Fr. Roger J. Landry National Catholic Register Print Edition December 30, 2022 When I first became a Diocesan newspaper editor, I had the pious, albeit mischievous, desire to have big front-page article with the thick bolded headline, “Jesus Christ...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor January 26, 2018 I am happy and humbled that on February 1, Pauline Books and Media will publish a new book I’ve written entitled Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor June 5, 2015 As we prepare to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi on Sunday, it’s a good time to turn to something that ought to be part of a Catholic’s Plan of Life each week: a Holy Hour in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting into the Deep May 24, 2013 Pope Francis was elected in order to bring about the reform of the Church. As we’ve described in previous columns, however, he is not limiting himself to fixing what needs to be fixed...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep May 17, 2013 The Church is now in the midst of the great annual novena praying for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit this Sunday on Pentecost. It’s become my favorite time of the Liturgical...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep May 10, 2013 During my years at the helm of The Anchor, I always had the half-mischievous, half-evangelical desire to put on the front page above the fold a headline with the biggest font in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep May 03, 2013 Wednesday was the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, instituted by Pope Pius XII to give a Christian response to the communist May Day celebrations. Every year it focuses the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep April 26, 2013 In the 11 days since the Patriots’ Day marathon bombings, the motto “Boston Strong” has become more than words put on professional sports jerseys and blue and yellow ribbons but...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep April 19, 2013 Every Easter Week since 2005 I’ve been organizing a Seminar for Priests at the beautiful Arnold Hall Conference and Retreat Center in Pembroke. It’s a great opportunity for...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep April 12, 2013 2013, Column, Putting into the Deep, The Anchor Both before and after the election of Pope Francis, there has been much talk about the reform of the Vatican. Francis gave some...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep April 05, 2013 On Sunday, Pope Francis in his Easter greeting before his solemn blessing for the city and the world (Urbi et Orbi), said that greatest Easter wish would be for “every heart” to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep March 29, 2013 One of the most fascinating aspects of the biography of our Pope Francis is when and how he discovered his priestly vocation. It’s a mystery worth pondering deeply on this Good...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep March 22, 2013 Most of us in Rome to cover the papal conclave and inauguration are still getting over the shock at Pope Francis’ election. We thought that it was certainly possible, if the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep March 15, 2013 I was really honored when Raymond Arroyo of EWTN asked me to come to Rome to do television commentary for the papal conclave. The week since I’ve arrived has been one of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep March 08, 2013 Just before the Year of Faith began, Benedict XVI, through his Apostolic Penitentiary in the Vatican, published a list of plenary indulgences that Catholics could receive...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep March 01, 2013 In his letter announcing the Year of Faith, Benedict XVI stressed that Catholics need to recover the sense that faith is a pilgrimage. To enter into the life of faith “is to set...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep February 22, 2013 Back in 2008, Pope Benedict said that Lent is “like a great spiritual retreat lasting 40 days.” That’s why last Sunday we heard of the principal inspiration for this holy...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep February 15, 2013 In 2010, in the book-length interview “Light of the World,” Pope Benedict told Peter Seewald, “If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep February 08, 2013 It’s five days from the beginning of the holy season of Lent and time for us to be formulating our Lenten resolutions in conversation with God in prayer. During this Year of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep February 01, 2013 Back in December, I had dinner with a great Catholic couple who took me and four priest friends to Fernando’s in New Bedford in anticipation of Christmas. During the course...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep January 25, 2013 Other than those of Czech origin, few Catholics know the moving story of St. John Nepomuc. He was a virtuous and brilliant young priest who, in addition to serving as vicar...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep January 18, 2013 Every year is meant to be a “year of the Lord” (anno Domini). Since 2013 takes place during the Year of Faith, however, all of us are called to make a special effort to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep January 11, 2013 Right after Thanksgiving, the Diocese of Fall River hosted Carolyn Woo, the director of Catholic Relief Services, for a powerful talk at St. Julie Billiart Parish in North...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep December 21, 2012 On Tuesday we will mark one of the greatest scandals in history: there was no room in the inn. Not only did people turn their back on a woman about to give birth, but...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep December 14, 2012 During the Advent season we’ve become somewhat accustomed to hearing jeremiads against the commercialization of the season, from clergy, faithful and even those who long ago...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep December 07, 2012 The day before Thanksgiving was a rare treat when I had no afternoon or evening appointments. I decided to download to my iPad Pope Benedict’s third and final volume of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep November 30, 2012 Today we finish November, the month in which the Church annually reflects on the last things of death, judgment, Heaven and hell. Last week I mentioned that this meditation...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep November 23, 2012 During the month of November, which begins with All Saints’ Day and the Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed, Catholics are called to meditate on the last things...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep November 16, 2012 I’ve been a sports fan all my life and have witnessed some amazing comebacks, but few compare to the incredible recovery that was made with regard to Ballot Item 2...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep November 09, 2012 It’s not often, especially for us in the United States with our relatively brief history, that we have a chance to celebrate a 1,700th anniversary. When we look back...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep November 02, 2012 A month ago I received an email from a young woman from our diocese who is studying in Ohio. She was asking advice about whether she should register to vote in Ohio or get an...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep October 26, 2012 St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great early Fathers of the Church, said that, morally, we are our own parents. By our actions, by the choices we make in response to the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep October 19, 2012 Once a lawyer, to test Jesus, asked Him what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responded by asking the man first to give his own opinion of what was written in God’s...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep October 12, 2012 Yesterday, the Church began the Year of Faith. The context of this holy year is rather clear: It began four days into the Synod on the New Evangelization and the Transmission...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep October 05, 2012 The Year of Faith announced begins next Thursday. It has no official theme, but I think the best one would be, “Lord, increase our faith” (Lk 17:5), the plea the Apostles made...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep September 28, 2012 Two weeks ago, Fordham University brought together three very funny Catholics for a conversation on humor and joy in the spiritual life: Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep September 21, 2012 When I was in Lourdes earlier this month, I went early in the morning to pray at the Grotto where Mary appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858. I had with me a biography of St...