Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 24, 2008 For the last nine days, Hispanic Catholics in our diocese and across the country have been celebrating “las posadas.” This is an annual novena, begun in Mexico and now observed throughout...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 24, 2008 One of my Christmas traditions as a teenager, in a parish without a Christmas Midnight Mass, was to turn on NBC at 11:30 pm and watch the time-delay broadcast of the Midnight...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 19, 2008 In 2005 we dedicated an editorial to Illinois Governor Milorad “Rod” Blagojevich after he signed an executive order compelling Illinois pharmacists — against their conscience, religious...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 19, 2008 Last week we encountered the heroism of the 35,000 Japanese martyrs who gave the supreme testimony to Christ between 1597-1639. It may have seemed a strange column to appear in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 12, 2008 There has been much written about the present economic mess of our country, but most of it has been a superficial analysis of the immediate causes rather than a penetrating examination of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 12, 2008 No Catholics of any country have suffered more for their faith in Christ than the Japanese. Now, nearly 400 years after they endured the most systematically brutal persecution in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 5, 2008 The day after Thanksgiving was black not merely out of retailers’ hope for their financial bottom line. It was black because of what happened at 5 am at the Walmart in Valley Steam, New York...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 5, 2008 For four days last week the whole world was united in horror and prayerful concern in response to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. In a series of ten coordinated attacks across India’s...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 5, 2008 Fifteen years ago this Monday, on the Solemnity of Mary’s Immaculate Conception in 1993, I did one of the most consequential things of my life. I was at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 28, 2008 During their annual meeting earlier this month, the Bishops of the United States, even though they had several other items on their agenda, spent much of their time discussing the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 28, 2008 One of the great joys for me during this Year of St. Paul has been the opportunity to preach and teach about this great hero of our faith. I have been able to preach on St. Paul...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 21, 2008 There’s a passage in St. Paul’s Letter to the Church in Philippi in which he calls the attention of the Macedonian Christians to the epicureans among whom they were living. He calls these...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 21, 2008 During this month in which we celebrate all saints, it is fitting of course that we have some Americans to cheer. Last Thursday we celebrated the feast of St. Frances Xavier...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 14, 2008 “Those who would legislate the composition of our families won some disturbing victories on Election Day,” began Sunday’s Editorial in the New Bedford Standard Times. The newspaper lamented...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 14, 2008 On Tuesday we celebrated the feast of one of the most famous and influential saints of the early Church, St. Martin of Tours. His conversion story, charity, reputation for...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 7, 2008 Recently a large international study on Catholics and the Bible found that only three percent of Catholics read the Bible each day. Eighty percent of Catholics confess that the only time they...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 7, 2008 One of the most enjoyable and exhausting pilgrimages of my life began on Christmas night during my first year as a seminarian in Rome. With classmates from Illinois and Oklahoma...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 31, 2008 During the past two months, we have run a series of editorials seeking to inform the consciences of Catholics with regard to our moral duty to defend innocent human life. We have tried to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 31, 2008 Tonight we celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, meant originally to be the vespers of the feast on which we celebrate all the saints in heaven and reflect on the vocation we’ve received...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 24, 2008 We received a not-for-print letter to the editor last week from an Anchor reader who said he has appreciated our series of editorials on the importance of the issue of abortion in the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 24, 2008 Last October 28 in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict presided over the largest beatification in the history of the Church, as 498 Spanish martyrs were raised to the altars. They...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 17, 2008 In the past several months, some prominent Catholics — like Pennsylvania Senator Robert Casey, Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec and Duquesne legal scholar Nicholas Cafardi — have been...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 17, 2008 When I meet with couples preparing for marriage, we always discuss why Christian marriage is a sacrament. The ultimate purpose of every sacrament is to make those who receive it...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 10, 2008 No news story marking yesterday’s 50th anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII failed to include the controversy over his actions with respect to the Holocaust during the Second World War...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 10, 2008 Yesterday the Church marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII, the man chosen by God to lead the Church during one of the most terrible times in human history...