Easter in Ordinary

This fine book, An Alley in Chicago: The Life and Legacy of Monsignor John Egan , tells an important story of the Church in Chicago before, during, and after the Second Vatican Council through the life and experience of one of the city's more notable inhabitants, Jack Egan. (An earlier, 1991 edition is available for free here .) Simply put, I loved this bittersweet book. Jack Egan , a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, led a life that is difficult to summarize: priest, pastor, community organizer, and activist are but a few words. A teacher once told me, "To tell me who you are, tell me who your friends are." This book, populated by Egan's many friends, tells us a lot about who he was. Many of the names were known to me, certain names were people whom I had met, and a select number of them are people that I have known well, and a few are still with us. The story is bittersweet for three reasons: first, for those recalled in the book who have gone on to their et...

I just came across an article from The Washington Post , Why Pope Francis’s silence on black America may soon end , and, while it breaks new ground, I would suggest re-focusing some of its conclusions. Take a minute, go read the article, and come back, please. I have been struck in recent months by the challenges before us, as a nation and as a Catholic Church in the U.S., around the issues of race. I was out of the country until the end of March. I watched from abroad as events unfolded in Ferguson, MO. Living in Chile these last years, I perceived anew some of the warped ways that we attend to race in the U.S., ways that are peculiar to our history. Also, in recent months, I have been reading Bryan Stevenson , Michelle Alexander , john a. powell , and Ta-Naheisi Coates . Increasingly, issues around race, structural racism, and implicit bias have been a growing concern for me. The Pew Research Center recently ranked Catholics as among the most racially diverse faiths in the ...

For Pope Francis, "mission" is a critical word. Evangelii Gaudium was all about mission. Laudato Si' may well be understood as an incarnation of a Christian's mission in this life. We are to care for our common home. In their 1992 pastoral letter, Stewardship: A Disciple's Response , the U.S. Bishops explained: An oikonomos or steward is one to whom the owner of a household turns over responsibility for caring for the property, managing affairs, making resources yield as much as possible, and sharing the resources with others. The position involves trust and accountability.(19) This understanding of a steward is keenly aware of its groundedness in the care of creation, calling Christian disciples to be "collaborators in creation" (26). In other words, Laudato Si' is a reflection on our discipleship as stewards. Stewardship is a spirituality that aims for a growth in holiness. We cannot be good Christian stewards without taking care...

The period following the Second Vatican Council, with all of the challenges in implementing the vision of the council, had many important figures. Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland , O.S.B., abbot primate of the Benedictine Confederation and then Archbishop of Milwaukee, was one of the more significant and, occasionally, controversial figures of that period. Personally, I heard Archbishop Weakland speak twice at the University of Notre Dame. He had chaired the writing of Economic Justice for All , the pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic Bishops on the economy. Weakland's participation at the interfaith conference in Bangkok, Thailand where Thomas Merton died also intrigued me. I had read his writings as they appeared in secular and religious press. I recalled his participation in the Common Ground Initiative of Joseph Cardinal Bernadin. It was with great sadness that I learned of the sexual relationship and payout, revealed in 2002, that ended his public ministry. Arc...