These days Bishop Callahan and I have the privilege of reading a large number of letters from young adults preparing [...]

To be a member of the pilgrimage that accompanied Archbishop Listecki last week to Rome for the reception of his pallium was a privilege and a delight. Visiting the major ancient basilicas for the daily celebration of the Eucharist was also an opportunity to think about the forthcoming English translation of the new edition of the Roman Missal. After 40 years of experience with liturgy in the vernacular throughout the world we now pause to reaffirm our commitment to full active participation of all of God’s people in the celebration of the sacred mysteries.

Those who shaped the Mass formulas which we call the Novus Ordo in the late 1960s and early 1970s were faithful scholars who knew the church’s long liturgical tradition very well, and who knew what worship should be. We need to be profoundly grateful to them and their scholarly predecessors over the past centuries for restoring and preserving the church’s heritage of communal praise and prayer. I reject any idea of “reforming the reform” as a complete revamping or dismantling of what we now know and love. Make no mistake about it, I like what we experience today and I cherish the way in which the eucharistic liturgy of the Catholic Church is celebrated in the best of our parishes every week across the country.

At the same time, I know the theoretical debate about the art of translation which has also occurred, sometimes in the background, during those same decades. The issue remains the quest for the right balance between the linguistic forms of the original language (Latin) and those of what we call the “receptor” language (English or other vernacular tongues).

It may be hard to believe, but once again I come to the end of another confirmation season … my [...]

A few weeks ago I had the good fortune to participate in an international interreligious conference at Boston College. The question posed for the scholars was, “Is this the golden age for Jewish/Catholic relations?” I concluded my talk with a tentative suggestion, namely “Early Bronze age!” They all smiled. I wanted to retain a metallic label, but also playfully allude to the primitive period in human culture as illuminating our own contemporary era of interreligious relations. We are once again still at the beginning of things, and history could go both ways, depending on our honesty, mutual respect and determination.

One of the Jewish speakers, curiously enough, teaches a course on Catholic sacraments at the University of Tel Aviv. He told me that once a person makes a leap of faith, the Catholic sacramental system is completely reasonable, logical, integrated and cohesive. It was a good reminder of the profound blessing which our faith can bring to the lives of people who understand its inner power.

That in turn led me to think about all the confirmation letters which we bishops here in southeastern Wisconsin receive this time of the year, and how often the young people admit that they haven’t been very faithful to regular Sunday participation in the Eucharist. Usually the confirmation programs rekindle a spark of new interest and understanding; the retreat experiences often produce a resolution to change the pattern.   Sometimes the young people become the ones who get their parents up for Mass on Sunday morning!

Weekly participation in the Sunday Eucharist is far more than a mere duty to be gotten through like a dentist appointment or a cold shower. It is far more than a boring interlude in an otherwise interesting life. Included in every Eucharist is a crash course in all the fundamentals of Christian spirituality. Everything is there! For that reason we need to come back, week after week, to recapture the full reality of our life in Christ.

If truth be told, I have attempted to write this column in at least a dozen different ways over the [...]

About this time every Lent, it becomes clear that our first fervor of Ash Wednesday has dimmed, if not worn [...]

Last month I had the privilege of traveling with priests from around the country who had been part of my [...]

Looking back over the past half century, it hardly seems possible that I have been privileged to serve for 50 years as a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee! Undoubtedly, like couples who celebrate five decades of marriage or individuals who have been employed for great periods of time at the same company, we are amazed and wonder where the time has gone? Good days and more challenging ones … where have they gone?

In December of 1959 it was a very different world from what we now know and take for granted. The Cold War sharply separated the democratic West from the communists of the Eastern European Bloc, each regarding the other with profound suspicion and mutual distrust. Europe was being rebuilt after the Second World War, and air travel was just beginning to become common. Space travel was a dream mostly relegated to comic books and science fiction. 

Because so many of the Christmas readings from Scripture speak of the imminent arrival of a great Light, the season of Advent has assumed a kind of darkness, perhaps similar to the dark void before creation. That distinctive notion of darkness might also be experienced at night before the dawn or in the thunderous heart of a severe storm before the breaking out of the sun. The angelic chorus of Bethlehem seems to assume that the birth of the Christ occurred at night and our Midnight Masses reinforce that bit of Catholic piety. Christmas carols invariably describe the “O Holy Night,” and their carolers usually go forth after sunset.

In the weeks of Advent prior to Christmas we are encouraged to watch and wait. The prescribed color of vestments is a certain hue of serum purple, dark yet not harshly penitential (broken only on the third Sunday of Advent by that awful color of off-rose which always makes me feel like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol).