Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 28, 2007 This time at the end of one civil year and the beginning of another has always been a time for reflection and resolution. The ancient Romans used to turn at this time to the two-faced god...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 28, 2007 St. John, whose feast day the Church celebrated yesterday, is clearly one of the great figures of the history of Christianity. This “Son of Thunder” was one of the three singled...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 21, 2007 One of the principal goals of the Advent season is to prepare us to embrace the Lord when and as he comes. It is not enough for us merely to await the Messiah’s arrival; we must accept him...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 21, 2007 The most extensive Advent preparation of all was done, not by John the Baptist, not by Mary, not even by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Zephaniah and the other famous Advent prophets...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 14, 2007 In his encyclical Spe Salvi, which we printed in last week’s edition, Pope Benedict wrote that for a Christian, the “good news” is not meant to be merely “informative” but “performative.” It...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 14, 2007 One of the most rewarding years of my life was spent in Toronto at St. Philip’s Seminary. Thanks to the strict discipline of the seminary, its academic rigor and a brutally long...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 7, 2007 On November 30, Pope Benedict published his second encyclical letter, Spe Salvi, which means “Saved in Hope.” He addressed the letter not just to a select few Catholics across the globe, but...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 7, 2007 God has always called unlikely candidates to great missions. Abraham was too old to be a dad and David and Jeremiah too young to be heroes. Moses and St. Paul both had speech...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 30, 2007 This Sunday we celebrated that Christ is king of the universe, a truth that Christians now recognize and everyone will acknowledge one day. This reality, however, has more than...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 30, 2007 The season of Advent that begins this weekend focuses on the great encounter each of us is called to have with the Lord. The Lord is coming — that’s what Advent literally means —...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 23, 2007 At their annual meeting last week in Baltimore, the bishops of the United States received the preliminary findings of an independent, in-depth study by the John Jay College of Criminal...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 23, 2007 The Solemnity of Christ the King, which is celebrate on Sunday, is a relatively young feast. Pope Pius XI instituted it in 1925 at the request of bishops and faithful from around...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 16, 2007 On November 2, Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey signed a bill forcing pharmacists in his state to fill prescriptions even if doing so violates their moral beliefs and contravenes their...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 16, 2007 On Tuesday, we celebrated the feast of the first American canonized saint. Born in 1850 near the Italian city of Lodi, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini had a hunger for holiness from...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 9, 2007 Many today in the Church are grappling with the consequences of a massive paradigm shift in the relationship between faith and society and between churches and government. In many parts of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 9, 2007 During the Jubilee Year of our Redemption in Rome during the year 2000, every time there was a morning event with Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square, St. Peter’s Basilica...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 2, 2007 The largest beatification in the history of the Church was held on Sunday in the Vatican, when 498 Spanish martyrs were raised to the altars. They were all killed in hatred of the Catholic...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 2, 2007 After every scandal in the history of the Church, God has raised up great saints to bring his Church back to holiness. These saints are the ones who show the true face of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 26, 2007 Last week, the state of Maine made national headlines when the Portland School Committee voted to make prescription contraceptives available to middle school students without parental...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 26, 2007 October 28 is the feast day of Saint Jude, commonly known and invoked as the patron saint of hopeless causes. He remains one of the most popular of saints, probably because...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 19, 2007 At the beginning of October in Connecticut, a new law went into effect that illustrates once again that “pro-choice” politicians and proponents will stop at nothing to force their immorality...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 19, 2007 This Sunday the Church celebrates World Missionary Sunday. When thinking about the missions, most of us think about far away lands, but the history of the first evangelization of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 12, 2007 There is much being made, both inside and outside the Church, about President Bush’s October 3 veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP, pronounced S-Chip) and the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 12, 2007 Next Wednesday the Church celebrates the feast of one of the most heroic, influential and important saints of all time, St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in Rome in the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 5, 2007 During his trip to Austria last month, Pope Benedict XVI made a visit to Heiligenkreuz Abbey, the ancient Cistercian monastery that for two centuries has also had a famous school of theology...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 5, 2007 The editorial on the left of this page focuses on Pope Benedict’s recent description of the inadequacy of a cold scientific study of God and the truths of the faith. God should...
