Category: Advancing the Kingdom

In recent years, there has been horrific violence in Muslim majority countries perpetrated by Muslim extremists in the name of Allah. Earlier this year scores of Muslim scholars and religious leaders from 120 countries convened in Morocco to issue the Marrakesh Declaration (http://marrakeshdeclaration.org/marrakesh-declaration.html) In essence…

“I have decided to consecrate the rest of my life to this. All that I have done in 47 years of priesthood … will not be as important as what I am doing now. Here I am building a living church in which every stone…

Although spoken a half a century ago, it is a reply that still echoes in my memory. Indeed, it is one I appreciate more fully with each passing year. Three college mates and I were engaged in a tennis match at my parents’ home on…

Isn’t it curious that in our world of instantaneous communication so many of us feel ‘unrooted.’ Could it be that the dizzying volume and array of distractions that invade our daily lives elicit in us a reaction so necessarily defensive and indiscriminate that we respond…

“The weakening of the family finds one of its causes in a culture that more and more promotes extreme individualism. The strengthening of individual freedoms – something that of course we can be proud of – becomes a negative if it has no limits, because…

The following are remarks delivered by Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia in Taiwan recently at the 20th Asia Pacific Congress on Faith, Life and Family organized by Human Life International (HLI). I want my message today to help you communicate the Gospel of the Family and of…

Where are the prophets? Where are those voices in the wilderness to challenge the pressures of complacency? Who will proclaim the unpopular? Who dares state that our much touted comfort and security mask an ennui that now has triumphed? When a vibrant community nourished by…

According to statistics provided by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), in the United States there were 19,620 Catholic parishes and 52,124 priests  (diocesan and religious) in 1990. In 2014 the numbers had dropped to 17,483 parishes and 38,275 priests. Regardless of…

Today I lunched with a good friend whose disquisitions on matters ecclesiological are always illuminating. As usual, I emerged from this delightful reunion edified by the possession of new insight. In a religious context, the word ‘faithful’ has different connotations. For some it is a…

Have you ever entered a Catholic church and, upon discovering an extinguished vigil lamp, immediately felt immersed in emptiness? The usually beckoning flame was not there to reassure and promote your awareness of the presence of the Divine. This is what vigil lamps do. People…