There are no more scandalous lines in the sacred Scripture than the despondent words of the crucified savior, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” Christians well know that Jesus Christ is indeed divine, that he is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, that he is God’s very own Son “… consubstantial with the Father,” as the new Roman Missal will soon proclaim. more

The local press recently featured a review of a play about the Apostle Paul. The review asked whether Jesus’ celebrated Sermon On The Mount would make any less sense if Jesus Christ had not risen from the dead on Easter Sunday. more

Hermes was the Greek god of eloquence and communication. Zeus usually employed Hermes to deliver his messages to the world because the young god was swift by air and fleet of foot. more

“American Grace” by authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell is a statistical and anecdotal survey of America’s current religious situation. more

Wisely does the church’s Lenten liturgy follow last week’s narrative of Christ’s temptations with an account of Jesus’ Transfiguration. Last week worshippers at Mass witnessed Jesus’ triple victory as he struggled to express in human terms the meaning of his divine sonship. more

Certainly Jesus Christ never experienced an identity crisis in the sense that he failed to appreciate the full meaning of his divine personhood. more

The American public has just enough Puritanism left within its ranks to bring a blush to the face when sex is mentioned in polite society. more

A thoughtful reading of the Sermon on the Mount, actually chapters five, six and seven of St. Matthew’s Gospel, provides overwhelming testimony to the centrality of the fatherhood of God in the thought and ethics of Jesus. The fatherhood of God was no metaphor in the preaching of Christ. more

One of the major complaints that hastened the American Revolution was the harboring of British troops in private homes. more

A good deal of the celebrated Sermon on the Mount as presented by St. Matthew in his version of Christ’s grand instruction to his disciples seems to consist in a refinement of the Old Mosaic Law. more

Pope Benedict’s annual address to the Vatican diplomatic corps caused quite a stir in certain quarters although American readers will never know of it because his remarks did not involve condoms or abusive clergy. more

It might be disrespectful, perhaps even sacrilegious, to write that Jesus proclaimed his celebrated eight beatitudes with tongue-in-cheek. more

As the church’s calendar begins Ordinary Time, i.e, the ordered or numbered weeks of the calendar, the public life of Jesus Christ as recorded by St. Matthew is proclaimed as well. more

Eighteenth century English author Henry Fielding wrote about a woodcutter forced to act as a doctor, owing to a prank played on him by his wife. more

A priest in New Mexico advised a class of about-to-be-ordained seminarians, “Always remember, you are ordained to serve God, not the people.” more

Pope Benedict XVI was born in the Christmas card perfect duchy of Bavaria in southern Germany. more

A couple of months ago in the second reading at Mass St. Paul wrote to Timothy a concise summary of the whole Gospel message, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David: Such is my Gospel.” Thus St. Paul links the supernatural, even divine, elements in Jesus Christ (… raised from the dead. …) with the natural and human aspects of the Savior (… a descendant of David). more

My old professor, Father Charles Curran, is the center of controversy once again. Father Curran was the moral theology professor at St. Bernard’s Seminary in Rochester, then controversially at The Catholic University, and lately at Southern Methodist University in Texas. more

In the 1930s and 1940s a number of concerned French clergy attempted to respond to the diminished status of the church in France by inaugurating grassroots movements such as L’Action Francaise, the Sons of Charity and the Young Catholic Workers. more

Advent is a four-week celebration of the presence of God. God the Father was present to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. more