Catholic
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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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Pope Leo has asked Catholics to pray the rosary every day in October as a call for peace. I’ve never really been one to pray the rosary. As a convert, I didn’t grow up with the devotion, and I’m still pretty sure I don’t have the whole order of prayers quite right. Beyond that, rote…
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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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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…
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Last Sunday’s Old Testament passage from Deuteronomy was a beautiful passage from Moses on how the law of God is written on our hearts, and the Gospel was the Parable of the Good Samaritan, so my guess is that nobody paid much attention to the second reading, Colossians 1:15-20. But Paul says something interesting in…
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Do you trust me? I don’t know if you ever have this experience, but I have found that some themes, questions, and challenges keep coming back to me, generally because I haven’t satisfactorily addressed them before. How many times have we committed to getting to Mass early, or at least on time? How many times…
Reading Francis 