Come As You Are

I found this talk by Charlie Mackesy, to be both refreshing and profound! I hope it blesses you as much as it has me!

BM

Waiting and Aging!

“Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be.” – Henri Nouwen

I am about to enter my 70th year and my body is telling me to pack my bags and wait patiently. Unfortunately, I am in considerable pain and the waiting is prolonged and uncomfortable. I have a problem with my thoracic spine and it recently caused me to literally stop. I was returning to my car in the local shopping area when all of a sudden I felt I was shot of hit by lightning! The pain exploded in the middle of my thoracic spine and for a brief moment I was unable to breath or move. The electrifying pain turned into feeling like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my spine. I was able to get home, but in considerable agony. I took ibuprofen and applied ibugel to my spine (at least my daughter-in-law applied it, as I could not reach the spine where the pain was emanating from). The pharmacist told me that I should avoid using the ibuprofen and the gel for a long period as I am on 75mg of aspirin a day and that they are both NSAI’s which potentially can cause serious stomach problems, such as ulcers. I called the doctor, but was told my earliest telephone consultation would be in three weeks. Today, I now am waiting for the phone consultation. (Update: Now seeing the doctor tomorrow -Thursday).

Waiting is not fun! I feel I am waiting in a state of limbo…waiting without any real idea about what is going on in my spine and worrying that the pain in my spine might get worse…or worse still, that I might have another horrific episode, similar to the one I had in the car park!

I recently waited before taking action over a chest infection. It turned out that I had pneumonia! Luckily the receptionist at the surgery understood that the matter for me, as someone who in his past had had bronchial pneumonia five times and a collapsed lung, might be important! It was as I was having pain in my lungs and my blood oxygen level had dropped to 90SpO. Waiting is not always beneficial!

Waiting can teach me patience, but it also can add to my anxiety. I am trying to meditate more and in the silence wait for the noise in my head to be still and silent. Waiting for my mind to stop its mad rushing here and there, with its multitude of worries and the noise of past, present and future concerns. Waiting is difficult for my ego, but important for my soul. Henri Nouwen knew about waiting and his thoughts have helped me understand about how waiting and patience are connected!

“How do we wait for God? We wait with patience. But patience does not mean passivity. Waiting patiently is not like waiting for the bus to come, the rain to stop, or the sun to rise. It is an active waiting in which we live the present moment to the full…….

The word patience comes from the Latin verb patior which means “to suffer.” Waiting patiently is suffering through the present moment, tasting it to the full, and letting the seeds that are sown in the ground on which we stand grow into strong plants.” – Henri Nouwen.

I might not enjoy aging and waiting, as my body slowly and painfully enters its final part of my pilgrimage in this life, but I believe that the One I wait for, the One whom my heart desires, the One who calls me, ‘Beloved’, has shown me the way and as Nouwen wrote, “Waiting patiently always means paying attention to what is happening right before our eyes and seeing there the first rays of God’s glorious coming.”

I rather like the thought at the end of the poem, ‘The Hound of Heaven’, by Francis Thompson, which asks “Is my gloom, after all,. Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?” I will try my best, as time passes, to wait patiently..to find out!

BM

Sue Daly 1958 – 2005 💕

It will be 18 years tomorrow, that my beautiful Sue, passed from this life! I struggle still with the void that her going has left in my life and our life as a family. I was sobbing the other day, thinking of her and the rawness that I still feel inside, welled up and I felt totally bereft, like she had been wrenched from my arms and my heart broke, shattered in a moment, with no consolation. If anyone tells you such pain goes away, they have never experienced the joy and pain of love! My life has been a mess from that dark night and I don’t know how I am still here, other than by the grace of our sons. I have little memory of those days following and no memory of the years following when I took on the role of home keeper.

I have a few very short memories of me breaking down while I tried to look after the boys. I have a memory of me shouting down the telephone at the school because of something that was probably trivial but at that time seemed like another attack on the boys which they did not need, and I had to be there to defend them, even if they were in the wrong! It was like I had to save them from more pain, as they had had a belly full from having their mother wrenched away in the middle of that dark night! I am amazed they seem to have come out unscathed from those years when I tried to be mum and dad…and failed on both accounts.