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 3, 2008 Two months ago, we marked the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s encyclical that reiterated that every act of love making by spouses needs to be open to the transmission of life and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 3, 2008 On September 28, the Church marked the 30th anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul I, bishop of Rome for a stunningly brief 33 days. In a Church that thinks in centuries, his...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 26, 2008 The bishops of the United States have been vigilant and busy this election cycle not only in responding to false statements about Church teaching on human life and abortion by Catholic...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep September 26, 2008 Tomorrow we celebrate the feast day of a saint whose name is known by almost all Catholics but whose remarkable life is known only by a few. In terms of the sheer amount of good...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 19, 2008 The bishops of the United States are taking a much more public role in forming the consciences of the faithful with regard to the social and personal moral stakes involved in the upcoming...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep September 19, 2008 It is often commented how much our culture needs genuine heroes. These examples of virtue in the midst of ordinary and extraordinary vicissitude lift us up by revealing to us...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 12, 2008 On Valentine’s Day this year, the New Bedford Standard Times ran a front-page article documenting the latest data on teen pregnancy rates in Massachusetts. The article said that in 2006...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep September 12, 2008 When I became a seminarian in 1993, I began to pay much more attention to the Church’s liturgical calendar. I already had a strong devotion to the saints in general, nourished...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 5, 2008 One lie generally leads to others. Unless one admits the first falsity, that person usually needs to tell other fabrications to buttress the initial one. Few are the parents, teachers...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep September 5, 2008 Each morning, as I scan the news on the internet, I copy certain articles into digital folders on my computer, to serve as the raw material for future editorials or, if they...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 29, 2008 For over a century, Americans have celebrated Labor Day on the first Monday in September. This national holiday was established in the 1880s for two reasons: to mark the irreplaceable role of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 29, 2008 The second half of August is a time when students begin returning to college. It’s also a time when those preparing to be priests head to seminary. Most years this exodus of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 22, 2008 The recent disclosure of former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards’ marital infidelity has revealed much about him as a person, but much more about how far many in our culture...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 22, 2008 Yesterday we celebrated the feast of the birth into eternal life of the founder of the Diocese of Fall River, Pope St. Pius X. This saintly shepherd always had special affection...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 15, 2008 Today we celebrate the Assumption of our Lady, body and soul, into heaven. It is a feast on which we celebrate not only the reality of heaven and the passage of our spiritual Mother to the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 15, 2008 During my seminary years in Rome, when we needed a vacation but didn’t have much money to spend, we would generally head to Belgium. It was pretty easy to find a cheap, direct...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 8, 2008 On July 20, a group calling itself Roman Catholic Womenpriests conducted the simulation of the Catholic presbyteral ordination rite for three women at a Protestant Church in Boston. Boston was...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 8 2008 Eight years ago, during my last year of studies in Rome, I received an email from a friend with whom I used to work in Washington, DC. “Hi, Father Roger,” Peter wrote, “I just wanted...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 18, 2008 The love of man and woman in marriage was meant from the beginning to be a “sacrament” of the love within the heart of the Blessed Trinity. God created man in his image… “male and female he...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep July 18, 2008 The last time I was in Portugal visiting my friends João and Maria and their seven wonderful kids, Maria took me to visit the ruins of a former Carmelite Church on the promontory...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 11, 2008 In a June 25 interview with the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the Papal Master of Ceremonies Msgr. Guido Marini caught the attention of the Catholic world when he announced that...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep July 11, 2008 Back in 1994, as he was preparing the Church to put out into the deep for the third Christian millennium, Pope John Paul II wrote that “there is a need to foster the recognition of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 3, 2008 When President Bush addressed Pope Benedict XVI on the White House Lawn in April, he invited the Holy Father to give all Americans a catechesis on the true meaning of freedom. “In a world where...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep July 4, 2008 Sports are meant to play a larger role in human life than wins and losses. At every level — from youth leagues, to high school and NCAA programs, to professional sports — athletic...