2011

It’s twenty-five years since I was received into full communion with the Catholic Church. In some ways it seems like an aeon ago. In other ways it seems like yesterday. It’s a quarter-century now, but I still experience, every February, a certain sense of homecoming. On February 22, the Church celebrates the feast of the […]

In the readings for last week’s Sunday Mass, we saw Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 9) that a divine king, a Son of David, would appear in the north of Israel and give light to the people there. In the readings for todays’ Mass (4th Sunday of Ordinary Time), we see Jesus

Today is the Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas! In honor of that, I thought I’d cover some ground I’ve been over before, namely, Thomas’ role as a model of Catholic theology and his primary focus on Scripture. Perhaps most striking—at least to some—is Thomas’ insistence on the priority of the literal-historical sense of Scripture.

Today’s saint, Agnes of Rome, is long overdue for a revival. Why? She was probably the most revered female martyr of the early Church — outstanding in a field that included Blandina and Perpetua, among others. St. Jerome was not a man easily impressed, but of today’s saint, his near-contemporary, he wrote: “Every people, whatever

With the coming the New Year, a number of blogs gave recommended readings for the upcoming year. I’d like to do the same, and recommend two books to read carefully over the course of the coming year. 1. First, since for those of us following the Catholic lectionary, it is Year A, it’s a great