I look and talk to a photo of Sue on my wall…as it soothes my spirit and I kiss her tenderly, wondering if she hears or sees me as I blubber away. Sue was the best mother children could want! She loved her boys (that would include me too) and she rarely complained. We had little money and Sue would always go without and buy her boys what they needed. Sue was good with budgeting and looked after the finances as I am useless with money and mathematics!

I never wanted to marry again, which Sue always said I should do in the event she died. Of course I have wanted and desired to feel the closeness of another, (selfishly), so as to ease my pain and loneliness. But it would be all for the wrong reasons! I would enjoy the intimacy…but I would feel guilt and shame! Funny to think I have now been a celibate for 18 years (though I have looked and desired intimacy – always selfishly – in all sorts of places, but found none) and I will remain so now, until my last breath. (Don’t get me wrong…I am sure there is still some life in the crazy old man…but I now no longer have the desires or interests I once had, and am quite happy to be just a little eremitic, contemplative brother, with my Companions of Jesus).

Will the raw pain ever cease? I doubt it!

Will I ever forget the most beautiful woman I had the good wisdom to ask to marry me? I hope not!

Will it get better as more years go by and I become more senile? I don’t think so…nor want it so!

I want to remember Sue as that beautiful bright, funny, delicate flower, who was crazy enough to say yes to me and who taught me what real love is!

You are missed, Sue, but never forgotten!

Thank you for loving me!💕

Michael

The CDF…Joseph Ratzinger and History

This reflection by Fr. Tony Flannery should be read by many and wept over, as his case with so many, reflect the ungodly control, domination and suppression of so many good priests, religious and theologians. The Church may have stopped burning those it decries of heresy, but it still seeks to silence all who would think and speak beyond the boundaries of the CDF!

BM

Joseph Ratzinger; My memories.

As I sit down now to write my reflections on Benedict/Joseph Ratzinger, it is about twenty four hours since his death was announced, and I have heard and read many people commenting and giving their assessment of this man, and of his contribution to the Catholic Church. I think it is fair to say that I am one of the Irish people whose life has been most significantly effected by his attitudes and his exercise of power. I am now into the eleventh year since, under his papacy, I was forbidden to exercise my ministry as a priest, and I will shortly celebrate my seventy sixth birthday. (Sean Fagan was more severely dealt with, but he has now deceased). I wouldn’t even attempt to measure the negative impact his teaching and action had on LGBTQ people, and on those abused by priests and religious. I am focusing on those of us, theologians, priests, religious and lay, who were punished in one form or another for our writings on matters to do with Church teaching and doctrine, and various aspects of the faith.

Not that I had any direct dealings with Joseph Ratzinger. He had left the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by the time they came after me. It was 2012, and he had been pope for about five years at that stage. But the CDF that dealt with me was very much of his making, during his long years in charge there. The then head, William Levada, was not a man who was either capable or wished to do things differently than his predecessor in the office; he carried on exactly as he had learned from Ratzinger. And his successor, Gerhard Meuller, was very much in the image and likeness of Ratzinger. 

There are two things that stand out for me from my experience of what I like to call ‘the Ratzinger Vatican’.

The first was a total conviction about the rightness of their beliefs and practices. They believed they had the truth, the whole truth, and that nobody could argue with them on any matter to do with the faith and the Church. There was a type of ‘contagious infallibility’, which meant that they didn’t feel the need to discuss anything with anybody. They had nothing to learn, and certainly not from people who held opinions that differed from their own. Those people, they believed, were in error, and error had no rights.

The second one was their complete lack of respect for the people they considered in error. This expressed itself in my case by not allowing me any opportunity to exercise any of the rights that accused people are accorded by the law systems of all civilised societies. I was not allowed to know who my accusers were. (I heard indirectly that I had been accused by a senior member of the Irish hierarchy, but, though I have my suspicions, I don’t know who that was. I was well aware that there were also certain lay and clerics who regularly reported myself and others to Rome in those years but pondering the identity of “reporters” can have a negative effect on the person “reported”). The Vatican authorities did not consider it necessary to meet with me, and to give me the opportunity to defend myself. At no stage did they ever communicate with me directly; it was all done through my Superior General in Rome. And, maybe worst of all, there was no appeal process of any nature.

