In this holiday season, extended families are preparing, at long last, to gather around the table. After a year and a half of separation and isolation, we’re all eager to be together again.
A major issue in bioethics today involves "informed consent," but some try to make everything about consent. This is especially notable when it comes to ethical discussions around the exercise of human sexuality.
If this was an ordinary year, the Octave of All Saints — the weeklong stretch when the Church offers a plenary indulgence for souls in purgatory, obtained in part by visiting a cemetery and praying for the dead — would be over by the time you’re reading this column. The period is typically Nov. 1 through Nov. 8.
We likely all have our favorite saint: our namesake, the saint we chose for confirmation or a saint to whom we reach out due to a specific need. Saints are a staple of the Catholic Church. Nov. 1 was All Saints’ Day (which we celebrated this year at our Sunday liturgy, rather than making a special return to our churches for Mass, on what in other years is a holy day of obligation). With this day, we annually reflect on our devotion to these holy and venerable human beings who provide a map for living a life dedicated to God.
Just as “Tiger King” became a defining show of our early quarantine days and “Bridgerton” carried us through the first COVID winter, “Squid Game” has dominated this fall. It’s not hard to see how the Korean drama resonates more deeply in the pandemic’s long shadow.
When I lived a few blocks from Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul, I liked to go on walks there when the late evening sun and the faded monuments cast long shadows on warm summer evenings. The cemetery never felt like a frightening place to be. Instead, I contemplated the lives of the more than 100,000 people buried there. Calvary Cemetery is palpably filled with the presence of generations of Catholics laid to rest there since its founding in 1856.