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep September 14, 2012 At the beginning of September I went to Spain to do a retreat and a continuing formation course for priests in the Pyrenees. In addition to a lot of time for prayer...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep September 7, 2012 In the days leading up to Republican Convention, there were various television specials and articles about Mormonism, since Mitt Romney is the first Mormon ever to be...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep August 31, 2012 Last week, we considered Buffalo Bishop Richard Malone’s thoughts on martyrdom in the New Evangelization and we distinguished between what Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen used to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep August 24, 2012 On August 10, Bishop Richard Malone was installed as the new shepherd of the Diocese of Buffalo. I’ve known Bishop Malone for more than 20 years, from the time he was chaplain...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep August 17, 2012 Last week I relaunched this column by focusing on the future Pope Benedict’s comment, “The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep August 8, 2012 In his pastoral plan for the Third Christian Millennium, Blessed John Paul II denominated “Put into the Deep” as the motto for the Church for the next thousand years. Like St...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 22, 2012 One of the lessons Blessed John Paul II brought with him from Poland to the papacy was the importance of opportunities to give the entire Church and the wider society the time to pray about...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 15, 2012 There’s a famous Latin aphorism corruptio optimi pessima, “The corruption of the best is the worst of all.” This is true not only because falls from grace are more severe the higher the position...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 08, 2012 On May 21, 43 Catholic institutions— dioceses, hospitals and health care chains, universities, elementary and high schools, Catholic Charities offices, peace centers, newspapers and cemetery...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 01, 2012 This Sunday the Church celebrates in a special way the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Jesus during the Last Supper prayed repeatedly to the Father for the Church He was founding, that the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 25, 2012 Prior to last Tuesday, the beautiful town of Acushnet was known mainly to residents of the south coast of Massachusetts. Most in other parts of the Commonwealth — not to mention outside its...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 18, 2012 Last Wednesday, President Barack Obama surprised no one when he announced — contrary to repeated affirmations during his 2004 senate and 2008 presidential campaigns that Marriage is the union of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 11, 2012 The recent controversy over the decision of Anna Maria College to rescind its invitation to Victoria Reggie Kennedy to give its May 19 commencement address and receive an honorary degree concerns...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 4, 2012 If one were to take seriously articles and columns in various news outlets, it would appear that a group of wicked misogynists in the Vatican are waging all-out war on religious women in the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 27, 2012 This weekend, on Good Shepherd Sunday, the Church will convene in parishes across the globe to carry out the Good Shepherd’s imperative to beg the Father for good shepherds to continue the work...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 20, 2012 Last Thursday, the U.S. Bishops’ Ad-Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty published a powerful statement on religious liberty in which they gave an “urgent summons” to Catholics and all Americans...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 13, 2012 During his customary press conference on “Shepherd One” with journalists traveling with him on the plane to Mexico, Pope Benedict was asked about the Church’s response to widespread...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 6, 2012 During his Palm Sunday homily, with his characteristic candor, comprehension, clarity, and courage, Pope Benedict led the Church to the Heart not only of Holy Week but also of the Christian...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 30, 2012 As we prepare for Palm Sunday and, in just over a week, Easter, it’s a time when many of the three-quarters of American Catholics who do not attend Mass weekly return to worship. These “Cape”—...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 23, 2012 On March 9, Pope Benedict gave the third of what should be five addresses on the challenges to the faith in our country to visiting American bishops making their quinquennial ad limina visits...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 16, 2012 Last week we began our examination of what we’ve been learning as a result of the Obama Administration’s decision to force objecting religious institutions, one way or the other, to pay for...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 9, 2012 It’s a new day for the Catholic Church — and for truly religious believers in general — in the United States. While the Church in the U.S. experienced discrimination in the past — most notably...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 3, 2012 Lent is a time for growth in faith. It begins with our being marked with ashes and instructed to turn our backs on sin so that we may be faithful to the Gospel. There is for sure a need for us...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 24, 2012 In his letter for Lent, Pope Benedict XVI sought to spur all Catholics to the “very heart of Christian life: charity.” Even though on extraordinary occasions like the natural disasters in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 17, 2012 After three weeks of unrelenting outrage from all corners about the Department of Health and Human Services’ trampling of religious freedom in its January 20 mandate for free contraception...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 10, 2012 In last week’s editorial on defending our religious freedom in the midst of new attacks by the Obama Administration — the focus of Bishop George Coleman’s letter to the faithful of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 3, 2012 On Apr. 16, 2008, when he appeared with President George W. Bush on the White House lawn, Pope Benedict XVI extolled America’s role as a beacon of freedom in world history and in the world...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 27, 2012 Next week is Catholic Schools Week throughout the Church in the United States, which is a time to focus on the importance of Catholic schools in the life and mission of the Church. It’s also...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 20, 2012 On Sunday, we mark the 39th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that with its companion Doe v. Bolton made abortion legal in the United States for all nine months of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 13, 2012 Today is the fifth and last day of Vocations Awareness Week in the Catholic Church in the United States. This observance began in 1976 in order to help the whole people of God recognize that...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 6, 2012 Ten years ago today, the Boston Globe published an article on the serial child abuse committed by Father John Geoghan, the suffering of his victims and their families, and the totally...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 23, 2011 Today is the last day of the traditional posadas. Celebrated in various Hispanic communities in the Diocese of Fall River, but particularly popular among Latino Catholics in the American...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 16, 2011 Secularism, as Pope Benedict has defined it, is living si Deus non daretur, “as if God were not a given.” For militant secularists, however, it’s not enough for them to live as if God does...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 09, 2011 The bishops of the United States of America are now in the midst of their ad liminavisits to the Vatican. Normally done every five years, these visits not only give the bishops of the world...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 02, 2011 The principle focus of Advent is to prepare us to meet Christ in history, mystery and majesty, to focus on God’s eternal desire for a loving communion with us. We ponder Christ’s first...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 25, 2011 Since the celebration of the Eucharist is not only the “source and summit of the Christian life,” as the Second Vatican Council taught, but also the main point of weekly contact for most...