This was the system Joseph Ratzinger shaped and honed during his years as head of the CDF. (I know it existed long before him, but he put his particular dogmatic and authoritarian shape to it during a time when the world was changing rapidly, and human rights were being recognised widely around the world.

So, do I regret his death? I can’t really say that I do.  But I do say a prayer for him, and wish him eternal peace. All of us, pope and pauper, face the same end, whatever exactly that will be.

I suppose in his later life I had a certain sympathy for him. Contrary to what many commentators say, I have no doubt that he wanted to be pope. His actions during the death and funeral of his predecessor, and during the days before the conclave seemed to suggest that.   But we should be careful what we wish for. He was not able for the task he had so desired, and he had the good grace to resign, for which of course he will be most publicly remembered.  Some of us will have our personal memories.  

Tony Flannery

(Follow Fr. Tony at: http://www.tonyflannery.com)

Christ Has No Body But Yours No Online Presence But Yours

At the start of 2023 I am trying to remind myself, that my online presence (as well as my offline presence) should, as far as possible, reflect the eternal truth, of my faith, hope and love!

Brother Michael

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which He looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are His body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

St. Teresa of Ávila

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Nothing Stands Alone

This is a great short video for the start of 2023! “Diversity tuning around one center”.

Choose God’s Love

You must believe in the yes that comes back when you ask, “Do you love me?” You must choose this yes even though you do not experience it.

You feel overwhelmed by distractions, fantasies, the disturbing desire to throw yourself into the world of pleasure. But you know already that you will not find there an answer to your deepest question. Nor does the answer lie in rehashing old events, or in guilt or shame. All of that makes you dissipate yourself and leave the rock on which your house is built.

You have to trust the place that is solid, the place where you can say yes to God’s love even when you do not feel it. . . . Keep saying, “God loves me, and God’s love is enough.” You have to choose the solid place over and over again and return to it after every failure.

Henri Nouwen

Move Toward the Light

You are constantly facing choices. The question is whether you choose for God or for your own doubting self. You know what the right choice is, but your emotions, passions, and feelings keep suggesting you choose the self-rejecting way.

The root choice is to trust at all times that God is with you and will give you what you most need. . . . God says to you, “I love you. I am with you. I want to see you come closer to me and experience the joy and peace of my presence. I want to give you a new heart and a new spirit. I want you to speak with my mouth, see with my eyes, hear with my ears, touch with my hands. All that is mine is yours. Just trust me and let me be your God.”

This is the voice to listen to. And that listening requires a real choice, not just once in a while but every moment of every day and night. It is you who decides what you think, say, and do. You can think yourself into a depression, you can talk yourself into low self-esteem, you can act in a self-rejecting way. But you always have a choice to think, speak, and act in the name of God and so move toward the Light, the Truth, and the Life.

Henri Nouwen

Our Inclusive God

The following excerpt is taken from Brad Jersak’s book: ‘In: Incarnation & Inclusion, Abba & Lamb’ It emphasizes to me Christ’s singular mind blowing incarnation and Abba’s all inclusive incomprehensible love! It also reminded me of my seraphic father, Francis, in one of his meetings as he journeyed.

Brother Michael

Brad writes:

I was boarding an airplane-Southwest airlines jet where you board by number but can pick your own seat once you enter the plane. I head down the aisle and secured an excellent aisle seat- 14C-which allows my right arm space in the aisle. If I want to write. I’m not elbowing my neighbor. Someone was in the window seat but so far, the middle seat was empty and I hoped it would stay that way. I start “man-spreading” to supersize myself and look inhospitable.

I’m praying, “Lord you love me, right? Please just let me be left alone.” I overdosed on air transit long ago and I don’t much like airplane evangelists. I don’t want to ne one.

I see this man coming down the aisle. He catches my eye from half a dozen rows away and I know I’m sunk. “Oh no,” I pray. “Why do you hate me?” This is a BIG guy. I have wide shoulder and so does he. I’m thinking, “Look bigger! Inhale! Expand! Come on, Brad! BE the pufferfish!”

