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Columnists and contributors
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe
Forever faith-ful
Posted: 6/26/2009
My mom was -- and is -- a pretty consistent disciplinarian. Because she lives with us, my kids have heard a lot of the same phrases she used to say when she was raising me. “Finish what you start.” “Put things away as you go along.” “When you get up in the morning and your feet hit the floor, turn around and make your bed.” Some of what she repeats has fallen on less than listening ears. But her simple synopsis of what it takes to be a decent human being will probably stick with our children the way it has with me. “Two things,” she used to say as she held up two fingers. “Only two things. I want to you be nice, and hardworking.” “Nice” and “hardworking” sometimes switched order, but they were always the bottom line. All the rest, at least in her view, would probably follow if you possessed those two qualities.
Father Robert L. Connors
Year for Priests offers chance for renewal
Posted: 6/26/2009
Thirty-eight years ago as I began my first assignment at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in Newton Upper Falls, I balanced my nervousness and naivete with enthusiasm and energy. I was a new “curate,” but the warm welcome from the people propelled me forward into a priesthood that has been filled with incredible highs and difficult lows. Truly, it is the consistent support from the people and my fellow priests that has supported my ministry and made it a great blessing in my life. Through all the varied assignments and challenging experiences over those years, nothing could have prepared me, or any priest, for the trauma that has touched the Church over the past several years. The “crisis” has forever changed how people view the priest. Often subtle, the difference seems to pervade a lot of our interaction. It is sad, of course, because the majority of priests love their priesthood, respect parishioners and are trying to do the best they can to fulfill the call to ministry they answered so many years ago. Gratefully, I am happy to note that the “positive” responses far out-weigh the “negative” ones, but priests silently and gently carry that baggage. We don’t want to be on top of the pedestal -- it’s so rewarding to do ministry with you; but we don’t want to be under it either. As the years pass by, I know that a new hope, new openness and new opportunities for growth between priests and people will be a welcomed grace.
Dwight G. Duncan
One year ends after another begins
Posted: 6/26/2009
We are accustomed to ending one year and beginning another at the end of December, not June. Of course, as Catholics our liturgical year ends around the end of November, and starts with the first Sunday of Advent. Jews, of course, celebrate Rosh Hashanah, their New Year’s, in September or thereabouts. And usually we wait until one year is over before beginning another. But last week, on June 19, the Feast of the Sacred Heart, Pope Benedict inaugurated a Year of the Priesthood. And next week, Monday, June 29, the Feast of the Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul, the Year of St. Paul comes to an end. The change of years comes at the end of June this year, with ten days of overlap! One Year of the P molts into another Year of the P.
Clark Booth
PED mess redux, ad nauseam
Posted: 6/26/2009
And so now it is clear that baseball’s worst fears are slowly but quite certainly being realized with a steady and relentless drip. Nor is there much doubt that the dreaded worst case scenario will soon follow, probably in the form of a deluge.
Father Richard M. Erikson
A Father’s Blessing
Posted: 6/19/2009
When I was studying sociology in the 1990s, the pillars of society were identified as family, religion, government and education. Today, sociology textbooks name the media and the peer group as additional pillars and as especially powerful factors in the formative years of young Americans. In a study conducted a few years ago, teenagers listed peers as equal to their parents in terms of influence.
Tiziana C. Dearing
The sun hasn’t set on Sunset Point Camp
Posted: 6/19/2009
If you have read The Pilot, The Boston Globe, or The Dorchester Reporter over the last couple of months, you may have heard that Catholic Charities has suspended its operation of Sunset Point Camp for this summer. I’d like to take this opportunity to talk with readers about that.
Kevin and Marilyn Ryan
Our Church’s gift to our government
Posted: 6/19/2009
Each moment of history can claim uniqueness, but this moment in our nation’s history is exceptional. The recent concentration of power in the hands of our government is extraordinary and has been building for years. We are witnessing a fundamental change in the relationship between citizens and rulers.
George Weigel
Let us now praise the Little Professor
Posted: 6/19/2009
In another summer of baseball’s steroid-driven discontent--A-Rod scandals, Manny’s suspension, Clemens’s denials, etc.--it’s worth remembering a different era in the pastime, the virtues of which were embodied by the other DiMaggio: Dom, the Little Professor, kid brother of Joltin’ Joe, the Yankee Clipper.
Clark Booth
Farewell to hockey
Posted: 6/19/2009
The rip-roaring theatre of it all rather resembles something borrowed from a grand finale of one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s lustier and more outlandish light operatic productions.
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk
What Should We Do with the Frozen Embryos?
Posted: 6/12/2009
When I give talks on stem cell research or in in vitro fertilization, people invariably ask, “What should be done with all the frozen embryos?” It is usually asked with a sense of urgency, even desperation, as they reflect on the fate of the hundreds of thousands of human embryos cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen at fertility clinics. The simple answer is that ethically there is very little we can do with the frozen embryos except to keep them frozen for the foreseeable future. No other morally acceptable options seem to exist.
Dr. Karen E. Bohlin
Moral maturity and the schooling of desire
Posted: 6/12/2009
In Antoine Saint-Exupery’s ‘‘The Little Prince,’’ we are reminded of a simple truth, “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” But how do we teach children to distinguish what is essential and lasting from what is fleeting? How does the heart learn to see rightly, when it is so easily misled?
Kevin Lynch
Parish Capital Campaigns Work…Yes, Even in This Economy
Posted: 6/12/2009
In the past year, between the stock market downturns, layoff announcements, bailout packages, the housing market fallout and unemployment numbers, how are we, as a Church, supposed to react?
Clark Booth
Some pieces of drifting wood
Posted: 6/12/2009
Here’s some driftwood to pick through while waiting for the basketball and hockey seasons to end hopefully before the Fourth of July.
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe
Killing by every other name
Posted: 6/12/2009
Most of us claim to have values, but few of us actually live completely according to them. When we really think about it, even the most reliable people are fickle. We say one thing and do another. We rationalize and justify things that are completely contradictory to the principles we say we hold. We are weak, conflicted, and inconsistent creatures.
Michael Pakaluk
Dialoguing over abortion
Posted: 6/5/2009
Here’s something I see everyday among my children: An older, crafty child, takes away a toy from a younger, trusting child, and then when the younger child begins to scream, the older child remains calm, smiles, and acts as though his younger sibling’s “irrationality” is a sign of the rightness of his own position.
Dale O’Leary
God Have Mercy
Posted: 6/5/2009
Sunday afternoon, my husband came into the kitchen as I was preparing dinner and announced that Dr. Tiller had been shot and killed. I gasped, “Oh, no please don’t let it be true.” But it was; he was shot at church.
Clark Booth
Spring book reviews
Posted: 6/5/2009
It’s been said lately that the strings are being pulled tightly in the publishing industry. Several factors are purportedly involved including the general decline of the printed word in our brave new internet driven world as well as the general malaise loosely termed “global recession”. Whatever, it’s said to be tough to get stuff published with titles already in the pipeline being dropped.
George Weigel
June 1979?The Nine Days of John Paul II
Posted: 6/5/2009
Thirty years ago this week, the Bishop of Rome returned to Poland for the first time since his recent election to the papacy. America’s premier Cold War historian, John Lewis Gaddis of Yale, is not ambiguous in his judgment of what happened next: “When John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw airport on June 2, 1979, he began the process by which communism in Poland--and ultimately everywhere--would come to an end.” Professor Gaddis is right: the Nine Days of John Paul II, June 2-10, 1979, were an epic moment on which the history of the 20th century pivoted, and in a more humane direction.
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