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 18, 2011 Last month Pope Benedict announced a “Year of Faith” to begin next October in order to strengthen the faith of Catholics across the globe in the midst of an increasing secularization. Last...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 11, 2011 At the end of October, Pope Benedict convened religious leaders from most of the world’s religions in Assisi for a day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 04, 2011 Death is the great contemporary phobia. Every November the Church seeks to help the faithful confront and overcome this fear. We begin the month by focusing on Heaven and the saints, which...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 28, 2011 In recent years, the popes have been trying to focus the attention of Catholics throughout the world on certain aspects of the Christian life that on occasion can be taken for granted. Prior...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 21, 2011 Several of the cardinals who elected Pope Benedict said that they had turned to him because he would be the most capable leader to guide the Church in the reevangelization of the supercilious...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October,14, 2011 The United States bishops have long spoken up in defense of religious freedom abroad when Communists, Islamicists, fundamentalist Hindus or militant secularists either in the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 7, 2011 In February, President Obama instructed the Justice Department to stop defending in federal court the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). This act specifies that under federal law marriage is...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 30, 2011 On September 7, Attorney General Martha Coakley certified an initiative petition aimed at legalizing physician-assisted suicide in our state. Dubbed by euthanasia supporters the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 23, 2011 Last week we focused on the Solomonic balance the Church needs to find between caring for those who have suffered child sexual abuse by ministers of the Church, defending other children...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 16, 2011 At the end of August, there was a sad story from Niagara Falls, Canada, that highlighted the vulnerability many priests feel about being falsely accused of sexual abuse. Robert Sammut, 46...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 9, 2011 The events of September 11, 2001 reawakened most Americans — and with us, so many others in the world — to some of the fundamental realities of human existence that in day-to-day life can be...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 2, 2011 Those attending Masses at many of the parishes in the Fall River Diocese this weekend will hear something different: the new and improved English translation of various sung parts of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 26, 2011 Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles is quickly becoming one of the most persistently prophetic voices in the Church of the United States. He is as cheerful, amiable and accessible as any...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 19, 2011 This weekend in Madrid, Pope Benedict will be joined by a million young Catholics and their chaperones to celebrate the 26th World Youth Day. This encounter of the successor of St. Peter and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 12, 2011 On August 1, Kathleen Sebelius, appointed by President Obama to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced that beginning a year from now all new private insurance...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 5, 2011 At their June meeting, the bishops of the United States approved and published a superb statement against Physician-Assisted Suicide entitled, “To Live Each Day with Dignity.” It was a response...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 15, 2011 For the last two weeks, we’ve been examining some of the larger issues that have been raised by the controversy over a Mass at St. Cecilia’s in Boston to welcome those who celebrate gay pride...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 8, 2011 Last week we began a look at the controversy at St. Cecilia’s Church in Boston over the scheduling of a Mass originally advertised to celebrate “gay pride” and then after criticism postponed and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 1, 2011 The ongoing controversy at St. Cecilia’s Church in Boston over the scheduling, postponing and re-theming of a Mass originally planned to celebrate Boston’s gay “pride month” has brought to the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 24, 2011 One of Pope Benedict’s greatest priorities has been to respond to the worsening secularism in western culture that is attempting to rebuild society on atheistic foundations. He has been...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 17, 2011 On Sunday, Catholic Americans will mark two celebrations: Holy Trinity Sunday and Father’s Day. The feast of the Holy Trinity is an occasion on which not only Catholics seek to deepen their...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 10, 2011 The tradition of papal general audiences goes back 140 years to Blessed Pope Pius IX. Up until then, the Popes would regularly grant “private audiences” to individual bishops, priests and...
The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by U.S. Priests, Part II , The Anchor, June 3, 2011
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 3, 2011 Last week we began an analysis of “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010” (see pages 14-15), the 152-page report by a research team...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 27, 2011 Last week we focused on a Circular Letter by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith giving guidance and a one-year deadline to bishops’ conferences around the world to formulate...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 20, 2011 In March 2010, when Pope Benedict penned a pastoral letter to the Church in Ireland in response to the clergy sexual abuse crisis there, he candidly confessed, “No one imagines that this painful...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 13, 2011 The Fourth Sunday of Easter is traditionally called Good Shepherd Sunday because on this day the Church always listens to a passage from St. John’s Gospel in which Jesus identifies himself as the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 6, 2011 “What kind of person pays for a Web site that makes abortion seem cool?,” Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham asked in an April 21 article. “Who would use the Internet to target teen girls with...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 29, 2011 On Sunday, the Catholic world will rejoice as Pope Benedict XVI beatifies his predecessor Pope John Paul II. Six years ago, at John Paul II’s funeral Mass, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 22, 2011 “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pontius Pilate’s question about Jesus’ identity, and Jesus’ response, bring us to the heart of the ongoing drama of Good Friday and the whole Christian life. The...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 15, 2011 The theme of Lent is encapsulated on Ash Wednesday when the words of Christ with which he began his public ministry echo throughout the world as ashes are imposed: “Turn away from sin and be...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 8, 2011 In Paris on March 24 and 25, a remarkable new Church initiative began. Born from the pastoral zeal, Biblical expertise and the university experience of Pope Benedict XVI, it is an attempt to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 1, 2011 Last November, Bishop Sal Cordileone, the youthful and talented bishop of Oakland, California, was appointed to head the U.S. Bishops efforts to defend marriage. While an auxiliary bishop in San...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 25, 2011 On Sunday night, 60 Minutes featured an interview with Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, It was a hard-hitting, but engaging, fair and largely positive portrayal. While certain aspects of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 18, 2011 On Sunday, Pope Benedict reminded all Christians that Lent “is a matter of following Jesus who turns decisively toward the Cross, the culmination of this mission of salvation. If we ask: Why...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 11, 2011 Nearly six years after Pope Benedict’s election, most of us have become accustomed to how rich, clear and evangelically fresh his writings are. He writes with such a depth, scope and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 4, 2011 When President Barack Obama took his oath of office on the Lincoln Bible, he swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 25, 2011 February has been a momentous month in Washington with respect to defending innocent human life from abortion. On the negative side, last Friday President Barack Obama rescinded a 2008...