Nope. The big man locks in and proceeds directly to the seat beside me. “God”, I pray, “grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change,” mainly to avoid the panic of knowing we’ll be two sardines crammed together for the next five and a half hours.

“Acceptance,” I breath the Serenity Prayer to myself, since God’s obviously tuned out. Try to make the most of it, I think. I notice my neighbour is wearing a black robe, nearly identical to the cassock I wear when serving at the monastery.

” I see you’re some sort of cleric,” I say politely.

“Yes, I am,” he replies. “Welcome here,” I lie.

He sees this as an opening and begins to relate some of his spiritual experiences, beginning with this moment. “Do you beieve God still speaks?2 he asks, not knowing that I wrote Can You Hear Me? Tuning into the God Who Speaks over fifteen years ago-it has sort of been my shtick.

“I do,” I reply.

“So do I, I believe in God’s voice,” he says with enthusiasm. ” I believe he guides and directs, counsel’s and gives wisdom to anyone who asks. And you know what? As I came down the aisle today, I was asking God, ‘Who do you want me to sit with?’ And he directs me to you.”

Sheesh…airplane evangelists, I said I don’t want to be one. But sitting beside one can prove even worse. But I remember the wisdom an old Welshman-BBC radio host who interviewed celebrities back in the 1950’s. He told me, “Always remember: every person you meet is absolutely fascinating! This will help you listen better and ask the right questions.”

With that “prompting,” I settle into interview mode and I’m happy to report that we entered a beautiful conversation about topics of great interest to me.

I began to ask him about his conceptions of God (a la A More Christlike God). I learned this man is devout. He loves God and longs only to be God’s faithful servant. He actively prays to God and listens for God’s voice. We talked about the power of healthy images of God versus toxic, idolatrous images.

“Here is my image of God,” he said, “God is merciful, all merciful, especially merciful.”

“Amen,” I say a little too loudly.

” I believe that on judgement day, God will reveal himself as just and merciful.”

“Amen.” I said again, and we compared strikingly similar visions of restorative justice.

By now it was clear that like me, my new friend is a preacher, so I asked him how he approaches that task. “What are the essentials of weekly preaching? What are the non-negotiables to your message?”

“Every sermon must be uplifting, inspiring and beautiful,” he said, “because our faith is uplifting, inspiring and beautiful.”

“Amen, brother!” I said, feeling a little bit bad for the girl boxed into the window seat. She’s pretending to be asleep beside tw enthusiastic evangelists..

I haven’t mentioned yet: my new friend is an Imam, That’s right: he’s a Muslim missionary who leads a Mosque in the Pacific Northwest.

Our long flight included conversations about God as all merciful (from the opening line of the Qur’an) and led to our shared conviction that Christians and Muslims alike must reject all violence done in the name of God. We both desire to be peacemakers and bridge-builders in God’s kingdom. While our understanding of Abba / Allah differs significantly, we both pray to the God of Abraham, the covenant God of Jacob and Ishmael-to the same God who Jesus worshipped and to whom he prayed, “Our Abba.”

Still a small voice in my ear whispered, ” Yeah, but he’s one of them. And remember, Jesus said, If you’re ashamed of me now, I’ll be ashamed of you on judgement day.” The words are biblical, but the chiding didn’t have the tone and texture of God’s empowering Spirit. Hey, even Satan can quote Scripture. I knew it was the voice of a guilty conscience conditioned by years of awkward and ineffetual”obligation evangelism.”

I waved it off, but the nagging persisted, “When are we going to talk about Jesus?”

I thought to myself, I believe we’re going to talk about him right now, but not begrudgingly or under pressure.

Because I am confident of Christ and his sensitivity to each individual’s place and pace on the journey, I try to share my point of view freely without arm-twisting arguments or offensive condescension. The Imam and I share common ground but that doesn’t preclude me from sharing my take on the good news of Jesus Christ.

I finally broached the subject this way; “I am aware of Muslim followers of Jesus who don’t convert to Christianity, yet are committed to knowing and obeying Jesus. What do you think of that phenomenon?”

He smiled and said, “Oh yes. I believe in that. I’m a follower of Jesus.” He elaborated on what his stream of Islam believes about Jesus.

