bible
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The Bible readings for the Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (October 26, 2025) seems tailor-made for Pope Leo XIV’s newly released apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te. The first reading from Sirach dwells on God hearing the cry of the oppressed, the wail of the orphan and widow, the prayer of the lowly.* The Psalm response is…
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If you are a Catholic nerd deeply engaged Catholic, this is probably not your post. But if you saw some quotes from Pope Leo about poverty (that weren’t fake), and you were just curious enough to learn some rudimentary things about this document that the quotes came from, I am here for you. Let’s do…
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Who is Jesus to you? I’ve been asked that by a couple of people recently, and, to be honest, my answer to that is pretty flat. I know the “right” answer, but the reality is that I’ve always found it easier to relate to God through the (non-anthropomorphized) Holy Spirit than through the person of…
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At what point do our scruples do more harm than good? Scrupulosity is not a term you hear a lot these days, even though I think it’s a burgeoning condition now in both secular and sacred circles. (We tend to go with the more pathological term, OCD.) Back in the day, Jesus poked at the…
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The main thing is to make the main thing the main thing. I mentioned earlier this week that the daily Mass readings this week cover the return to Jerusalem and rebuilding of the Temple, but one of those readings has really stuck with me all week, because I think it speaks to a larger question…
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To whom do we belong? I’ve been thinking a lot about a truism about religion that social scientists point out. For most of us, our faith (including secularism as a form of faith) isn’t so much something we adopt through reason, or something to whose principles we assent cognitively. Instead, for most of us, we…
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It was a murder so heinous that it shocked the nation. So much did it command the national attention that, even in a gun-soaked country grown weary of mass shootings, the President of the United States traveled to join family members in mourning the lost. Staggering everyone, the spouse of the victim forgave the killer.…
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The Bible readings that Catholics use at Mass this week are an interesting mix that, taken together, seem to underscore that God sees things very differently than the culture around us does. There’s a passage from Paul’s first letter to Timothy that actually shows up twice, in the Monday daily Mass and then again this…
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What does it mean, really, for Christianity to be countercultural? One thing you hear a lot in Christian circles is that Christians are called to be countercultural. Usually (like virtually all things American), this notion means something different, depending on which side of our societal divide you inhabit. Traditionalist Christians tend to equate being countercultural…
Reading Francis 