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 18, 2011 On January 9, after baptizing 21 infants in the Sistine Chapel on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Pope Benedict captured international headlines for reminding Catholic parents...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 11, 2011 The celebration of World Marriage Day on Sunday and St. Valentine’s Day on Monday are obvious, fitting occasions to think about the blessings of romantic love and marriage. They’re also...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 4, 2011 The celebration of Catholic Schools Week in the United States is an annual opportunity to reflect on the privilege and purpose of Catholic education. Education is at the heart of the Church’s...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 28, 2011 The 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s shameful Roe v. Wade decision last weekend did not pass unnoticed. On the positive side, hundreds of thousands descended upon Washington to pray...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 21, 2011 Each year on January 24, the feast of the St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists and communication, Pope Benedict publishes his routinely compelling annual message for the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 14, 2011 Last week, in the editorial “When Catholic Hospitals Lose Their Identity and Way,” we focused on Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted’s stripping St. Joseph’s hospital of its Catholic status, after...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 7, 2011 Before Christmas, as the Christian world was preparing to celebrate the birth of the child Jesus, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix had to deal with a Catholic hospital that carried out a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 24, 2010 There is something beautifully symbolic about the tradition of Midnight Mass. It shows that Christians are so eager for Christmas to begin that they want to start celebrating on the first...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 17, 2010 The Advent season focuses our attention on the first, second and daily comings of the Lord Jesus as Savior of the world. At Christmas we turn our attention to the Babe wrapped in swaddling...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 10, 2010 Among the many means bishops have to form their people, one of the greatest teaching tools is the pastoral letter, in which the leader of a local church focuses the attention of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 3, 2010 On November 16, at the U.S. Bishops’ Conference’s annual meeting, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago gave his final address as president Conference. In it he looked back over his three-year...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 26, 2010 Last weekend, headlines focused on how Pope Benedict was apparently changing the Church’s teachings about the immorality of the use of condoms. The comments, excerpted from a book length...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 19, 2010 Last month we discussed the embarrassing results of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which revealed that atheists and agnostics had a much...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 12, 2010 Halloween proved to be particularly ghastly for Syrian Catholics in Baghdad as they went to Church for the Sunday afternoon Mass. During the Eucharistic Celebration at Our Lady of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 5, 2010 On Sunday, as we were being bombarded with robo-calls, advertisements, television news segments and special programs focused on Tuesday’s elections, a significant commemoration quietly took...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 29, 2010 Several state bishops conferences, including the four Massachusetts bishop who comprise the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, have published letters or guides to the Catholic faithful about...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 22, 2010 The October 13 rescue of the 33 miners trapped for 69 days in a subterranean dungeon of the San Jose mine in Atacama was one of the most moving, exciting and literally uplifting moments the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 15, 2010 In 1949, an enormous controversy was ignited when the Nobel Foundation awarded its Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz for developing the technique of prefrontal...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 8, 2010 The September 28 publication of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life lent itself to various surprising titles, many of which focused on how atheists...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 1, 2010 Last week we examined how Pope Benedict, in his visit to Great Britain, got the “whole country to sit up and think,” to use the appreciative words of Prime Minister David Cameron. He reminded...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 24, 2010 At the end of Pope Benedict’s highly successful four-day apostolic journey and state visit to Great Britain, British Prime Minister David Cameron, on behalf of all British citizens...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 17, 2010 Around the anniversary of September 11, the subject of Islam in America was very much in the news. There has been the on-going controversy surrounding the planned construction of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 10, 2010 What ought to be the response of Catholic believers to the rise of militant secularism in the West that is seeking to exile Christian faith from relevance, cultural history, and the public...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 3, 2010 Over the past several weeks, we have received a half-dozen phone calls, emails and letters about the paid advertisement that we have been running by the Love and Mercy Publications, found...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 27, 2010 There’s a common phenomenon that occurs when a movie is made based on a best-selling book. Those who have never read the book go to the movie and often appreciate the story on its own merits...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 20, 2010 During the summer months, as there has been much higher volume on local roads as people head to cookouts, travel to Cape Cod, drive to the many local beaches, go to summer camps, sporting...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 13, 2010 If pictures are said to be worth a thousand words, political cartoons are often far more visually voluble. In the immediate aftermath of Federal District Judge Vaughan R. Walker’s outrageous...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 6, 2010 On July 15, the Vatican released updated norms to handle what canon law calls “graviora delicta” or the “more serious crimes.” The publication of these new norms was occasioned above all...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 6, 2010 In this mini-series on the truly Catholic response to the scandals, we have looked at the example of saints, for every crisis in the Church is a crisis of saints and the holy ones...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 16, 2010 On June 28, at the Roman basilica built over the human remains of the great apostle St. Paul, Pope Benedict announced that he was founding a new Vatican dicastery, which will be called the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep July 16, 2010 Ten days ago the Church celebrated the feast of St. Maria Goretti, whose Christian response to suffering sexual abuse as a minor is a light not only for those who have endured the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 16, 2010 On June 28, at the Roman basilica built over the human remains of the great apostle St. Paul, Pope Benedict announced that he was founding a new Vatican dicastery, which will be called the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 9, 2010 In gambling, the house always wins. That’s why it is particularly worrisome to see those we have elected to guide us wisely behaving like a desperate gambler in the false belief that casino...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep July 9, 2010 One of the least covered aspects of the clergy sex abuse crisis concerns priests falsely accused. It is hard to put into words what it is like for a man who has dedicated himself to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 2, 2010 Recently the importance of priestly celibacy in the Church has been questioned from different quarters. Some, influenced by implicit Freudian premises, have suggested that priestly celibacy is a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep July 2, 2010 As the whole Church has been confronted with the evil of the sexual abuse of young people in her midst during the past several decades, one of the most frustrating explanations...