I know there are impasses to our our theology of Jesus. As an Orthodox Christian, I believe that Jesus is God. As a Muslim, he must believe Jesus is not God. But out of pure ignorance, most Christians I know have caricatured Islam by minimizing their belief in Christ, as if they believe he’s just one of the prophets. That’s sloppy and probably slanderous. It’s worth probing who Jesus is to Muslims with actual Muslims (recognizing they are not all on the same page-as if Christians are). Here’s what they tell me.

“Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary by the breath of God’s Spirit. He is alive. Jesus is the prophet of the Spirit and Allah’s Messiah. Jesus is coming again and he’s going to overthrow the antichrist and establish God’s kingdom on earth. We need to obey Jesus’ commandments to love God with our whole heart and treat others as we want to be treated. We need to follow his teachings and way of peace.”

Some Imams, like the one I met on the plane, believe that Christ’s return comes not with violence but with revelation of his Way of peace. The antichrist to be overcome is not some political superstar but the spirit of hatred and violence that rules so much of our hearts and religious movements.

And I thought, “Not bad! I know Christians who couldn’t say that.” We also openly talked about the deal-breakers – areas where we are not in agreement about the nature of God (as Trinity) or Jesus Christ (as fully divine). When I suggested that being peacemakers is not merely sharing common ground, but includes mutual respect in our differences, the Imam was exuberant. He agreed. He also insisted I visit his home, share a meal with him and he offered his considerable influence to open doors for me around the world should I need his help.

My Imam friend may never see Jesus as I do. He likely won’t convert to Christianity. But I believe he will continue to revere God and more specifically, believe in and follow Jesus as he understands him.

I am also sure I’ll never convert to Islam. How then shall we relate to each other? I will do my best to share the good news of God’s love revealed in Jesus to him and whoever will listen.

What is the real ‘reason’ for the season: sin or love?

Bumper stickers and internet memes tend to spring up this time of year, beckoning onlookers to “remember the reason for the season” or exhort readers to “keep Christ in Christmas.” While undoubtedly well-meaning in their origin, these slogans have also been coopted by conservative commentators in recent years as a kind of political cri de coeur that signals a made-up “war on Christmas.”

Even though there is no such thing as a “war on Christmas,” at least not in the United States, I do find the rallying cry “remember the reason for the season” very interesting, especially because of its inadvertently theological invitation.

The question “Why did God become human?” has been the focus of theological reflection for as long as the earliest Christian community began proclaiming that the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). The most famous consideration of this question comes in the form of a treatise by St. Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo? (literally: “Why the God-Man?”).

The question is one of the divine ratio — that is “reason,” “motivation” or “logic” — for the coming of Christ into the world. Anselm begins his exploration with the presumption that human sinfulness is the biggest issue at play. Subsequently, we need to be reconciled to God, something we cannot accomplish on our own. It can only, ultimately, be achieved by one who is both divine and human; hence the Incarnation.

For Anselm, sin is the reason for the season. He believes that if humanity had not sinned, if we had continued to enjoy the rectitude and right relationship Adam and Eve are said to have enjoyed with God before the Fall, the eternal Logos would never have needed to become human. The Incarnation is, for Anselm, a sign of God’s benevolence, but it is also entirely predicated on our disobedience, pride, sin and need for reconciliation.

This has come to be known in theological circles as the “majority opinion” about the divine reason for the Incarnation. Indeed, if you were to poll a selection of average Christians leaving church this Sunday and ask them: “Why did God become human?” the most common answer is likely to be “to save us from our sins.”

Yet even as most Christians believe that the reason God became human is sin, this is hardly a theme in Christmas cards. And most secular and religious Christmas songs tend to be lovely, cheerful, and often upbeat. With a few exceptions, like the classic “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” there is hardly acknowledgement that the popular understanding of the “reason for the season” is human sinfulness.

I’m not suggesting we need more Lenten or Good Friday-themed Christmas songs. Rather, I think we have the whole focus on sin wrong in the first place. And I’m far from alone in that view.

The “majority opinion” about the divine ratio for the Incarnation is not the only view. There is a longstanding theological and spiritual tradition dating back to the New Testament itself that holds that even if we had not sinned, God would still have become human!

