As we have seen organizational tool of Mark consists of Jesus meeting his opponents one after the other and answers arguments specific to each of these opponents Jesus had cleansed the Temple a prophetic or messianic gesture only to be challenged by the Sanhedrin who asks by what authority

Ambassador to the Holy See is not like most ambassadorships For starters the First Amendment notwithstanding it is the only position in the U S government that involves formal recognition of religion Ambassadors are not accredited to the Vatican City-State the 103 acres on the west bank of the

AP reports that according to nbsp Cardinal Francis Arinze prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship Pope Benedict XVI is considering moving the sign of Peace from immediately before Communion to earlier in the Mass nbsp The brief story is here nbsp Arinze told the Vatican newspaper

Cambridge MA I have been making entries for In All Things for almost a year now and by my count this is the 25th such contribution I have recently written of dreams or nightmares about elections and accountability in the Church interreligious violence and love I have also tr

The Superior General of the Society of Jesus Adolfo Nicolas S J nbsp in nbsp an interview nbsp with El Periodico a Spanish newspaper said that liberation theology which has been under scrutiny in the Vatican in the last several decades is a courageous and creative response to an unbearable

Congresswoman Linda Sanchez from California has announced that she is pregnant and expecting her first child in May Congratulations to her and her fianc eacute Jim Sullivan Last month I suggested that Sanchez would be an ideal candidate for Secretary of Labor in an Obama administration given he

It was almost painful watching the CEOs of the big three automakers testify before Congress These nbsp former titans of industry nbsp unconvincingly blamed the crisis in the financial markets for their imminent collapse a reverse Deus ex Machina that is undoing years and years of thoughtful forwa

If we have read of Jesus power over sin sickness nature death in the first eight chapters we now read of Jesus wisdom whether it be the wisdom expressed after each of his three prophecies about the passion resurrection or it be the wisdom he now shows in his brief teaching in the Templ

Christ the King Nov 23 2008 The Roman Emperor Constantine was baptized in 337 He put it off for years In the early Church Christians could only confess their sins once in their lives so Constantine remained a catechumen until he was nearing the end Despite what The Da Vinci Code says when h

Because I m tired of being made to feel like an idiot was the reason a woman friend of Tablet correspondent Clifford Longley gave for no longer attending Mass One hears variations on this sentiment with such regularity among thoughtful Catholics that the temptation is to coin a further beatitud

President-elect Barack Obama s Nov 16 statement that we ve got to shore up our efforts in Afghanistan should be a finalist for understatement of the month According to news reports attacks against coalition forces along Afghanistan s northeast border with Pakistan have surged in recent

President-elect Barack Obama has tapped Tom Daschle to become Secretary of Health and Human Services a selection that is due chiefly to Daschle rsquo s expertise in health care and his intimate knowledge of Congress and its ways The Secretary of HHS alas also oversees policies that treat abortio

The sneering video letter nbsp issued by Al Qaeda s No 2 proves if nothing else that the Islamist terror network is running scared of Barack Obama And so they should be Obama s commitment to withdraw troops from Iraq and focus them on Afghanistan smashes the central Al-Qaeda thesis that the

Yes Advent nbsp I wanted to be the first to say that word on our blog at least this year nbsp You may already know Fr Robert Barron professor of systematic nbsp theology at Mundelein Seminary in Chicago popular speaker and author of many books my favorite is The Strangest Way nbsp S

Yesterday the Vatican appointed a new auxiliary for Washington D C forty-five year old Bishop-elect Barry Knestout This is a big feather in the cap of D C rsquo s Archbishop Donald Wuerl Getting such a young auxiliary through Rome rsquo s sometimes arcane appointment process is not easy Wuerl

Spooky I suggest in this blog that the Archbishop of Canterbury take bishops to Lourdes -- and then he does Then a few weeks ago I come up with something called CathPod only to learn now that nbsp about that time an application called iBreviary was being launched Report in Italian here nbsp

CCHD the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has been under attack lately--unfairly nbsp David Gibson nbsp sets the record straight in an online piece for America here Gibson nbsp In nbsp a denunciation that America blogger Austen Ivereigh declared ldquo manifestly unjust rdquo Fat

Jesus and his disciples return to Jerusalem after a night in Bethany Ascending a staircase about 3 stories high Jesus stepped onto the Temple platform the religious political economic psychological center of Israel and of Judaism a four-cornered area about the size of a soccer field with th

Every scrap of Scripture in today s liturgy contributes to making two points actually one blended assertion The Lamb is slain and God did not intervene to stop that scandalous deed And God s flock suffers at the hands of shepherds who abuse it and profit from that abuse and though God does