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 25, 2010 One of the most pressing problems for our nation to solve is illegal immigration. Recent legislation in Arizona has brought the many social, political and moral issues regarding illegal...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep June 25, 2010 The crises that the Church and the world face are “crises of saints.” This insight of St. Josemaria Escriva, the 35th anniversary of whose birth into eternal life the Church...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 18, 2010 Last month, we noted the irony that Mother’s Day fell on the 50th anniversary of FDA’s approval of something that symbolizes the antithesis of motherhood, the birth control pill. This month, as...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep June 18, 2010 Since last June, to mark the Year for Priests, which took place on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth into eternal life of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Year for Priests Vocational Reflection June 11, 2010 I have always believed that the seeds of priestly vocations are revealed not just in a general desire to give one’s life in the service of others — the starting...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 11, 2010 Today the Year for Priests comes to a close. In the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict is offering Mass with several thousand concelebrating priests joined by the prayers and gratitude...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 11, 2010 Approaching his death, St. Paul wrote to his spiritual son, St. Timothy,” I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” Those words could easily sum...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 4, 2010 On behalf of the U.S. Bishops Conference, three leading prelates —Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Center and Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City —...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 4, 2010 “God is always almighty,” the Curé of Ars once told his sister. “He can at all times work miracles and he would work them now as in the days of old were it not that faith is wanting.”...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 28, 2010 The mission of Catholic schools emanates from the mission of the Catholic Church, commissioned by Jesus to “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into the Deep May 28, 2010 In Catholic piety, May is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It’s a fitting time, therefore, to see what we can learn from St. John Vianney’s ardent devotion to the Mother of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 21, 2010 The Solemn Feast of Pentecost, which the Church celebrates on Sunday, is an annual opportunity for authentic ecclesial renewal. This year the need for the Church to beg the Holy Spirit for the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 21, 2010 St. John Vianney’s mission as pastor, as he mentioned the day of his arrival to eight year-old Antoine Givre, was to show the people of Ars the way to heaven. The beginning that...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 14, 2010 On Sunday our nation celebrated Mother’s Day. It’s highly fitting that we stop, at least one day a year, to express our gratitude to and for our mothers, because so often so many children can...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 14, 2010 One of the most memorable events in St. John Vianney’s life occurred the first day he was on the job as pastor. He was near the completion of the 20 mile journey from Écully to Ars...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor First Communion Supplement Feature Article May 7, 2010 The first time a believer receives the flesh and blood of the eternal Son of God in holy Communion ought to be one of the greatest occasions in that person’s life...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 7, 2010 The May 1 Vatican communiqué in response to the Apostolic Visitation of the Legionaries of Christ was a powerful indication of Pope Benedict’s resolve to clean up what he described in his 2005...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 7, 2010 One of the most humbling events in the life of St. John Vianney occurred in May 1845 when Fr. Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, the famous Dominican whose homilies at Paris’ Notre Dame...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 30, 2010 Last week, we examined the Pope’s meeting with Maltese victims of clergy sexual abuse as well as the comments of retired Vatican Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos about the relationship between...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 30, 2010 One of St. John Vianney’s greatest priestly challenges came in the pulpit. He was not naturally eloquent or comfortable in front of crowds. He had not received much of a theological...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 23, 2010 Concentration on the Church’s response to the evil of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy has continued unabated. In the past week, among other headlines, there has been much attention given...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 23, 2010 Last week we focused on the importance of St. John Vianney’s longevity as pastor in Ars. Even though he was a holy, hardworking, amiable, and supremely self-sacrificing pastor, and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 16, 2010 Today is Pope Benedict’s 83rd birthday. The last few weeks have likely seemed for him as long as years, but some semblance of sanity seems to be returning, at least among those who take an...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 16, 2010 Toward the end of St. John Vianney’s life, as pilgrims flocked to Ars from all over France, they would leave marveling not only about having witnessed “God in a man,” as one...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 9, 2010 Lent continues for the Church. The coverage of the Sacred Triduum from the Vatican focused very little on the events of the Lord’s suffering, death and resurrection, but mainly on what Benedict...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 9, 2010 On Monday of Holy Week, the Gospel at daily Mass focused of Mary of Bethany’s anointing Jesus’ feet with oil made from genuine aromatic nard. Judas Iscariot immediately objected to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 2, 2010 Today the whole Church somberly meditates on the Passion of the Lord Jesus. We focus anew on how the chief priests of the temple and others plotted to get him killed: how they put Jesus on a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 2, 2010 The saints are always given to us as models of the Christian life. St. John Vianney is given not merely to priests as a patron and exemplar but to all the faithful as an icon of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 26, 2010 Pope Benedict’s March 19 pastoral letter to the Church of Ireland was an unprecedentedly candid and direct condemnation of the double-evil of the clerical sexual abuse of minors and of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 26, 2010 On Palm Sunday and Good Friday, the whole Church will contemplate in unison the Passion of the Lord Jesus. It is a day on which we seek to grasp the greatest of all paradoxes: how a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 19, 2010 On Monday, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, published a lengthy statement — entitled “The Cost is Too High; The Loss is Too...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 19, 2010 Last week we saw the heroic charity of St. John Vianney, who sought to treat others with the same limitless love with which Christ loves. He was never content to give merely...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 12, 2010 As President Obama and the Democratic leaders of Congress continue to approach the artificial deadline of March 18 to have the House of Representatives pass the Senate version of the Health...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 12, 2010 Because love is the point of human life and the means of holiness, it’s not at all surprising that St. John Vianney excelled in Christ-like charity. The Curé of Ars’ example is a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 5, 2010 Fifty years ago this September, while campaigning for the presidency, John F. Kennedy went to Houston to try to convince the Protestant Ministers of the Great Houston Ministerial Association...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 5, 2010 “I’m a liar. Do you believe me?” That mind-twisting statement, said to me humorously by a high school teacher, is germane to whether we can consider credible anything the devil says...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 26, 2010 The richness, depth and clarity of the homilies and catecheses Pope Benedict has given during his first five years as the successor of St. Peter have provoked several experts in Church...