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 27, 2008 Tomorrow night, at the basilica built outside Rome’s ancient walls over the tomb of the Apostle to the Gentiles, Pope Benedict will inaugurate the much-anticipated Year of St. Paul. Benedict...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 27, 2008 When I arrived in Rome as a seminarian thirteen years ago, I began to spend an inordinate amount of time in and around St. Peter’s Basilica. It was conveniently just down the hill...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 20, 2008 Last Friday, the bishops of the United States overwhelmingly approved a teaching statement entitled, “On Embryonic Stem Cell Research.” In it, the bishops tackle head-on the arguments some make...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 20, 2008 No matter how many times we hear the Lord’s words, “You must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Mt 24:44), they seem always to catch us off guard...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 13, 2008 The great 20th century Christian apologist C.S. Lewis wrote that there are really only two types of people in the world, “those who say to God ‘thy will be done’ and those to whom God says ‘thy...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 13, 2008 The Church celebrates today one of the most popular saints of all time. Portuguese and Italians love him so much that both claim him as their own. The former call him St. Anthony of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 6, 2008 After the Supreme Court in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision judicially legalized abortion throughout the country, a few famous Catholic politicians sought to separate their faith from their life...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 6, 2008 June is traditionally the month dedicated to Jesus’ Sacred Heart. It’s always struck me as noteworthy that we don’t have a feast of Jesus’ sacred brain, even though Jesus is...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 30, 2008 On May 12, by a 4-3 margin, the California Supreme Court found a right to same-sex marriage in the California Constitution that all previous courts, back to the writing of the Constitution, had...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 30, 2008 Over the past 40 years, since Rolf Hochbuth, a communist, wrote his fictional 1963 play The Deputy in order to undermine Church authority with the calumny that Pope Pius XII was a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 23, 2008 The Church is preparing to celebrate on Sunday the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord. The Sequence for this feast, the Lauda Sion Salvatorem — written by St. Thomas Aquinas in 1264 at...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 23, 2008 I’m writing from Italy where I’m the chaplain for a pilgrimage of American consecrated virgins who, after their international congress in Rome last week, have launched out with me on...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 16, 2008 A recent Marist college poll of Americans’ reactions to Pope Benedict’s visit revealed that by a wide margin the “most meaningful” part of the papal pilgrimage was not the huge Masses at...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 16, 2008 On Sunday we celebrated Mother’s Day. It was a day for all of us to remember the inestimable gift of our mothers and of the importance of motherhood in a culture in which it so...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 9, 2008 Faithful Catholics in America and abroad have long had concerns about the United Nations. Unlike with secular criticism of the institution, these apprehensions do not center fundamentally on the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 9, 2008 Today we finish the series on the Vatican Scavi. I began the series five weeks ago, as we were waiting for the arrival of Pope Benedict, in order to buttress the faith of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 2, 2008 Pope Benedict came to the United States not merely to speak with Catholics and call them to a new Pentecost. He came to speak to all Americans: to remind us who we are, what our particular...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 2, 2008 Last week we described the elation of the excavators when they found the prince of the apostle’s tomb underneath the main altar of St. Peter’s basilica in 1941, a victory monument...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 25, 2008 During his apostolic pilgrimage, Pope Benedict, conveyed repeatedly that in celebrating the “bicentennial of a watershed in the history of the Church in the United States, its first great...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 25, 2008 In the last two columns, we focused on Peter’s death — crucified upside down in the Circus of Caligula and Nero— and on his burial a short distance from the Circus on the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 18, 2008 At the end of his Regina Caeli address on Sunday, Pope Benedict summarized the purpose of his trip to the United States which is now underway. “This Tuesday,” he said, “I leave Rome for my...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 18, 2008 After St. Peter died upside down on a cross in the Circus of Caligula and Nero, the surviving Christians obtained his body and buried him quickly nearby, on the steeply sloping...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 11, 2008 In anticipation of his apostolic pilgrimage to the United States next week, Pope Benedict on Tuesday recorded a video message to the American people. It sums up what he hopes to accomplish on...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 11, 2008 Besides the celebration of the sacraments, the greatest privilege of my life has been to be a guide to the Vatican Scavi, the Italian name for the excavations underneath St. Peter’s...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 4, 2008 In September 2006, Pope Benedict gave a speech on the mutual dependence of faith and reason to university professors at the University of Regensburg. One of the conclusions that flow from the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 4, 2008 Yesterday, I had the joy — while leading a pilgrimage of journalists and authors to Italy — of visiting Assisi and celebrating Mass at the tomb of one of the greatest and most...