NCR Today is the group blog of NCR. Each member of our diverse team of bloggers writes on different topics, including the politics of the church and secular society (and the interaction between the two), culture, management of the church and more.
Children leave but the parents stay.
I was noticing that at church this weekend. It was my youngest daughter's last Mass as an altar server; she graduates from eighth grade at our parish school in two weeks then moves onto high school in the fall. Everyone has been patting us on the back, telling us that -- after putting a couple of kids through all nine grades over a 14-year period -- we are finally "done."
Pope Francis, speaking at an economic forum, links widespread unemployment with a global economic system that does not consider solidarity an important consideration.
NCR Today: Cardinal Pell 4.5 hours before parliamentary committee; the latest on the Fugee/Myers case; NY archdiocese's health care plan.
“We understand reality better not from the center, but from the outskirts,” Pope Francis said to thousands of persons awaiting him Sunday at the parish of Sts. Elizabeth and Zechariah in the Prima Porta neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Rome.
Upon arriving, Francis greeted the families with children who had been baptized during the year and also heard several confessions, according to a Vatican statement.
Memorial Day salutes sacrifice for country and for that reason also offers itself as the most comprehensive anti-war event on our annual calendar. Other occasions come close, but this is the grand communion between the living and all the country's war dead. Alongside the tributes to valor lies the inescapable message that war exacts a horrible price to real people in real towns and cities. Whatever misplaced idealism and romance quickly fade. "It is well that war is so terrible," said Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, "otherwise we would grow too fond of it."
Stephen Colbert was distraught at Pope Francis' remarks regarding atheists in his latest homily. Christ's redemption including atheists in his latest homily.
According to Catholic News Service, the pope was speaking of people of all or no faith working together to do good. "The Lord has redeemed us all with the blood of Christ, all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone," he said. Some may ask, "'Father, even the atheists?' Them, too. Everyone."
Pope Francis may write his first encyclical, a high and authoritative letter from the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, on poverty, several Italian media outlets are reporting.
Additionally, the new pontiff may give his signature to an encyclical being completed on faith by the retired Pope Benedict XVI.
While new popes have been known to complete encyclicals begun by their predecessors, Italian Bishop Luigi Martella has said the retired pope is still working on the document, which Francis has then agreed to sign and promulgate.
There was a story in The New York Times Monday that’s making the rounds on email and Facebook. It’s not breaking news, just a feature story about something that happened two months ago.
Now let’s see if I have this straight.
The Jesuit, Jorge Bergoglio, gets elected pope.
He takes the name “Francis,” after the founder of the Franciscan order, St. Francis of Assisi.
The Jesuit pope, in his first major appointment, names a Franciscan, Father José Rodriguez Carballo, the head of the Franciscan order and president of the Union of Superiors General (USG), the umbrella group for representatives of men's religious orders, to be secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious.
NCR Today: Gay Boy Scouts OK; Obama, Gitmo and drones; Catholic health care in Wash state. And more.
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