FOR THE JOURNEY November is a month of thanksgiving, family and celebration. But it also ushers in our national period of overconsumption and excess in December. This year, the holidays come as the gap between the very rich and the poor widens, as attacks on Jewish-Americans and other minorities grow, and health care […]
Effie Caldarola: Choose to hope
FOR THE JOURNEY What is the nature of hope? Are we born to be either a pessimist or an optimist? Or is it up to us to decide? At a day of reflection, a Sister of Mercy discussed the environmental threat to our planet. Then she asked us to stand up and choose a side […]
Effie Caldarola: Half a dress
FOF THE JOURNEY When our youngest daughter shopped for clothes for high school dances, her father would often comment, “I hope that dress is on sale for half-price, because it’s half a dress.” It was a joke, but it made his point. Our youngest child was pretty with an eye-catching figure, and she hit the […]
Effie Caldarola: The view from my pew
FOR THE JOURNEY The crisis in the U.S. Catholic Church lumbers along. We were still reeling from the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual misconduct and hierarchical cover-up when a disgruntled archbishop released a scathing letter calling for Pope Francis to resign. Now, many states are launching probes into diocesan files, a good thing. […]
Effie Caldarola: Mollie Tibbetts and our church
FOR THE JOURNEY Can you take any more bad news about the Catholic Church right now? I didn’t think so. The Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse and the cover-up by church officials, the disgrace of the former Cardinal McCarrick, the confusing letter by a disgruntled former papal nuncio to the U.S. in […]
Effie Caldarola: What’s a Catholic to do?
FOR THE JOURNEY The charges leveled against a former cardinal, Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, are sickening and almost unbearable to read. It’s horrible enough that former seminarians allege he invited them to a beach house with the certainty that he was always inviting one extra who would have to share his bed. But then comes […]
Effie Caldarola: Execution and mercy
FOR THE JOURNEY In early July, the Nebraska Supreme Court issued an Aug. 14 execution date for Carey Dean Moore. Moore, 60, has been sitting on death row for nearly four decades. It was 1979 when he killed two Omaha cabdrivers five days apart, and in 1980 he was sentenced to death for these crimes. […]
Effie Caldarola: Making a difference
FOR THE JOURNEY Many years ago, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Some Americans feel those words are eerily prescient right now. Things are falling apart. The crisis created at our border bids us to take action, and political action is good. But no matter what our political […]
Effie Caldarola: Sacramentals as a door to the sacred
FOR THE JOURNEY It was near the end of a long East Coast visit, a road trip that took us to visit a priest friend at the University of Notre Dame, the sights at Niagara Falls and an Italian cousin who was visiting my husband’s extended family. We had driven hundreds of miles, but this […]
Effie Caldarola: The need for apologies
FOR THE JOURNEY When former first lady Barbara Bush died recently, memories of her good qualities abounded. In a culture where females are pressured to think a face-lift is just a matter of time and slimness is non-negotiable, she was an attractive natural with a matronly figure and soft white hair. A champion of literacy […]
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