This is my homily for yesterday, the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A. Yesterday's readings are here.
Monday, January 26, 2026
Saturday, January 24, 2026
Another shooting
Apparently, a licensed male nurse in Minneapolis was taken to the ground by three ICE agents, then shot to death with around ten shots. I can’t see how anyone can’t see what is happening here. The government won’t stop this, none of the three branches. The Democrats are a joke. ICE must disappear but that won’t happen. Trump is enjoying all this chaos. But we are on our own. All the political processes that could bring us back are enclosed. The opposition party are nothingburgers. I could continue with many points showing why this ICE incursion is political violence but I really am tired of wasting my time.
Friday, January 23, 2026
What I look like
Nellie Bowles, a journalist who is married to Bari Weiss, now famous (notorious?) as the head of CBS News, writes a humorous current-events column called TGIF each Friday for The Free Press. Here is an example of her humor - this is from today's column:
"An Aging Boom for Catholicism" by John Allen
Back in February 2007 when he was still writing for the National Catholic Reporter, John Allen wrote a great article:
More Catholics on the way
They're likely to be gray-haired, healthy and rich
That article is no longer available on the NCR website, but I have a copy since I thought it was so important that I distributed it to our parish Pastoral Council (I was a member then). There was a positive reaction to the article, and the pastor did say that we should eventually get around to doing something about the growing elderly population. However, his thinking was more problem than asset driven.
The parish is very youth oriented with a vibrant parish grade school, and pre-school. Unfortunately, they could not see how my vision of how a vibrant parish retirement community would be the perfect complement to its young educational focus. The pastor recently retired without any thing much being done for the elderly even though he had a long struggle with illness before retiring at age 75.
John Allen, however, has not given up on his vision of an "Aging Bloom for Catholicism." He recently reviewed a Pope Leo address on the matter.
In my LAKE COUNTY WEAL BLOG, I have written about all this in a post
You might want to read my WEAL post for its summary of the NCR 2007 article but you will definitely want to read the entire recent CRUX article, not just my summary. IT IS NOT BEHIND A PAYWALL. YES, YOU WILL BE INVITED BUT NOT REQUIRED TO REGISTER AND CONTRIBUTE.
You might also want to read Pope Leo's original address to see how John Allen has connected all the dots of information there into the "home run" address the Leo should have made (John loved baseball analogies);
John excuses the lack of a home run with words like "hinting" and he notes the limits of a 900-word address. A comparison of the two shows how John makes his subject look good while excusing his faults.
In both articles Allen uses positive language about the elderly without laying the blame of a refusal to recognize their talents upon our prejudices against them that are just as blame worthy as those against women and racial minorities.
We are very likely to see the elderly as problems rather than assets with time, talents and treasure to solve our problems. Recently Lake County produced a study on its elderly, i.e. those over age sixty. The data in the study made clear to me that we healthy age sixty plus have all the resources to solve the problems of those who are over age sixty, probably with time, talent and treasure to take up some other county problems.
Thursday, January 22, 2026
RIP John Allen [Updated 1/23/2026]
Update 1/23/2026: I corrected a broken link to the first obituary link below (h/t Anne), which was from Catholic News Agency - now apparently owned by EWTN. And I added a new link to America Magazine's obituary, which may be the best of the bunch.
---
I was dismayed to learn this afternoon that John Allen Jr., the noted "Catholic beat" journalist, has died of cancer. He was only 61 years old.
Allen had been National Catholic Reporter's Rome correspondent during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He was then hired by the Boston Globe for its new Catholic outlet, Crux. A couple of years later, the Globe transferred Crux to the staff; Allen served as its editor.
As obituary here. Colleen Dulle's obituary in America here. And a nice remembrance here.
I hope he and Tom are trading war stories in heaven.
Friday, January 16, 2026
What to Do About ICE?
This isn't a prediction, it's a thought experiment. The truth is, even though the awful time we're in feels like forever, it isn't. Trump won't be here forever, he's 80 with mental deterioration and health issues. He can't run for a third term. Oh, he'll probably try. But his ability to do so is diminishingly even possible. However what he has set in motion will still have to be dealt with. The people he has surrounded himself with are still going to be dedicated to authoritarianism and outright fascism.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
The Donroe Doctrine is a Scam
This is from an article on the New Republic site, by the same name. New Republic has never been one of my favorite opinion journal places, but I don't think anything they said in this article is untrue. Seem like they pretty well nailed it:
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)