July 21st, 2020
How, for all these years, could I not have noticed the last sentence of the Gospel of Matthew 14:13-21? This Gospel relates the famous story of Jesus’ feeding multitudes of people from only a few loaves of bread and some fish. It is one of the most moving and inspirational of Jesus’ “miracles” assuring us,…
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July 11th, 2020
These words in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent on Wednesday to the Supreme Court’s decision regarding birth control should be engraved on all our hearts. When debating deep moral and religious issues, we must understand ambiguity, which the majority decision does not do. The rights of these employers have suddenly become paramount; the rights of…
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July 7th, 2020
When I opened Facebook one day in June and saw the headline, “Men Think God is a Man,” I thought, well doesn’t that say it all… In 2020, quite a few men still believe that God is a man. While I don’t particularly care to paint all of man-kind with one broad brush, there is…
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July 4th, 2020
“All men are created equal.” Is there one among us who has not wished that this had been stated in another, more inclusive way? That the whole American project could have been based on a different premise? While we celebrate the progress we have made, we are conscious of how much more we want to…
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June 27th, 2020
Will the powers that be pay attention to Daniel Horan’s column this week in NCR? The sentences that make me most want to cheer are these: “it is demonstrably clear that those who invoke ‘gender ideology’ generally don’t know what they are talking about. Such folks would do well to listen to leading scholars on the subjects…
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June 13th, 2020
“A worthless statement” is how Franciscan theologian Daniel Horan characterizes the 2018 Bishops’ pastoral “against racism.” Immediately, a pang of guilt; in this blog I said it was “pretty good.” I also called on the bishops to defend it in the public sphere as vigorously as they defended some other pro-life issues, and on parishes…
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June 9th, 2020
If you are a homeowner in Great Britain, you are entitled to live under the English Common Law Principle of “Ancient Lights”, i.e. you have the “right to unobstructed passage of light and air from adjoining land if you have had uninterrupted use of the lights for twenty years.” The Irish author, John Banville, put…
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June 2nd, 2020
Before this past weekend, I had sent in a totally different post for today’s The Table.Then I watched my own city ravaged by an understandable, justifiable, and yet horrificanger. I do not know how to express how sorry and sorrowful I am. I think Shannen Dee Williams, assistant professor of history at Villanova University andauthor…
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May 19th, 2020
I am writing during “Laudato Si’ Week”, the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical letter: “On Care for Our Common Home”. This particular encyclical made me proud to be Catholic (instead of a confusing mixture of semi-lapsed, semi-faithful) and grateful to have a Pope, if only to give us someone as a world-recognized spokesperson with…
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May 16th, 2020
In the women’s supplement to the May issue of L’Osservatore Romano, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet calls for more women in seminaries! But it’s not for the good of the women, though I would be happy if more academic jobs were made available to women theologians. No, this is for the good of the seminarians. I’m…
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