A forum of Catholic Thought

Men behaving beastlyGreg Erlandson

"Why do men become beasts?" The question was asked by South African Archbishop Buti Joseph Tlhagale. In a speech last August, he was warning men that they will be held accountable for the treatment ...

The challenges of being a Catholic voter Greg Erlandson

Every four years, for as long as I've been in the Catholic press, editors get two types of phone calls come election time. The first is to complain about the perceived bias of the editor or her reporters. Once, ...

Dealing with pandemic PTSDGreg Erlandson

I'd like a show of hands for how many of you tested positive for COVID this summer. Or felt like heck but didn't have any tests on-hand. Or self-diagnosed your distress as summer flu, even though this ...

Is every Sunday a wasted opportunity? Greg Erlandson

It's not every day that The New York Times runs a story about Catholics and Eucharistic Adoration. Yet the National Eucharistic Congress held in July in Indianapolis caught the attention of the Gray ...

Let's celebrate Easter for a whileGreg Erlandson

This year, I'm glad to see Lent come to an end, and not just because of Easter Alleluias and Cadbury dark chocolate eggs. It was a tough Lent. Part of it, of course, had nothing explicitly to do with ...

'Ted Lasso' and 'Succession': What makes a good dad? Greg Erlandson

Judging from media coverage, the press has been gaga over the HBO series "Succession." It chronicled the Roy family, a dysfunctional media brood with an oppressive, manipulative patriarch and an endless ...

More than ever, we need diocesan news mediaGreg Erlandson

When my wife bought a Subaru a few years ago, we not only got a car. We also received a company magazine called "Drive." Subaru is trying to use a "membership magazine" to build a relationship with us ...

What do we do when our heroes let us down Greg Erlandson

My wife took Christ off our living room wall the other day. It was a postcard image of a mosaic created by Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik. She couldn't bear to have it up. Rupnik is a remarkably gifted ...