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 26, 2010 Last we described the various vexations by which the devil for over 35 years harassed the patron saint of priests at night as he was trying to get a couple of hours of rest...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 19, 2010 The Catholic Church as a whole has its work cut out to respond adequately to the secularizing push of American culture. In Catholic homes, parishes, schools, religious education programs...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 19, 2010 “The first time the devil came to torment me,” St. John Vianney recounted to catechism students many years later, “was one night at 9 pm, just as I was about to go to bed. Three...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 12, 2010 Ever since the Bush Administration and a cooperative Congress increased funding for abstinence-only education programs, there has been a concerted effort to try to say that such instruction...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 12, 2010 Among those who, prior to this Year for Priests, had heard about the Curé of Ars but did not know much about him, most likely they had heard of two facts: that he was an heroic...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 5, 2010 Last year, for his annual message for World Communications Day, Pope Benedict made a powerful appeal to young Catholics to become the apostles of the new communications frontier produced by...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 5, 2010 Last week, as the Church in the United States was preparing for Catholic Schools Week, we focused on all the sacrifices St. John Vianney made and work he did in Ars to found a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 29, 2010 Scott Brown’s victory over Martha Coakley in the special election for U.S. Senate has not only massive national ramifications but perhaps even more pronounced statewide implications. January...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 29, 2010 Perhaps as a result of his many hardships due to the inadequate education he received as a young boy, St. John Vianney was always a great apostle of the importance of Catholic...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 22, 2010 We have all been watching with tear-filled eyes and pierced hearts the scenes of devastation coming from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. We’re staggered by the estimated death toll of 200,000. Our...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 22, 2010 In the past two weeks, we’ve focused on two of the great challenges St. John Vianney faced in his priestly life. The first came from various lay people in Ars who disparaged...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 15, 2010 When civil governments declare a special year — like last year’s celebrations of the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln — it generally remains on the periphery of most people’s...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 15, 2010 When I was a seminarian, a priest I knew was taking me out to dinner. On the way to the restaurant, we passed a church whose territory bordered the parish where he was pastor...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 8, 2010 On December 9, in the days of preparation for Christmas, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published the results of a survey that suggested that theological confusion may pose a larger...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 8, 2010 One of the most difficult things for any of us to deal with is criticism. It’s hard enough when we’re criticized justly and constructively. When the criticism is unmerited, off...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 24, 2009 Each year the joy of Christmas is contextualized by the remembrance of those whom Christian tradition has called the Holy Innocents, the male infants two years old and younger who were...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 24, 2009 St. John Vianney always loved the major feasts of our faith, but Christmas in particular filled him with extraordinary joy. In the tiny baby Jesus lying in the manger, the Curé...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 18, 2009 Even though President Barack Obama admitted that his accomplishments up until now have been “slight” and that he couldn’t argue with those who would have found others “far more deserving” of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 18, 2009 Because of his work in the confessional, preaching on conversion, heroic life of fasting and little sleep, battles against the devil, and crusades against indecent dancing and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 11, 2009 On the day American Catholics celebrated Thanksgiving, Catholics in Ireland marked what should be called Ash Thursday, the first day of what portends to be a long ecclesial Lent. On November...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 11, 2009 Within this year-long series of articles on St. John Vianney, the 150th of whose birth into eternal life provided the occasion for Pope Benedict to declare the Year for Priests...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial December 4, 2009 Later in this edition, we print in full a remarkable declaration of American Christians— clergy and lay, Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical— that is a brilliant analysis of the ongoing series...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep December 4, 2009 Last week we discussed how demanding St. John Vianney was in requiring a firm purpose of amendment from those who came to him to receive the Sacrament of Penance. For a confession...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 27, 2009 In a November 20 letter to U.S. Senators about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2,074 page health care reform bill, Cardinal Daniel Dinardo, Bishop William Murphy and Bishop John Wester...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 27, 2009 In the last two weeks, we’ve discussed how St. John Vianney would try to help people to make better confessions. He began by teaching them how to examine their consciences more...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 20, 2009 After the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, we argued that among the lessons needing to be learned from the history of the Church’s interaction with “pro-choice” Catholic politicians on...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 20, 2009 Last week, we began to look at how St. John Vianney, once he got his parishioners to return to the Sacrament of Penance, sought to help them get more out of it. His strategy was...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 13, 2009 Two weeks ago New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan captured the attention of Catholics across the country by writing a compelling critique of recent examples of anti-Catholicism in the New York...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 13, 2009 During his fruitful decades as the Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney not only labored to get his people to come to confession but to help them become good and better penitents. In...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial November 6, 2009 We discussed last week the very positive development of Pope Benedict’s decision to establish personal ordinariates for Anglican faithful and clergy seeking full communion with the Catholic...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep November 6, 2009 Last week we examined how St. John Vianney used his pulpit to draw people to God in the confessional. Through his homilies at Mass and his catechetical lessons for kids and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 30, 2009 Pope Benedict’s decision to create a relatively easy and straightforward canonical pathway for Anglicans who share the Catholic faith to enter the Catholic Church is one of the most...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 30, 2009 Last week, we examined one of the reasons why St. John Vianney’s confessional became the most besieged one in the history of the Church: he prayed and sacrificed so much for...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 23, 2009 Last week we mentioned the increasingly firm statements of the leaders of the U.S. bishops that unless President Barack Obama actually make good on his September 9 promise to the American...