 What's
your parish music preference?
Does the
music you hear at Mass have you singing to the mountains or running
for the hills?
Nothing can make or break a
sacred experience quite like the music. It can mean the difference
between sublime and sub-par, between fantastic and fiasco, between
extraordinary and merely ordinary. So we at U.S. Catholic are gathering responses
now to appear in our March 2014 Reader Survey. When you go to Mass do you
like to hear organ music, or do you prefer to clap your hands along with
a praise band? Does the sound of a guitar cause your ears to perk up or
your heart to sink? Take
our survey and let us know!
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 How
cooking can create community
Famous food author Michael Pollan insists there's
much to be gained from sitting around the table and sharing a home-cooked
meal.
For award-winning author
Michael Pollan, food rules. And in today's culture, it seems as though we
are always being bombarded by the latest recommendation for the best way
to consume food. One study will show that fatty foods are doing us in;
the next week, we are implored to reduce our sodium intake, only to hear
from a new expert that it's really sugar we should be avoiding. But
according to Pollan, there's really one primary rule that we should
follow: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Read
more.
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COMMENTARY: Pope Francis is not
a standard bearer for the right or the left
What the pope is doing is prophetic, not political,
and we shouldn't view his actions through the lens of American politics
and ideology.
It's one thing to
say kind words about gay people and atheists while
admonishing those who would bury them in stones. It's one thing to
walk humbly and call the Catholic Church to compassion for the
poor. It's one thing to kiss a horribly disfigured
man from whom most people would run in disgust. But apparently,
it's quite another to start calling out growing economic inequality and
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 Don't
forget about Advent
Have we become so enamored with instant
gratification that we cannot sit in silence for a few minutes and wait,
even when it is waiting for the greatest joy that could come to us?
There is a giant Christmas
tree that I pass most nights on my walk home from work. It is quite
lovely: Multi-colored lights and large globes decorate its branches.
There is, in fact, an entire life-sized Christmas Village surrounding the
tree, and one particularly cold and blustery evening, I was passed on the
sidewalk by Santa Claus and his wife, both decked out in all their red
velvet glory. Then, when I get home to my building, I am greeted in
the lobby by not only a decorated potted plant, but also cheery holiday
music playing over speakers that are not used during any other season of
the year. Read
more.
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Will the new commission for the
sex abuse crisis heal the past?
Victims and their families need the church to show
that they are the first priority in handling abuse cases--something that
the church has sadly failed at in the past.
Last week at a press
conference, Cardinal Sean O'Malley announced that the pontiff has called
for a commission in the church's central bureaucracy to be created. This
panel of experts will advise him on how best to approach the sex abuse
crisis of the clergy. "The world is starting to wonder if Pope
Francis has forgotten the crisis," Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org
said after Francis' meeting with the Dutch bishops on Monday (Dec. 2). The
pope either has impeccable timing or has taken his own advice once again
and continued "living in the smell of the sheep." Read
more.
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 Read:
Off the Cuff & Over the Collar
By Bishop John McCarthy (Greenhills Publishing,
2013)
Bishop John McCarthy
pastored the Diocese of Austin, Texas from 1986 to 2001. After serving as
executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference, he was installed in
1979 as auxiliary bishop of Houston. In Off the Cuff & Over the Collar,
McCarthy covers a wide range of theological, devotional, and moral topics
that are the "stuff" of everyday Catholic life. Most
heartening is the spirit of personal wisdom and compassion the bishop
brings to his understanding of how our church needs to think and behave
in modern society. Read
more.
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