Becoming a Real Man of God Father Roger Landry 2007 Father Roger Landry was asked by the Knights of Columbus to write this booklet for men. It is part of the Knights of Columbus’s Veritas Series “Proclaiming the Faith in the Third Millennium.” The...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 28, 2007 Governor Deval Patrick’s September 17 announcement to seek to license three Resort Style Casinos in the Commonwealth, including one here in southeastern Massachusetts, is a unwise wager...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Duc in Altum September 28, 2007 On Monday the Church celebrates one of the most lovable, and paradoxical, of saints: a doctor of the Church who did not receive even a high school education; the co-patroness of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 21, 2007 Sports will either be a school of virtue or a school of vice, and that’s why the epidemic of cheating in professional sports is, and ought to be, a huge cultural concern. Sports, at every...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Duc in Altum September 21, 2007 Of all recent saints, the one who has inspired the most devotion is Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, the 39th anniversary of whose birth into eternity the Church marks on September 23. One...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 14, 2007 Labor Day has passed and, as predicted, the political season has begun to heat up both locally and nationally. On the basis of recent elections in which faith-inspired and values-based...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Out Into the Deep The Anchor September 14, 2007 This Sunday, September 16, marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyên Van Thuân, the heroic Archbishop of Saigon who for the Gospel spent 13...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA Twenty-Third Sunday in OT, Year C September 9, 2007 Wis 9:13-18; Philemon 9-10,12-17; Lk 14:25-33 1) In the first reading, the Book of Wisdom queries, “For who can learn the counsel of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 7, 2007 The recent frenzy about the significance of Blessed Mother Teresa’s dark night of the soul revealed far more than the inner workings of her interior life. It also revealed a profound bias in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Out Into the Deep The Anchor September 7, 2007 The impact that the saints in heaven are supposed to have on us still on the pilgrimage of life is concisely summarized in the Preface for Holy Men and Women which the priest...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 31, 2007 The most notorious violations of human rights often occur by those who purport to uphold human rights. The way they try to get away with these crimes is arbitrarily to classify the human...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Out Into the Deep The Anchor August 31, 2007 St. Peter’s conversion came when, at Jesus’ word and against all piscatorial wisdom about catching fish in shallow water during darkness, he cast his nets out into deep water...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 24, 2007 Last week, we focused on how the action or inaction of Catholic adults in our country over the next couple of years will likely greatly determine the path of American society for...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Out Into the Deep The Anchor August 24, 2007 Even though God created marriage and family to be an earthly image of the loving communion of persons who is the Blessed Trinity, many families do not bear even the slightest...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 10, 2007 In every generation, Jesus has called on his disciples to transform society. He wants his followers to be the “light of the world” and communicate to those around them the truth about God and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Out Into the Deep The Anchor August 17, 2007 A prophetic summary of the heroic life and death of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, whose feast day we celebrated on Tuesday, happened when he was a young boy growing up near Lodz...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA Nineteenth Sunday in OT, Year C August 12, 2007 Wis 18:6-9; Heb 11:1-2, 8-19; Lk 12:32-48 1) Once in St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus asked aloud the harrowing question, “When the Son of Man...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 10, 2007 Sin always brings with it the need for expiation. And expiation is never easy. The $660 million settlement the Archdiocese of Los Angeles made with 500 victims of clergy sexual abuse on...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Out Into the Deep The Anchor August 10, 2007 Yesterday the Church celebrated the memorial of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a thoroughly modern saint with one of the most compelling personal stories of recent times. Born...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 3, 2007 On July 10, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a short “Response to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church.” As the news story on...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Out Into the Deep The Anchor August 3, 2007 To put out into the deep is simply to go for it. That’s what Jesus was telling Peter when he told him to throw his nets out for a catch. That’s what Pope John Paul II was urging...