The technical language for this admittedly “minority opinion” (minority only because it is lesser known, not at all less true) is known as supralapsarianism. That’s just a fancy word for “not occasioned by or dependent on ‘the Fall’ ” (from supra meaning “above” or “apart from” and lapsus meaning “the Fall”). The “majority opinion” is known as infralapsarian (from infra meaning “dependent on”).

This longstanding, perfectly orthodox, entirely sound theological view argues that the Incarnation was always part of God’s plan for creation and that the Word becoming flesh was never primarily motivated by human sin or anything else outside of God’s absolute freedom.

The issue here is the unfortunate conflation that many people have made over the centuries between the need for reconciliation and the need for salvation. As the second century theologian St. Irenaeus of Lyons explained in his classic treatise Adversus Haereses, God’s plan for creation always included God’s plan for salvation, which he understood (following St. Paul) as the recapitulation of the whole of creation back to God’s self.

When God created, God also willed to bring all of creation to glory through a finite share in the divine life, which is accomplished by the Incarnate Word and Holy Spirit.

Our Eastern Christian siblings have maintained this tradition much better than most of us Western Christians have. But many Western Christian theologians and saints have advanced the sound doctrine that the divine reason for the Incarnation is primarily about God’s love, freedom and plan for creation and salvation long ahead of any chance humanity had to sin or exercise disobedience.

Take, for example, the contemporary of Anselm, a fellow Benedictine monk named Rupert of Deutz, who wrote several treatises in which he presented a supralapsarian argument for the Incarnation in response to the classic counterfactual question: “What if humanity had not sinned?” His answer is that there is plenty of reason to believe with confidence that God would still have become human, a position he defends with scripture and the theological tradition.

Or consider some of the greatest theologians at the nascent universities of Paris and Oxford in the early 13th century, such as the Franciscan Alexander of Hales, Dominican St. Albert the Great or the secular master Robert Grosseteste, who served as the chancellor of Oxford before becoming Bishop of Lincoln. Like Rupert before them, they each offered their own contributions to the supralapsarian position on the Incarnation.

Perhaps the most famous medieval contributor to this theological tradition is the Franciscan Blessed John Duns Scotus, the scholar who also developed the philosophical argument that would eventually become the Catholic framework for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

Many modern theologians and spiritual writers, both Catholic and Protestant, have also contributed to this tradition, including Jesuit Fr. Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Trappist Fr. Thomas Merton, St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, among others.

None of these historical or contemporary figures deny the reality of sin or the need we have to be reconciled to God, which is indeed accomplished by Jesus Christ through his life, death and resurrection. The issue centers on not putting the proverbial cart before the horse, confusing one of the effects of the Incarnation for the primary or exclusive reason for it.

Just because Christ accomplishes our reconciliation with God, a need originating from our sinfulness, does not mean that is the only reason or even the primary reason God became human.

Love. Love is the reason God wanted to enter the world as one of us, to draw near to us in the most intimate way possible: taking on our very materiality (sarx), our very vulnerability (Philippians 2:6-11), our shared experience of human relationship in this world. If we humans had exercised our free will in obedience and never sinned, we wouldn’t have needed redemption or reconciliation for sin, but God would still have entered the world as one of us out of love and the desire to bring us and all of creation to share in God’s life in salvation.

I think the way Merton summarizes this in his book New Seeds of Contemplation says it best:

The Lord would not only love His creation as Father, but He would enter into His creation, emptying Himself, hiding Himself, as if He were not God but a creature. Why should he do this? Because He loved His creatures, and because He could not bear that His creatures should merely adore him as distant, remote, transcendent, and all powerful.

Again, it is divine love that is the primary motive. Not only can we give thanks that Christ has reconciled us to God because of our sin, but also and more fundamentally we can praise God at Christmas for the divine love and absolute freedom reflected in God’s desire to draw close to us as one of us from all eternity.

Now that is a reason for the season worthy of Handel’s “Hallelujah”chorus or “O Holy Night” or even a bumper sticker.

Dan Horan OFM

(Article taken from the on-line National Catholic Reporter)

https://www.ncronline.org/