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 28, 2008 Holy Week turned out to be a very good week on Beacon Hill. Legislators in the Joint Judiciary Committee effectively killed several bills that would have created even more chaos with regard to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 28, 2008 Though in our lifetimes, probably all of us have gotten to know some very holy priests, no native born American priest has ever been formally declared a saint. Moreover, in the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 21, 2008 Today we solemnly mark the day on which the Lamb of God was slain to take away the sins of the world. It is a day on which we see, in the mutilated body of Christ on the Cross, the real...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 21, 2008 There are many saints fittingly associated with Good Friday: the Blessed Mother, the apostle John, Mary Magdalene, Simon of Cyrene, and Veronica. All of them, in one way or another...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 14, 2008 Each year during the Easter Vigil, which we will celebrate eight days from now, about 150,000 American adults enter the Church through the waters of baptism. Or at least they think they do. In...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 14, 2008 Because Holy Week is so important that it liturgically trumps every other feast, it’s led to some changes in the Church’s liturgical calendar this year. The solemnity of St. Joseph...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 7, 2008 The headlines in newspapers and on television news channels last Tuesday were quite alarming: “Catholic tradition fading in the U.S,” “Catholic Church Losing Grip on Faithful,” “One in ten...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 7, 2008 We are two weeks from Good Friday, when we are called to stand at the foot of the Cross and behold Christ’s excruciating pain and the love for us that made such enormous pain...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 29, 2008 In a highly provocative op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post, Joe Feuerherd asks whether his vote for Barack Obama in the Maryland Democratic primary may seal his damnation. A veteran...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 29, 2008 The Lord worked many miracles of healing in the Gospel. He did them as a response to faith and in order to buttress others’ faith in him, in his words, and in his saving deeds...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 22, 2008 “The art and the gallery’s decision to show it need no defense.” So declared a haughty Valentine’s Day editorial entitled, ‘X hits the spot,” in the New Bedford Standard Times. Despite its...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 22, 2008 Every other November, on Tuesday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, daily Mass goers hear one of the most dramatic and inspiring passages of the entire Bible. It contains...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 15, 2008 After Pope Benedict last July authorized and facilitated far more liberal use of the 1962 Roman Missal for the celebration of Mass, some vocal Jewish leaders began to clamor for a change in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 15, 2008 We focused last week on the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the apparitions of Our Lady in Lourdes, France, which the Church celebrated on February 11. We considered the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 8, 2008 In his Lenten Message this year, Pope Benedict has written on the nature and the Christian imperative of almsgiving. “According to the Gospel,” he stressed, “almsgiving is not mere...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 8, 2008 As we begin the season of Lent, God gives us a special feast day on Monday to orient us. It is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the apparitions of our Lady to St...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 1, 2008 In a December interview with Time magazine, novelist Stephen King sought to persuade the magazine to name Lindsay Lohan or Brittney Spears its 2007 Person of the Year. The reporter, at first...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 1, 2008 Today is the end of Catholic Schools Week and our thoughts are naturally still with our young people, not just those who attend our parochial or diocesan schools, but the vastly...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 25, 2008 Over the course of his 80 years, Pope Benedict has justly earned the reputation as a theological genius and master pedagogue, but few would characterize him as particularly adept in public...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 25, 2008 As I began last Wednesday to pore through hundred of submissions for the annual Catholic Schools Week essay contest, it was easy to anticipate how many of the diocese’s top first...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 18, 2008 Today the Church begins the annual Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity. This year’s eight days of joint prayer among Christians is particularly special because it marks the centenary of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 18, 2008 Every year, within the heart of the Octave of Prayer for Church Unity, we celebrate on January 24 the feast of St. Francis de Sales. This is most fitting, because I think more...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 11, 2008 Next week, the Church in the United States marks National Vocation Awareness Week. It is meant to be a period of intense prayer to the Lord of the harvest to send laborers to gather his...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 11, 2008 The vast majority of priests and religious say that the nourishment of their divine vocations began at home. It was in the domestic Church that they first learned about God — who...