The Good Word

When The Da Vinci Code exploded onto the literary sic scene it created a secondary cottage industry Catholic and other Christian scholars who responded to it either in Parish halls or in short book-length refutations See a nice online refutation from my colleague David Landry I was a part of

How do you receive the word of God when you do not read This is a strange question to ask in an age of unprecedented literacy at a time when access to data texts and knowledge is constant No longer need one rely on books taken from the library you can carry Kindle and have over a thousand book

The second reading for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time continues with the reflections of Paul or a superb facsimile of Paul on human unity in and through Christ The reading for this Sunday is Ephesians 2 13-18 but I think it is worth drawing in the two verses just prior to this passage S

I know very few people these days who work from 9 00am to 5 00pm The eight-hour day seems to be a thing of the past Where priests regularly encounter these new work patterns is when we see young people who are preparing for marriage in the Church Sometimes to arrange a meeting we have to resort t

Two related points about this week s readings First it is difficult for me as a woman religious to hear Ezekiel rsquo s description of nbsp ldquo bad shepherds rdquo behavior without thinking of recent acts of power by authorities in the Catholic Church Whether pondering the abuse of childre

In the criticism of George Weigel s intemperate and churlish source criticism of Pope Benedict XVI s new encyclical criticism which is warranted it has not been much noted that biblical scholars engage in source criticism on a regular basis The same criticisms raised of Weigel s gold pen and r

Many scholars evaluate Ephesians as a pseudonymous letter of Paul s attributing it to a period some twenty years approximately after Paul s martyrdom and composed by disciples of Paul sometimes styled as a Pauline school Others note that the earliest manuscript traditions lack to the Ephesi

Building on last week rsquo s readings about prophets in a way unusual and interesting we now get additional insight from Amos and Mark nbsp The Amos narrative looms oddly in a book where otherwise the prophet is a speaker rather than spoken about and it comes too abruptly since the lectionary s

Many centuries ago the Pope decided that all the Jews had to leave Rome Naturally there was an uproar from the Jewish community nbsp So the Pope made a deal nbsp He would have a religious debate with a member of the Jewish community nbsp If the Jews won they could stay nbsp If the Pope won

The year of St Paul ends with the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29th 2009 I think this year has been a tremendous gift for the Church if only to draw considered attention to the man Paul and the many facets of his ministry Certainly in my diocese that of St Paul and Minneapolis