Have you noticed how over the past half-century the trend in religiously affiliated real estate has been one of secularization? Churches have become theatres, chapels boutique salons, and convents office buildings. Even some one-time Catholic campuses have become industrial parks. Could it be the trend…
Author: Dana Robinson
Contract of Covenant
‘Ambiguity’. ‘Adventure’. In the visiting priest’s homily at Mass last Sunday in our local parish these two words galvanized the congregation. Faith in God is like marriage. It is a covenant more than a contract, a relationship whose ambiguity, while not without risk, is pregnant…
In Case We Need Reminding
Through his fund at NCCF, one of our advisors recently initiated a distribution to the Saint Ignatius Parish in Msaladzi, Madagascar. He has forwarded to us the following response and two photos from the pastor, Fr. Heribert Muller. Readers will be as moved as we…
Freedom and Purpose
Though we may gainsay the characterization, we Americans are romantic. Perhaps our sesquicentennial is an opportune time to remind ourselves of this feature. We are romantic because we demonstrate and celebrate the mysteriously symbiotic relationship between freedom and purpose. We understand that together they are…
The Blessing or the Curse
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, (Deut. 30:19) With these words in his final…
Via Pulchritudinis
Readers familiar with the religious art that has adorned Catholic cathedrals and churches for the better part of two millennia are no doubt struck by its general absence in churches built in this country since Vatican II. In recent decades, this regrettable deficiency has not…
Sword and Rosary
What saint is associated with a sword and rosary? Most hagiographers would likely name as their first choice Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the sixteenth-century nobleman who, after being a soldier for Spain became as ‘soldier for Christ’ and founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in…
Remedy or Reality
In the welter of today’s unsettled world those of us old enough to remember the Baltimore Catechism might in retrospect be struck by the astonishing simplicity of its pedagogy. To the question ‘why did God create us’ its brief answer was ‘to know, love and…
Hope is Its Calling Card
Addis Ababa, Amman, Asmara, Beirut, Ernakulam, Jerusalem, the Caucasus, Ukraine. What do these disparate locations have in common? In each of them resides a regional team of an international organization which is celebrating its centennial this year. In 1926 Pope Pius XI consolidated the Holy…
Taking the Lead
The support donors in the National Catholic Community Foundation community provide for Catholic education is noteworthy. Among them there is a prevailing understanding that Catholic education transcends apprenticeship in the basic skills of life by inviting students to explore various paths to Truth. This steady…