or that there is no “Catholic vote.” As commentators have said for years, political polarization shapes the Catholic electorate as much as the… Read More The Wounded Church: Pro-Life and Social Justice Catholics Remain Divided

While the nation watched the shocking rise of Donald Trump in the Electoral College, much less notice was paid to the passage of a referendum in Colorado. Proposition 106 legalized a terminally ill patient to request from a doctor drugs to end his or her life. Colorado became the sixth state to legalize euthanasia, sparking… Read More Assisted Suicide Quickly Becoming a Major Cultural Issue for Millennials

A month before the election, a 2005 video of Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women on an Access Hollywood taping surfaced. As I listened to Donald Trump joke about how his celebrity allowed him to assault women without consequence, I felt sick to my stomach.  Here we had a presidential candidate actively boasting about… Read More The US Church’s Failure to Stand Against Sexual Assault

To celebrate the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, I have tried to complete all of the Works of Mercy during this past year.  As it turns out, it is a lot easier to feed the hungry and visit the sick than it is to counsel the doubtful or to bear wrongs patiently. Last weekend, just a… Read More Bring on the Revolution of Mercy