A Confession About Confessions
It’s a shame I wasn’t in a church with an open confessional last Saturday. I would very much like to have seen the look on the priest’s face when I told him, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s...
View ArticlePraying for Jennifer Fulwiler and Breaking the Gadget
Readers: When I wrote this piece, all the news I’d received on Jennifer Fulwiler’s condition had been encouraging. For that reason, I gave myself leave to take a detour from the ongoing drama of her...
View ArticleBroken Silence
On Saturday afteroons, there’s a special stillness in the air of churches, a vacuum like a collective holding of breath that contrasts favorably with the outside weekend buzz. With the electric lights...
View ArticleThe Witness of Mary Elizabeth Williams
Salon staffer Mary Elizabeth Williams calls herself “a gay-friendly, feminist, pro-choice, bigmouthed practicing Catholic.” In two weeks, she expects to watch as her older daughter is confirmed in the...
View ArticleGive Me A Palanca, and I’ll Move the World
Just this evening one of my readers PM’d me over Facebook and asked me to write a palanca for her husband, also a reader, who will be spending this weekend on a Cursillo retreat. She explained that a...
View ArticleMoral Injury Shows the Limits of Forgiveness
Among veterans of the Global War on Terror, the conscience is alive and kicking. The problem is that it kicks very hard. In The Atlantic, Maggie Puniewska describes a growing awareness of moral injury...
View ArticleThe Catholic Church: Destination for Wandering Adult Kids of Divorce
One Sunday afternoon when I was 17, I returned from my father’s house to find two elegantly rolled joints waiting for me on my dresser. In those days, I made a custom – even a tradition, if a tradition...
View ArticleContra Bill Maher
Try as I might, I just can’t dislike Bill Maher, probably because we represent the same unlikely mixing of the tribes. Normally, here in the American melting pot, Jews marry Italians, and the Irish...
View ArticleOn Abstaining from Communion
The other week at Mass, I remained in the pew when everyone else got up for Communion. I can’t remember whether I was praying fervently or daydreaming or nodding halfway off — the difference is...
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