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 13, 2007 Throughout the first two years of his pontificate, Benedict XVI has dedicated himself to implementing the authentic spirit of the Second Vatican Council in the life of the Church. He was a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 6, 2007 Last Thursday, Pope Benedict declared the Year of St. Paul. Two days later, he took a page from the evangelical method of the famous apostle of Tarsus. Just as St. Paul used to write letters to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 29, 2007 Last night, at the basilica built outside Rome’s ancient walls over the place where the Apostle to the Gentiles was buried, Pope Benedict declared and inaugurated a Year of St. Paul. Benedict...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA Birth of St. John the Baptist June 24, 2007 (Vigil) Jer 1:4-10; 1Pt 1:8-12; Lk 1:5-17; (Day) Is 49:1-6; Acts 13:22-26; Lk 1:57-66 1) Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Birth of St...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 22, 2007 Today is the feast of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, two English martyrs who went to their death in 1535 in defense of the truth about marriage. Their example provides a fitting backdrop...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 15, 2007 In our modern political culture, spin-doctoring has become a valued skill if not a pseudo-virtue. On some occasions, spinning the truth involves nothing more than exclusively stressing the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 8, 2007 In his March apostolic exhortation, Pope Benedict referred to the Eucharist as the “sacrament of love,” and called Christians to believe in, celebrate and live this sacrament. The feast of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 1, 2007 Astride the accolades and joy that came from Pope Benedict’s recent apostolic pilgrimage to Brazil, there were two sets of controversies. The first came from some indigenous groups, who assailed...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 1, 2007 The second controversy — which raised eyebrows and ire in North America and Europe — was about economic systems and the political policies and culture that support them. After Benedict...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Homily of the Week for Trinity Sunday June 1, 2007 Today we celebrate the feast of who God is. Every Sunday is, in a very real sense, dedicated to God and therefore every Sunday really is Trinity Sunday. Since the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 25, 2007 One of Pope Benedict’s principal goals on his recent trip to Brazil was to help the bishops of Latin America examine and reverse a recent exodus of Catholics to Evangelical or Pentecostal...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 18, 2007 Prior to Benedict XVI’s arrival in Brazil, there was much speculation about how he would address some burning issues for the Church in Brazil and throughout Latin America. These are the issues...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 11, 2007 For more than two thousand years, beginning 400 years before Christ with Aristotle, munificence was listed among the virtues. Perhaps the greatest indication that the virtue of munificence has...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 4, 2007 It is almost unheard of that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, especially during times of pressing budgetary concerns, would turn down free money. Yet that is precisely what Governor Deval...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 27, 2007 On Monday of last week, our whole nation seemed to stop, utterly speechless and sickened by murderous rampage at Virginia Tech. The hearts of at least 26,000 sets of parents raced in agony, and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 20, 2007 Over the past few weeks, as Christians were focused on the events of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Governor Patrick’s attention was on other things. Right before Holy...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 20, 2007 On Monday, Pope Benedict celebrated the eightieth anniversary of his birth and baptism with the publication of a book on the love of his life. Entitled Jesus of Nazareth, the work, he writes...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 13, 2007 This week we celebrate with great joy the fiftieth anniversary of The Anchor. Since April 11, 1957, this newspaper has been a welcome weekly visitor to the homes of tens of thousands of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 6, 2007 The great task of the spiritual life, one saint of the early Church was accustomed to say, is to “un-forget.” Like the Jews in the desert, who were prone to forget both the great miracles by...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 30, 2007 After Pope Benedict published his exhortation “The Sacrament of Love” two weeks ago, one of the major newspapers within the Diocese wrote a provocative editorial focusing on one of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year C March 25, 2007 Is 43:16-21; Philippians 3:8-12; Jn 8:1-11 1) Last week, Jesus preached to us the parable of the Prodigal Son, which stressed the Father’s undying love for his wayward child, the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 23, 2007 Arguments against the resurrection of Jesus, like James Cameron tried to advance in his Discovery Channel pseudo-documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, are nothing new. They started, in fact...