Perspective
Jim Crow and the Klansman
By now I think almost everyone has seen the photograph from Gov. Ralph Northam’s yearbook — a man in blackface standing next to a hooded Klansman. The figure on the […]
Perspective Archive
Perspective
‘Exceptions’ and the undermining of the moral law
Whenever we make small exceptions to universal moral rules, we shouldn’t be surprised that the rules themselves can be quickly undermined. Establishing an “exception” in one case makes people think […]
Perspective
Where is the Spirit leading us?
In the midst of the current crisis in our Church — with a once-admired cardinal accused of heinous acts, bishops widely judged incapable of policing themselves, investigators poring through Church […]
Perspective
The ever-present totalitarian temptation
First circulated underground in communist Czechoslovakia in October 1978, Vaclav Havel’s brilliant dissection of totalitarianism, “The Power of the Powerless,” retains its salience four decades later. It should be required […]
Perspective
I know your vocation in life!
One of the privileges we have as seminarians is going to school visits with either high school or grade school students. It is always a lot of fun to answer […]
Perspective
In the winter of faith, keep working
As I write this, it is midwinter in the Northern Hemisphere. Like each season, winter has its time, its three months. To many of us, there seems to be a […]
Perspective
Sudden cardiac death in the young
I was once called, “stat,” to the emergency room to see a 17-year-old young man who collapsed while playing a pickup football game with friends at a local high school. […]
Perspective
Encountering the gaze of the Father
Like too many people in a post-fall world, I am someone with a deep father wound that, despite the immense love I have been surrounded with throughout my life, results […]
Perspective
What everybody didn’t know
When the Pennsylvania grand jury issued its report last August chronicling the sexual abuse cases in six Pennsylvania dioceses, everybody thought they knew the whole story. After all, this was […]
Perspective
The internet and Satan’s game
By now the entire country has seen a video of a supposedly racist confrontation, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, between a grinning young high school student and a Native […]
Perspective
Adventure by Catholic terms: ‘You were made for greatness’
All afternoon I had been hunkered over my MacBook, perched above a frozen lake and watching the sun cast pink into the clouds. I was thinking about what lie dormant […]
Perspective
The welcome outreach of perinatal hospice
During the course of pregnancy, receiving an adverse prenatal diagnosis can be a tremendously jolting experience for parents. In severe cases, physicians may tell them that their unborn child has […]