Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and His Relationships with Women (2007) by Andrew Greeley is an essay collection.  It purports to be, instead, an examination of the Divine Storyteller's love of surprises, but that thread, while very interesting and typically Greeley, doesn't tie the volume together as the preface and afterword insist.  This ( Read more... )

The bishop of Phoenix is, apparently, a heart and mind stunted and disconnected to a degree unusual even among his ecclesiastical peers, but curiously in tune with his geographical region.

As Nicholas Kristof writes in his NYT column today, and as I heard on NPR last week but found too upsetting to mention then, Sister Margaret McBride of St. ( Read more... )

I just heard a short interview on NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday" about the continuing problems the Curia and hierarchy are having with the revelations of sexual abuse and cover-up.  For once, at last, the person interviewed was clear, concise and sensible about the part of this that the media wants to talk about ( Read more... )

• This one is worth reading, though probably not buying.  I picked up The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (2008) by Matthew Goodman the second time I saw it on the "new books" shelf in the library.  It's told in the style that I associate with ( Read more... )

The Incarnation: God's "rescue raid into history."  --- Garry Wills, What Jesus Meant (2006 ( Read more... )

On my way into mass today, running a little late, a man tried to hand me a "Yes on 8" flier.  "No. Thank you," I said.  "Yes!" he replied, but then I was past him, up the steps, and stewing a little about divisiveness battering community at that time and place.  (This is the first time such a thing has happened to me at a California church; now ( Read more... )

Today's Washington Post has an interesting perspective column titled "A Priest Walks Into Qatar and..." by Ryan J. Maher (SJ).  Excerpt:A person of Muslim faith and a person of Christian faith engaged in honest conversation about religion are not like two fans pulling for their respective teams.  They are more like two men in love with the same ( Read more... )

I will be leaving shortly for a day-long fencing event (went to Saturday vigil mass -- 4:30 in English because Spanish and Portuguese get the prime later spots).  I don't plan to put my raw incompetence on display in front of strangers :-) but my sister will be competing ... and I will bring a change of clothes, just in case someone does need a ( Read more... )

That Robert Novak's latest column again proves he is creepy surprises no one, I'm sure.  I managed to avoid most of the papal visit thing, ducking much coverage that would certainly have left me either exasperated or outraged as the weirdos came out of the woodwork, as they always do.  And I'm not going to refute Novak point by point now.  ( Read more... )

The GTU Bookstore is going out of business, I hear.  Apparently, it is open only until the end of this term, unable to compete with Amazon.  At any rate, that's what the priest who leads the twice-yearly scripture seminar at my parish said tonight.  He shared the anecdote that when he heard the news, he remembered that he had a gift certificate ( Read more... )