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 23, 2009 A few weeks ago, when I began this miniseries on St. John Vianney as a confessor, I asked why so many men and women from throughout France made enormous sacrifices to get to the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 16, 2009 Eight days ago, the U.S. bishops drew a line in the sand on health care reform. Three of the bishops who have been most actively involved in the health care debate — Cardinal Justin Rigali of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 16, 2009 A priest classmate recently told me that whenever he preaches about confession, he now talks primarily about how much he personally needs confession. He said that this one of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 9, 2009 Last week, in our continuing survey of Catholic analysis of the present health care reform proposals, we began an examination of the “Principles of Catholic Social Teaching and Health Care...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 9, 2009 Last week, we focused on the “great miracle” of St. John Vianney’s confessional, to which prodigal sons and daughters from all over France flocked to be embraced by the merciful...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial October 2, 2009 In our continuing survey of Catholic analysis of the present health care reform proposals, we turn this week to the most comprehensive analysis to be issued by any of the U.S. Bishops, a joint...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep October 2, 2009 “The great miracle of the Curé of Ars,” one of his contemporaries said during the process for beatification “was his confessional, besieged day and night.” The fundamental reason...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 25, 2009 The debate about health care reform continues to occupy much of the nation’s attention, as well it should, considering the gravity of the need for reform and the magnitude of the proposed...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep September 25, 2009 Two weeks ago, we looked at how St. John Vianney’s whole life was transformed into a prayer. Last Friday, we examined what he taught his parishioners about prayer in general...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 18, 2009 The funeral rites of Senator Edward Kennedy generated a lot of controversy. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, in an entry on his weekly blog, told us very clearly why: “Needless to say, the Senator’s...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep September 18, 2009 Last week we looked at how St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests, was an example of “an existence made prayer.” The focus of all his pastoral work in Ars was to help his...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 11, 2009 Last week, our editorial argued that one of the most important lessons pastors of the Church in the United States need to draw from the history of interactions with Senator Ted Kennedy on...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep September 11, 2009 In a catechesis on July 1, Pope Benedict declared what is the “first task” and “the true path of sanctification” for a Christian — prayer — and why St. John Vianney is so...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial September 4, 2009 There is no debating that Senator Edward Kennedy lived a highly consequential life. Over the span of his 47-year career in the Senate, he became one of the nation’s most effective and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep September 4, 2009 The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council taught that Jesus in the Eucharist is meant to be the “source and the summit of the Christian life.” In other words, for a life to be...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 28, 2009 As we wrote about earlier this month, Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, on behalf of the U.S. Bishops, has specified two main areas of concern with respect to the health care reforms...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 28, 2009 The most important part of St. John Vianney’s efforts to convert his parish in Ars was to help his people to recover a sense of the sacred importance of the Lord’s Day. The fathers...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 21, 2009 Last Friday in Hyannis the Church celebrated the funeral of a truly remarkable, faithful and strong Catholic woman who was the personification of the Good Samaritan toward those with special...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 21, 2009 Last week we focused in general on the heroic prayer, penance and preaching St. John Vianney engaged in to bring about the total conversion of his parish. Like any good shepherd...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 14, 2009 In his recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict dedicates five paragraphs to how a proper understanding of and care for the environment is essential for the integral development...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 14, 2009 When Fr. John Vianney was notified that he was being sent to Ars, three years after his priestly ordination, his vicar general told him, “There is not much love for God in that...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial August 7, 2009 Everyone knows that our health care system is in need of reform. Rising costs are crippling the budgets of families, small businesses and even large corporations. Insurance plans are charging...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 7, 2009 Sacred Scripture abounds in examples of how God has repeatedly taken the least and made them great in salvation history. Abraham was a childless octogenarian who became the father...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 17, 2009 “To the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, the lay faithful and all people of good will.” That’s how Pope Benedict addresses his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep July 17, 2009 The future patron saint of priests, John Vianney, never desired merely to be a priest. He hungered to be a truly holy priest. One of the greatest means God used to help him learn the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 10, 2009 On June 28, when Pope Benedict concluded the Year of St. Paul at the Basilica outside the walls in Rome, most of the headlines generated centered on his announcement that tests on the bones...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep July 10, 2009 A few years ago, as I was preaching at the first Mass of Thanksgiving of a newly ordained priest, I made reference to a quotation of the Curé of Ars that, prior to my ordination...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial July 3, 2009 Most Americans can cite or at least paraphrase by memory the celebrated phrase of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep July 3, 2009 I begin today a series of articles on St. John Vianney, the Curé or pastor of Ars, who was declared by Pope Pius XI in 1929 the patron saint of parish priests and who, during this...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 26, 2009 We have come to the end of the Year of St. Paul, in which the whole Church, celebrating the 2000th anniversary of the great apostle’s birth, has focused on learning to imitate him as he imitated...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 26, 2009 When Pope Benedict announced on March 16 that he was declaring a Year of the Priesthood, my first reaction was total joy. I love these ecclesiastical years which do for the Mystical...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 19, 2009 Today we begin the Year of the Priesthood on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Benedict XVI called for this year back on March 16 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 19, 2009 A few weeks ago, I was interviewed for a story on fatherhood by the National Catholic Register. The reporter noted that Father’s Day this year occurs the day before the Church...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 5, 2009 In the days leading up to the celebration of Pentecost, the traditional birthday of the Church, Pope Benedict gave his yearly address to the annual synod for the Diocese of Rome. The theme of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 12, 2009 Throughout this year of St. Paul, as I’ve had the chance to go through the details and the writings of the great apostle anew in greater depth, I have often returned to one figure...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial June 5, 2009 Since abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered on Sunday during a worship service at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, the reaction of the vast majority of people on both sides of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep June 5, 2009 I have always had a great devotion to the martyrs and for this reason, June has always been a special month. We begin the month with the memorials of Saints Justin, Marcellinus and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 29, 2009 Ever since Jesus’ brief valedictory address when he said, “Go … and teach all nations” (Mt 28:18), education has always been among the Church’s highest priorities and greatest glories. Christian...