+++ THE DONKEY G.K. Chesterton When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born; With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient [...]

29 years ago Oscar Romero was murdered by a right wing politician’s hit man. Romero was preaching at Mass and was shot through the heart. He had been archbishop of San Salvador for only three years. He was the conservative, pious candidate who took his catechism seriously so he got himself killed. He had a [...]

This is St joseph’s Hospital in Kansas City Missouri where I went for an operation after first grade. There I met Catholics in some numbers including the Carondolet sisters…It was their kindness that helped me overcome all the bad stories I heard about RCs later…though at times, I wish they had not been so kind [...]

This is the cycle B gospel reading…[A is used in parishes with the RCIA and that is, of course, the gospel of the Woman at the Well] which folks groups as well as the great Mahalia Jackson did very well singing…But the B cycle is very apt for these days. The National Round Table for [...]

I love Helen Keller. When I was in junior high I was desperate to “see” what she saw. I blind folded myself and went around the house “blind” so I could get an idea. It was supposed to be a three day experiment but my mother cut it off immediately, fearing that God would punish [...]

St. Edith Stein, Jewish convert murdered along with her sister Rosa at Auschwitz, was a philosopher. She never got a university position because she was a woman and then had to leave all teaching when Jews were forbidden to hold such positions after 1933. Her dissertation was on empathy. It is not particularly long but [...]

Lent II is the Transfiguration which by itself is repeated as its own feast day in August. It is the great sign of Lent…transfiguration and not trivialization of the human…we are transformed by God in Lent, not pin pricked by giving up chocolate. Though the loss of chocolate is actually easier on the system than [...]

Slate runs an article from Reuters. We are at a certain stage on our  way to BRAVE NEW WORLD. Human sperm and egg sales are part of a growing business…human egg cells leading the market. Human embryos, of course, will be on the market (Please Mr. President, this is not a change we need.) Slaves [...]

I suppose this is a way to separate off religious institutions which have their own dynamics, often a spiritual veneer over what is essentially secular if not actually demonic. Having been a Catholic 48 years and a priest 35, I have had plenty of experience of Catholicism as a veneer. Nevertheless, the distinction has only [...]

Cardinal Schoernborn wrote his clergy trying to improve their morale. At about the time of the disastrous de-excommunication of the holocaust denying bishop (holocaust denying was a sin but not a heresy!!!) Austria was hit by a papal appointment of an auxiliary bishop of Linz who had said that Katrina was God’s punishment for the [...]