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Scapegoating Priests
Faulty diagnosis makes for wrong prescription. Unless a disease is diagnosed properly there is little chance of effective treatment. These principles should be brought forth, front and centre, today regarding
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Ever So Brief A Glory
The last couple of years have not been particularly kind to my family. Two years ago, a sister was lost to cancer; this spring, a brother-in-law died suddenly of a
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Humanae Vitae … 25 Years Later
In late summer, 1968, Paul V1 released the encyclical, Humanae Vitae. Few church documents in recent centuries have caused the kind of stir that ensued. Almost immediately every kind of
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An Honest Anger
Today, for the main part, most of us live in chronic depression. This is not clinical depression so it’s not as if we need professional help or therapy, it’s just
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Eucharist as God’s Touch
Andre Dubus, in a beautiful essay on the Eucharist, makes the following comment: “My belief in the Eucharist is simple: without touch, God is a monologue, an idea, a philosophy;
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Longing for Innocence
We are all haunted by two great desires, beyond the desire for intimacy. We long for innocence and long for sincerity. But they, like intimacy, are highly elusive. It is
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Hungry for Blessing
Several years ago, I preached a homily on the baptism of Christ within which I remarked that the words that God speaks over Jesus at his baptism: “This is my
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God Locked Them In!
In story of Noah and the ark there is a most curious line. God asks Noah to build an ark and then to put into it a pair, a male
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Ice Cream Vs. Beans
An elderly man was once asked what he would do differently if he had his life to live over again. His reply is worth meditating: “If I had my life
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Memories Dispel Depression
One of the newspapers that I write for, the Catholic Sentinel, in Portland, Ore., occasionally carries a column by a young teacher and freelance writer from Pompton Plains, N.Y., Christopher