Should kids have their own liturgy? How does your parish welcome children into the liturgy? Take our survey. When my husband and I brought each of our babies for baptism, the church posed two questions: “What name do you give your child?” and “What do you ask of God’s church?” The standard answer to the […]
Black Catholics are leaving the church. Why? Despite high levels of religious commitment, Black Catholics are abandoning the church. In February, the Pew Research Center published the most comprehensive survey to date of Black faith in America. This report is a major resource for understanding U.S. Black religious life in all of its manifestations: Catholic, […]
Each stage of life brings opportunities for discernment Our lives ebb and flow, but God remains constant throughout. Years ago, when I was in graduate school, I had a wonderful spiritual director who would often ask me this simple question when I was in the midst of discernment: “What is it the season for?” It […]
In ‘All Creatures Great and Small,’ humanity steals the show A new PBS series about a country vet shows the power of human decency. It’s so nice to visit England. It’s even more delightful to time travel back to the years before the Second World War, remembered nostalgically through the eyes of beloved author and […]
Conversion is a lifelong process, says this professor We must always be open to learning from one another. We like to think that there are deep, internal, and existential reasons why people convert, but Stacy Davis, professor of religious studies and theology at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, says that is not always […]
A priest finds unexpected serenity in the city Spiritual growth requires accepting the unexpected. For years I’ve had the word gelassenheit (literally: “serenity”) framed on my wall. In college, I studied existentialism and phenomenology and came across the writings of Martin Heidegger, who writes about gelassenheit, an image he takes from the writing of Meister Eckhart. Simply put, […]
6 stories of vocations interrupted by the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic changed work for many. But a more expansive theology of vocation reminds us that God calls us always. My colleague Jane and I met over Zoom with a congregational leader in Brooklyn, New York a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic. Tears flowed as […]
Discern vocation with toddlers, teens, and everyone in between Discovering your vocation is a lifelong adventure. When I was pregnant for the first time, my husband and I lived on the edge of the world in Big Sur, California. We spent hours hiking the beaches, cliffs, and canyons between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa […]
TENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME BEATITUDES “As we have shared in the sufferings of Christ, so do we share in his consolation,” Paul tells us today. What Jesus proposes in the beatitudes is a turning upside-down of values, (attuned with the message of Paul in Year I). But we are not […]