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Mass of Thanksgiving for the World Youth Alliance St. Vincent Ferrer Church, New York City March 23, 2007 Gen 1:26-31; Lk 1:46-55; James 1:17-26; Jn 4:34-38 1) Throughout history, God has chosen young people for great tasks. The...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 16, 2007 After God had liberated the Jews from Pharoah’s clutches, he reminded them repeatedly, “Remember, O Israel, that you were once slaves in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Third Sunday of Lent, Year C March 11, 2007 Ex 3:1-8,13-15; 1Cor 10:1-6,10-12; Lk 13:1-9 1) Lent is the time for us to realize that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. It is the time to heed Jesus’ call to “turn away from...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 9, 2007 It has become a recurring pattern that every Lent and Easter season, as Christians mark the most sacred moments of their faith, they receive a full frontal attack on their beliefs by publicity...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Second Sunday of Lent, Year C March 4, 2007 Gen 15:5-12,17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Lk 9:28-36 1) Every year on the second Sunday of Lent the Church gives us two great gifts in the readings. The first is the figure of Abraham...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 2, 2007 When the federal Department of the Interior on February 15 declared the 1,461 members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe worthy of federal recognition as a sovereign Indian nation, it reignited a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA First Sunday of Lent, Year C February 25, 2007 Dt 26:4-10;Rom 10:8-13;Lk 4:1-13 1) The episode in today’s Gospel is particularly special, because the only way the evangelists would...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 23, 2007 Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the publication of Donum Vitae, the Church’s highest level foray into modern bioethical issues at the beginning of life. Written by the Vatican’s...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C February 18, 2007 1Sam 26:2,7-9,12-13,22-23; 1Cor 15:45-59; Lk 6:27-38 1) Today Jesus continues the very clear and challenging homily he began...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 16, 2007 On Wednesdays, Catholics throughout our diocese will form lengthy lines to receive ashes on their foreheads along with an instruction. The instruction can take one of two forms, each of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C February 11, 2007 Jer 17:5-8; 1Cor 15:12,16-20;Lk 6:17,20-26 1) There is a huge contrast in today’s readings. In the first reading, the prophet...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 9, 2007 This Sunday is World Marriage Day. This celebration began in 1981 in Baton Rouge, when married couples encouraged the mayor, governor and bishop to proclaim St. Valentine’s Day as “We Believe...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C February 4, 2007 Is 6:1-8; 1Cor 15:1-11; Lk 5:1-11 1) At the beginning of the third Christian millennium, Pope John Paul II wrote a beautiful...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 2, 2007 On Sunday, Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan, one of the most scandalous figures in the history of U.S. Catholicism, died. He was 86. His obituaries focused on the fact that he was the first Catholic...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C January 28, 2007 Jer 1:4-5,17-19; 1Cor 12:31-13:13; Lk 4:21-30 1) Today we mark the beginning of Catholic Schools Week and we focus in a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 26, 2007 The celebration of Catholic Schools Week causes us to reflect on the blessing of a Catholic education and why it is worth the many sacrifices — from parents, teachers, parish communities, and...
The Certainty of the Teachings We Have Received, Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (C), January 21, 2007
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C January 21, 2007 Neh 8:2-4,5-6,8-10; 1Cor 12:12-30; Lk 1:1-4;4:14-21 1) In the passage we have just heard, St. Luke tells us very clearly why the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 19, 2007 Two weeks before Christmas, for ignominious reasons, New Bedford became the center of attention for most in the state and for many across the nation. At 2 o’clock in the morning on December...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C January 14, 2007 Is 62:1-5; 1Cor 12:4-11; Jn 2:1-11 1) Last week we celebrated the epiphany or manifestation of the Lord to all the nations...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 12, 2007 Last week we marked the fifth anniversary of the revelation of the horrible, systematic sexual abuse of minors by Fr. John Geoghan. That started an avalanche of disclosures of abuse...
Fr. Roger J. Landry St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA Epiphany, Year C January 7, 2007 Is 60:1-6; Eph 3:2-3,5-6; Mt 2:1-12 1) Today we celebrate the Lord’s Epiphany, the “manifestation” of his light, glory and presence to all the nations...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor January 5, 2007 On November 9th, after 109 legislators voted to recess the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention until January 2nd, supporters of same-sex marriage gloated that they had effectively killed...