Catholic Church

By Msgr. Charles Pope - Yes, there is a time for everything. We like to think we determine when that is, but more often events and time itself determine what is timely and appropriate. We are not the master of time and events. Something bigger, caught up in God’s providence, sets the agenda. We may wish to laugh or celebrate, but sometimes there comes the awareness that now is not the right time. Even a happy occasion like a birthday or an anniversary can be overtaken by other events and a time to laugh becomes a time to cry.

By Fr. Mike Schmitz, Ascension Press - Have you ever felt like you’re just not fitting in at your parish?.. Perhaps you’ve felt the temptation to be a cookie-cutter Catholic, one who does all the Catholic things that other Catholics are doing because they think … well … that’s what makes us Catholic… But comparison is kind of like the cousin of envy, Fr. Mike says… If we only express our faith in certain ways because that’s what other believers around us are doing, we should re-examine our relationship with Christ. After all, he is the only one we should pattern our life after.

By Joan Frawley Desmond, NC Register - Summing up the response of many Catholics in the pews, Vickie Schmidt, a victim-survivor of sexual abuse by a priest and the co-author of Soul Light for the Dark Night, told the Register: “I want to know how many people knew about McCarrick in the U.S. hierarchy and in Rome.”… Schmidt also vented her anguish at the shameful evidence of McCarrick’s double life and Church authorities’ failure to protect seminarians and young priests subject to his abuse… “We are talking about people’s lives,” she said. “The Church is so concerned about priestly vocations, and then it allows something like this to go on in its seminaries.”