Month: March 2012

On
Greg Wagner

Mandate should be seen as attack on religious liberty

To the editor:

At a recent gathering at our parish, I overheard a group of people discussing the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate. The consensus of their conversation could be summed up as follows: “The bishops are getting way too riled up over this issue. It is an election year after all and the president will back down on this.”

As Archbishop Chaput stated, “The  current administration prides itself on being measured and deliberate. The current HHS mandate needs to be understood as exactly that.”

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On
George Weigel

Converts and the symphony of truth

The Catholic Difference by George Weigel

Why do adults become Catholics? There are as many reasons for “converting” as there are converts.

Evelyn Waugh became a Catholic with, by his own admission, “little emotion but clear conviction”: this was the truth; one ought to adhere to it.

Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote that his journey into the Catholic Church began when, as an unbelieving Harvard undergraduate detached from his family’s staunch Presbyterianism, he noticed a leaf shimmering with raindrops while taking a walk along the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass.; such beauty could not be accidental, he thought — there must be a Creator.

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On
Fr. John Nellissery

Observing Lent with Mary

Lent invites us to seek and find God. In this regard, our earthly pilgrimage continues, fixing our eyes on God.

It is our delight to take short-cuts, especially when our way is long and hard. Indeed, our way to God looks enormously long and tedious. God knew our problem and came to our rescue.

Seeking and finding

God in his infinite love created in his children a heart that longs for him. God, from his part, loved to be with us. Salvation history illustrates beautifully this mutual seeking and finding of God and his children. God was the first one to seek.

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On
Mary C. Uhler, Catholic Herald Staff

Bringing ‘drop-outs’ back: Everyone in the Church can make a difference

Editor's View by Mary C. Uhler

We hear these days that more people — especially young adults — are “dropping out” of organized religion. They say they are still “spiritual,” but they don’t want to belong to a particular church.

In the past, young people sometimes took time off from regular church attendance. There were those who shopped around at different churches to see what they were all about, but many of them ended up returning to the denomination of their youth.

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On
Obispo Robert C. Morlino

Año de la Fe: Llamado a la Nueva Evangelizaci

Queridos amigos:

En octubre comenzaremos algo muy importante en la vida de la Iglesia, comenzaremos el Año de la Fe. Cuando empiece, será algo muy grande y, si eres un católico activo, simplemente no podrás perdértelo. Un Año de la Fe es un tiempo en el que estamos llamados precisamente a darnos cuenta de que en nuestra Iglesia y en el mundo hay una crisis de fe. Por esa crisis de fe, por el hecho de que nuestro mundo, cada vez más, avanza hacia un espacio sin Dios, es que necesitamos este Año de la Fe para fortalecer nuestra Nueva Evangelización. Ese ha sido el tema que nosotros los obispos hemos tratado mucho con nuestro Santo Padre y con los encargados de las distintas oficinas vaticanas durante nuestra reciente visita ad limina (N.T. visita obligatoria que hacen todos los obispos del mundo al Papa por lo menos una vez cada cinco años).

Estamos llamados a una Nueva Evangelización para lidiar con esta crisis de fe. El mundo avanza hacia la tierra sin dios y el secularismo, y por eso tenemos que combatir la actividad de Satanás así como Jesús lo combatió en el desierto. El tema y el punto principal para la Nueva Evangelización durante el Año de la Fe va a ser uno hermoso: porque apunta a la belleza misma.

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