Opportunities, Decisions, and Legacies

For most of us, the opportunities are small and quiet. They come in our home, with our family and friends, at our job, or in our parish or community. A decision is presented to us. Perhaps it’s a question of telling the truth when it’s against our interests. Or going out of our way to

Bearing False Witness on Abortion and Health Care Reform

The other day, the President was speaking by a telephone conference call to a group of religious leaders, to drum up support for his health care plan.  Oddly enough, none of the “religious leaders” was a Catholic bishop.  In any event, during the call, the President made an astonishing statement: “I know there’s been a

Please, Father, Help Me To Be Holy

I’m trying to be holy. I try to set aside time for prayer, and I particularly try to be attentive during Mass. But, the basic problem is me. I’m just very, very easily distracted. My mind whirls around, thinking about what I was doing, what I’m going to be doing, the current list of things

What Are You Supporting?

It is simple common sense that when you support a piece of legislation, you are supporting what the bill will actually do. It doesn’t matter what your private motives are, or even what your long-term goals are. If you support a bill, you support what it will do. This is relevant because another of those

A Beautiful Wedding

I went to a wedding the other day. But it wasn’t the kind of wedding that you’d think. Let me explain. On the Feast of the Transfiguration, several hundred people gathered in beautiful St. John’s Church in Stamford. Sr. Catherine Marie and Sr. Shirley Ann knelt before the altar of God, and took perpetual vows

A Catholic Approach to the Right to Health Care

In my last blog post, I discussed a problem that is impairing our ability as Catholics to discuss the idea of a right to health care, which is relevant to the proposed health care reform initiatives. I suggested that the basic difficulty is that as Americans, we tend to think of “rights” in legalistic terms.

Health Care and “Rights”

There is a very robust debate going on now about health care policies, one that is very much worth paying close attention to. But there is one discussion that goes right to the foundation of the issue, and that’s one of the things that interests me the most. It’s the question of whether health care