Manipulating the membership roster sets the agenda and determines the recommendations In announcing that non-bishops would be able to vote in this fall’s Synod on Synodality, Rome tried simultaneously to hype and downplay the news. Channeling its inner Leslie Neilsen, the synodal website blandly headlined the change as “Some News for the October 2023 Assembly.” … Read more
Like zealous COVID politicians, the U.S. bishops have yet even to look at their own record during the “pandemic.” So far, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops hasn’t engaged in self-examination as to whether shutting down Mass and the sacraments from sea to shining sea, in some places for more than a year, was … Read more
Your time on earth is fixed, and constantly diminishing — take life and death seriously Almost a month has passed since we accepted ashes on our foreheads as a sign of our mortality. Lent is half over. We’ve spent the past four weeks meditating on death: its meaning; our human orientation to life, being, and … Read more
“There is none so blind as he who will not see.” In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus asks blind Bartimaeus what he wants, and the latter’s response is unambiguous: “Master, I want to see.” And Jesus gives him back his sight. The episode of Bartimaeus is one of several healings of the sightless in the Gospels, … Read more