Saturday, June 24, 2017

Fear of God, Faith, and Encounter

First appeared in The Catholic Thing on June 24, 2017.

May and June of 2017 will be hard to forget. Frightful killings, suicide bombings occurred in Manchester (May 22), Egypt (May 26), and Afghanistan (May 31), where numerous innocent lives were snuffed out. June began with more terrorist attacks in London again (June 3) and Melbourne (June 6). And these are just the major ones; many smaller incidents occurred during the same period all over the world.

How are people coping with pain and loss? Poet Tony Walsh read from his poem This Is The Place to a Manchester audience: “In the face of a challenge we always stand tall.” His Grace Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, grieved over the Coptic martyrs, but forgave the perpetrators with the following statement:
You are loved by me and millions like me, not because of what you do, but what you are capable of as that wonderful creation of God, who has created us with a shared humanity. You are loved by me and millions like me because I, and we, believe in transformation.
These public expressions of determination and Christian forgiveness are welcome in a culture that seems to have lost both. But the bombs and carnage have left many people across the world more fearful than ever about crowded events, flights, airports, city centers.

...continue reading in The Catholic Thing  

Friday, June 16, 2017

Unleashing the Feminine Genius: Mother Vincenzina Cusmano

First appeared in The National Catholic Register on June 16, 2017.


Our society owes much to the genius of women as St. John Paul II said in his Letter to Women in 1985. In fact, the Church cannot do without the genius of women, without the feminine, who have repeatedly saved Catholicism. What would have become of St. Benedict without St. Scholastica? St. Francis without St. Clare? Sts. Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa without St. Macrina? Blessed Giacomo Cusmano without his elder sister Venerable Mother Vincenzina Cusmano?

...continue reading in The National Catholic Register