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  American society is fractured; discourse that is civil is rarely heard. We are divided Red against Blue and Blue against Red. Our history is reckoned glorious; or it is taken to be an embarrassment. Technology throws gasoline on fires that otherwise might be easily... Read More →

   [This (2009) column is reprinted from Fun Is Not Enough, a collection of Fr. Francis Canavan’s Catholic eye columns edited by Dawn Eden Goldstein and published in 2017.] __________________________________________________________________________ Since man is a social... Read More →

  In a recent address to French Catholic political leaders gathered in Rome for the Holy Year, Pope Leo spoke of the weighty challenges they face in our often hostile world: I am well aware that the openly Christian commitment of a public official is not easy, especially in... Read More →

  I recently made a trip to Tabora, Tanzania, a place most people I know have probably never heard of let alone visited. Certainly, I would not have heard of it but for a connection with the Anglican bishop there, who had repeatedly invited me to visit his diocese. The trip... Read More →

  I have the privilege of composing this reflection while residing in Tanzania. A colleague and I are working on a series of projects for the Archdiocese of Mwanza, which is on the shore of Lake Victoria, in the north-central part of the country. Like many Africans,... Read More →

  This is my second, and last, Pastoral Reflection that centers on a declaration for life. Promise. In 1988, a small group of United Methodist pastors began discussing the possibility of writing a declaration addressed to The United Methodist Church on life and abortion. In... Read More →

Love must be learned. Which is why there is no better example of love in our world than that of mothers, who both love and learn to love by giving themselves to another—often at great cost. It is also why pro-choice culture is so deeply destructive. For a culture that is all... Read More →

  It’s hard to know what to do with a film that begins with the end of the universe. The Life of Chuck places us in a generic urban/suburban world where normal things are starting to unravel. In a traffic snarl, a schoolteacher (Marty) sees a billboard with the picture of an... Read More →

  Robert Cardinal Sarah wrote a wonderful book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, in which he reminds us that we need to escape from the tyranny of endless distractions produced by constant sound. We must learn how to place ourselves silently before... Read More →

  This essay first appeared in Pins in the Liberal Balloon, a 1990 collection of essays from Fr. Canavan. ____________________________________________________________________________ The face of the earth has changed over the centuries and is changing more radically in the... Read More →