Commentary

In our preparation for the Synod, here in the Archdiocese of New York, close to 7,000 people accepted our invitation to attend listening sessions or respond online to issues of concern in the life of the church today. One question I always posed was, "How can we get people back to Sunday Mass? Why have so many of our folks stopped coming?"

To natural death. It’s a phrase we Catholics need to reflect and act on, not just during Respect Life Month in October but always. We’ve seen the horrible laws passed in St. Paul this year concerning the beginning of life. Attacks on the vulnerable at the end of life will now be in focus.

For many Catholics, Pope Francis’s decision to call for a synod on synodality is akin to the boss calling a meeting to discuss meetings, more likely to earn a yawn or an eye roll than enthusiasm. And while the term “synod” is not new to the Church, it is safe to say most Catholics also give very little effort to understanding what a synod is, much less synodality -- the process of such consultation and discernment.

Catholics of a certain age will remember reciting a set of prayers after Mass called the Leonine Prayers. Introduced by Pope Pius IX in 1859, the prayers were offered in the Papal States for the protection of the Holy See’s temporal independence. The prayers included, among other things, three Hail Marys and the Hail Holy Queen.

In recent years, the number of young people with gender dysphoria, or extreme discomfort in one’s biological sex, has skyrocketed in the US and Western Europe.

When I first read the phrase “life is synthetic,” all I could think of was polyester.

We all know that hitting rock bottom is one of the surest ways of recognizing our need for God. When every other sense of security, comfort and competence has been stripped away, we are more able to see the stark reality that was and is and has always been the case: At the end of the day, God is all we have.

Four hundred Catholic women from across Minnesota gathered for a banquet at the St. Paul Hotel on Thursday, Nov. 5, 1931.