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Word on Fire |
Excerpted from Brandon Vogt’s book, RETURN: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church
In our daily prayers, let us call out to one of the greatest pastors in the history of the Church, St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. The Curé d’Ars had one all-consuming desire: to help his parishioners become holy.
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Word on Fire |
Excerpted from Brandon Vogt’s book, RETURN: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church
In our daily prayers, let us call out to one of the greatest pastors in the history of the Church, St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. The Curé d’Ars had one all-consuming desire: to help his parishioners become holy.
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When I was going through school, the devil was presented to us as a myth, a literary device, a symbolic manner of signaling the presence of evil in the world. I will admit to internalizing this view and largely losing my sense of the devil as a real spiritual person.
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I recently granted an interview to the National Catholic Reporter concerning the upcoming Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment, to which I was elected a delegate.
We discussed a number of topics, including the rise of the “nones,” the purpose of the Synod, and creative ways of listening to the concerns of young people.
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Spoiler Alert! This column reveals details of a newly released film.
The original Jurassic Park film from 25 years ago rather inventively explored a theme that has been prominent in Western culture from the time of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment — namely, the dangers of an aggressive and arrogant rationalism.
Beginning in the late 18th century, poets and philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Herder, William Blake, and John Keats warned that the lust to understand and control nature would result in disaster for both the human soul and for the physical world.
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On the afternoon of June 14, a rather spirited, fascinating, and unexpected debate broke out on the floor of the USCCB spring meeting in Ft. Lauderdale. At issue was the possibility of reconsidering Faithful Citizenship, the 2007 statement of the U.S. bishops on the formation of conscience regarding matters political.
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| Fr. Steve Grunow |
Hanging on the wall of one of the confessionals at my parish is an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The unknown artist has opted, as many have, for a soft Jesus, whose features are as bland and inoffensive as possible and whose heart is more of a glowing orb than anything remotely resembling flesh and blood.
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Word on Fire
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In the year 480 A.D., the last of the rulers of what remained of the western Roman Empire, a man by the name of Julius Nepos, died, leaving one Roman emperor in the far off eastern city of Constantinople (for the first time in 95 years), and the old Roman empire in Europe in the midst of a deleterious decline. In this era of ever diminishing expectations, St. Benedict was born.
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Word on Fire
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This article is in joyful preparation for the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is observed annually on May 31.
A few years ago, I was having dinner with some friends, and the discussion turned toward Catholic social justice. This got me really excited, because one of the things that drew me into the Catholic Church was her rich body of social teachings.
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This article is the second in a two-part series.
In Grammar of Assent, John Henry Newman reminded us that truth is brought home to the mind, becoming convincing and persuasive, when it is represented, not through abstractions, but through something particular, colorful, and imaginable.
