Like many of you, I have good neighbors. My next-door neighbor, for example, while mowing his own lawn continues over to cut mine—and not just the mowing but the weeding and trimming, too. Another oversaw renovations to my house, and she steps in to assist with ongoing needs. Still another, as long as I keep […]
Early in my priesthood, I was privileged to be mentored by Monsignor Arthur Matthew Tighe, longtime pastor of Visitation Parish, site of my first assignment in 1987. Then, like now, there were various discussions and debates among Catholics about how the church should function as a sacramental institution, a hierarchical enterprise, a community of faith […]
I am concerned about maintaining our Catholic presence in Kansas City’s urban core in the future. We have a limited number of priests serving our diocese; the bishop and diocesan leaders must send priests where Catholics live and worship to provide sacraments—there is not a proportionate number of Catholics living or worshipping in our inner […]
There are about 220 Catholic colleges and universities in the United States, a number that has diminished over the past decade with several closings each year. The most famous schools are those known for their sports teams, like football powerhouse Notre Dame, or Villanova and San Francisco that have won multiple national basketball championships, as […]
Dr. Ralph Wilson, director of Joyful Heart Renewal Ministries, once wrote: “If you ask your average heathen youngster what Easter is about, he’ll tell you about the Easter bunny and finding decorative baskets filled with annoying plastic grass that sticks to every household furnishing and those pastel foil-covered football things that are a sad excuse […]
When fishes flew and forests walked, and figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood, then surely, I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry and ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody on all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, of ancient […]
A group of friends I know happen to be pretty good singers. They discovered this reality one night at a new south Kansas City bar, Corner Cocktail, some forty-five years ago. One of them was forced by his dear mother to sing in a church choir because, as she said, we should use our talents […]
“You say we’ve got nothing in common, no common ground to start from, and that we’re falling apart…And I said, ‘What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’ And she said, ‘I think I remember that film, and as I recall, we both kinda liked it.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s one thing we’ve got’.” Those lyrics from […]
“I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains, I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains. There’s more than one answer to my questions, pointing me in a crooked line. And the less I seek my source as a definitive, the closer I am to fine.” From the Indigo Girls to […]
On Valentine’s Day, 1929, in Chicago, when tension between organized crime gangs and city police exploded, there was a bloody massacre that is still talked about today. Four years later in June, at Kansas City’s Union Station, another bloodbath occurred when local mobs and what later became the FBI tangled in a similarly notorious shoot-out. […]
UPON THIS ROCK 