The Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World begins by underscoring the church’s humanity and empathy: “The joys...
Church history
Memories of a Catholic boyhood. It is Ash Wednesday, and the choices about what to give up for Lent finally take effect. I remember that Ash Wednesday meant...
On October 31, 2016, the same day Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in 1517, the Lutheran World Federation began a yearlong commemoration...
Recent news about limbo kept us, well, in limbo. Is it in or out? To many, this issue had to do with the ability the church to modify its teaching. We tend to...
Ordinary Time, or the season in the liturgical calendar outside of Advent, Lent, and the Christmas and Easter seasons, is a time when the church focuses on the...
That Jesus died for our sins is so ingrained in Christianity it seems almost absurd to question it. It’s in our creed: “For our sake, he was crucified under...
Historical Jesus scholars all agree that Jesus was a Galilean first-century Jew. He was born of a Jewish mother, was addressed by his followers as “Rabbi,”...
I spend much of my time speaking to different groups of people throughout the country. As a black Catholic theologian, one of less than a half dozen in this...
When I started doing research for the essay I wrote in the May 2016 issue of U.S. Catholic, I was surprised to find out that the church never issued an edict...
It all started when my brothers and I were planning what Dad called a “shindig” for our mother’s 80th birthday. Looking through some old family photos, we hit...
