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  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 →

(This is a reprint from July 8, 2024) Last week, we celebrated the 248th anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, a bold act of defiance that ultimately, after eight long years of revolutionary war, resulted in Great Britain’s recognition of the sovereignty of the... Read More →

   This past Tuesday marked the third anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the 2022 Supreme Court decision revoking the “constitutional right” to abortion invented by Roe v. Wade. For those of us who want to see unborn children protected by law, Dobbs was a great... Read More →

    Let’s be honest. Congregations, as well as their pastors and priests, are hesitant, even unwilling, to address abortion either publicly or from the pulpit. We are afraid that we might make somebody in the local church mad. Nevertheless, faithful ministry involves... Read More →

    The room is not quite big enough for everyone who has come. In her reclining chair, the 95-year-old woman takes it all in, with smiles. Her hearing is spotty, her eyesight rather darkened, and her walker ever close to hand. But she is full of delight, for gathered around... Read More →

  “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy . . .” So goes the opening aria in George Gershwin’s 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. Summer is upon us now and easy it is—or is supposed to be! School is out; vacation time beckons. It is the season to put aside, as much as possible,... Read More →

  Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them. (John 20:22-23) The scene of our Lord’s first resurrection appearance to the disciples, when all of them are together, from the Gospel of John, is sometimes called “St. John’s Pentecost.” John doesn’t give the... Read More →

  The late John Courtney Murray, S.J., once told me that at a convention he attended, a Protestant theologian said to him in a rather worried tone of voice, “I don’t see how we can base a foreign policy on the Sermon on the Mount.” Replied Fr. Murray, “I never thought we... Read More →

    This post originally appeared on this website on Feb 3, 2017. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you... Read More →

    [This reflection was written and filed in the interregnum between Pope Francis’s death and Pope Leo XIV’s election.] ___________________________________________________________________________________   It has long been observed that the Church is not a museum... Read More →