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How wonderful that Our Lady of Guadalupe appears as a pregnant woman clothed in the sun!
In the Book of Revelation, Mary is described in just this manner (Rev 12:1). But we should not approach this symbolism in a superficial or merely sentimental way.
The woman clothed in the sun and with the moon at her feet is portrayed in Revelation precisely as a warrior. Confronting her is a terrible dragon intent upon devouring her child as soon as it is born.
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Just recently on the website maintained by the episcopal conference of Germany, there appeared an editorial concerning Pope Francis’ apostolic visit to Africa.
As many have pointed out, the piece was breathtaking in its arrogance and cultural condescension. The author’s take on the surprisingly rapid pace of Christianity’s growth on the “dark continent” (his words)? Well, the level of education in Africa is so low that the people accept easy answers to complex questions.
His assessment of the explosion in vocations across Africa? Well, the poor things don’t have many other avenues of social advancement; so they naturally gravitate toward the priesthood.
MADISON — Bishop […]
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Just after I was named auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles (LA), Archbishop Gomez, my new boss, told me to get the Waze app for my iPhone.
He explained that it was a splendid way to navigate the often impossible LA traffic. I followed his instructions and have indeed used the app on practically a daily basis since my arrival on the West Coast.
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Some years ago, I was involved in a Catholic-Evangelical dialogue. One of our Protestant brothers challenged the Catholics in the group to articulate clearly what the Gospel is.
I knew what he was getting at: many Evangelicals pride themselves on the fact that they can succinctly sum up the Good News in a way that people find compelling and helpful, whereas many Catholics, it seems, get tongue-tied.
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My great mentor Msgr. Robert Sokolowski told a class of eager philosophy students many years ago that we should read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics every year of our lives. As we grew older, he explained, new dimensions of the book would continually present themselves.
I can’t say that I’ve followed Sokolowski’s advice perfectly, but I have indeed returned often to Aristotle’s great text for inspiration and clarification.
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René Girard, one of the most influential Catholic philosophers in the world, died recently at the age of 91.
Born in Avignon and a member of the illustrious Academie Francaise, Girard nevertheless made his academic reputation in the United States as a professor at Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford University.
There are some thinkers that offer intriguing ideas and proposals, and there is a tiny handful of thinkers that manage to shake your world. Girard was in this second camp. In a series of books and articles, written across several decades, he proposed a social theory of extraordinary explanatory power.
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Toward the end of the liturgical year, we Catholics hear at Mass from the mysterious, often confounding, and utterly fascinating Book of Daniel.
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the Book of Daniel had an extraordinarily powerful influence on the first Christians, providing them a most important template for understanding the significance of Jesus.
Daniel is, of course, an example of apocalyptic literature, which in the common understanding means that it has to do with the end of the world.
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About 15 years ago, I prepared an elective class at Mundelein Seminary which I entitled “The Christology of the Poets and Preachers.” In this course, I endeavored to explore the Catholic tradition’s non-technical, more lyrical manner of presenting the significance of Jesus.
I studied the literary works of Dante, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and G.K. Chesterton, and I also investigated in detail the sermons of many of the greatest masters: Origen, Augustine, Chrysostom, Bernard, Aquinas, Newman, and Knox, among others.
What struck me with particular power, and caused me, I confess, to re-think things rather thoroughly was this: none of these figures — from the late second century to the 20th century — whose sermons we specially revere and hold up for imitation, preached the way I was taught to preach.
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Ridley Scott’s The Martian is a splendidly told tale of survival and pluck, reminiscent of the novel Robinson Crusoe and the films Life of Pi and Castaway.
In this case, the hero is Mark Watney, an astronaut on a mission to Mars who is left behind by his crewmates when he is presumed dead after being lost during a devastating storm.