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 29, 2009 For the past few decades, the popes have been trying to inspire Catholics to take up their role in the re-evangelization of areas where the Church was once strong but where now the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 22, 2009 Twice in the past two months, we have described why Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Barack Obama by granting him an honorary doctorate of law and by inviting him to deliver its...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 22, 2009 When I was in Louisiana in March, I made my second pilgrimage to the parish church dedicated to St. Landry in Opelousas. The last time I had been there was ten years ago, ten days...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep August 21, 2009 Last week we focused in general on the heroic prayer, penance and preaching St. John Vianney engaged in to bring about the total conversion of his parish. Like any good shepherd...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 15, 2009 Over the past week, a scandal has ripped through the heart of Spanish-speaking Catholicism and spilled over into the national network morning television programs. At the center of it is Fr...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 15, 2009 I spent the summer of 1996 in Portugal, where Bishop O’Malley sent me to study Portuguese at the University of Lisbon. Among the many highlights and memories from that time was the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 8, 2009 Four weeks ago we wrote on the symbolic messages the University of Notre Dame was giving Catholics and non-Catholics in the country by inviting President Barack Obama to give its May 17...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 8, 2009 Over the next week, as Pope Benedict is in the Holy Land visiting the principal sites of our redemption, any of us who have had the privilege of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial May 1, 2009 The Fourth Sunday of Easter, traditionally called Good Shepherd Sunday because each year at Mass the Gospel is about Jesus’ self-identification as the Good Shepherd, is the annual occasion of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep May 1, 2009 Ten days ago the Church marked the 900th anniversary of the birth into eternal life of the man Pope Benedict calls “one of the most luminous figures in the tradition of the Church and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 24, 2009 Last September, Stonehill College and the Diocese of Fall River sponsored an important symposium entitled, “Apostolic Religious Life since Vatican II … Reclaiming the Treasure: Bishops...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 24, 2009 Last Wednesday, I was in the capital of the world for the installation of Archbishop Timothy Dolan as the new shepherd of the Archdiocese of New York. Prior to the Mass, as I was...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 17, 2009 A year ago, Pope Benedict was in the midst of his apostolic pilgrimage to the United States to lead us in spiritual renewal on the theme of “Christ our Hope.” In his visits with Christians in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 17, 2009 When I first entered Mount St. Mary’s seminary in Maryland, I met some fellow seminarians with a devotion to the Divine Mercy. They would often get together and recite the chaplet...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 10, 2009 For the first several years of his preaching of the Gospel, St. Paul for the most part ducked the subject of the Cross. With Jews, he preached on how Jesus was the fulfillment of all the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 10, 2009 One of the most moving moments of Pope Benedict’s recent trip to Africa was when he stopped at the Cardinal Léger Center in Yaounde, Cameroon on March 19. The center, founded in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial April 3, 2009 On Sunday, we will all listen to St. Mark’s account of the Passion. We will recall Judas’ perfidy, the failure of Peter, James and John to stay awake in prayerful vigil with the Lord in his...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep April 3, 2009 One of my great joys is to preach retreats and parish missions. In my first decade as a priest, I’ve given about 30 of them, to priests, seminarians, religious sisters and cloistered...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 27, 2009 Over the last few decades, our society has made great progress against discrimination and harassment in the work place. The rights that flow from workers’ human dignity have been increasingly...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 27, 2009 Last Friday and Saturday, the Diocese of Fall River held its first ever Diocesan Reconciliation Weekend. As priests stepped into their confessionals and reconciliation rooms across...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 20, 2009 On March 10, Pope Benedict sent the bishops of the world a letter (see p. 18) clarifying his January 21 gesture of reconciliation toward the four validly but illicitly ordained bishops of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 20, 2009 In his beautiful 1984 Apostolic Exhortation on the Sacrament of Penance entitled “Reconciliation and Penance,” Pope John Paul II names four “extraordinary apostles of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 13, 2009 President Obama’s Monday executive order to lift President Bush’s 2001 ban on using our tax money to fund the destruction of human embryos for embryonic stem cell research is a disgraceful...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 13, 2009 We are celebrating this year the 150th anniversary of the birth into eternal life of the patron saint of parish priests, St. John Vianney (1786-1859. The Curé of the tiny French...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial March 6, 2009 There’s a necessarily prophetic dimension to the proclamation of the faith. While the Gospel is fundamentally, supremely and not merely etymologically “good news” — a jubilant “yes” to the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep March 6, 2009 During my seminary years, my parents would come to Rome to visit each February when plane fares would drop to as low as $300 round-trip. I would always arrange for them to stay...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 27, 2009 During the past two weeks in Florida and Arizona, the world’s greatest baseball players have been fielding ground balls, catching pop ups, laying down bunts, working on pick-off moves...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 27, 2009 I sang a Te Deum early Monday morning when, after years of speculation, Pope Benedict named Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee as the Archbishop of New York. With many of my...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 20, 2009 Everyone agrees that Nadya Suleman did something wrong. Where the debate begins is over what she did wrong, why it was wrong, and what our society needs to do to prevent its recurrence. The...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 20, 2009 On Sunday night, the Academy Awards will be given out. It is the most important feast of the liturgical year for our culture’s new idolatry: the worship of celebrities. It begins...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 13, 2009 We are now in the midst of a campaign by the four Massachusetts dioceses to strengthen Catholic marriages entitled “The Future Depends on Love.” This week is a good opportunity — coming as...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 13, 2009 There’s something beautiful about St. Valentine’s Day. It’s a day on which romantic love is justly celebrated and couples feel inspired to show their affection for each other in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 6, 2009 In his great priestly prayer on the night he was betrayed, Jesus implored his Father that all the disciples would be one as the persons of the Blessed Trinity are one. He said that their...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep February 6, 2009 Next Thursday we celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of the greatest president ever to serve our country. He has long been considered great on account of his most notable...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 30, 2009 We are concluding Catholic Schools Week, which is an annual opportunity for the Church in the United States to focus on our young people and to remember that not only is the future of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 30, 2009 This Sunday we will all get a chance to focus on a true hero whose impressive athletic exploits are eclipsed by his personal accomplishments. Here in New England, we can sometimes...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 23, 2009 This Sunday we celebrate one of the highlights of the Year of St. Paul now underway: his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus. Pope Benedict has both authorized and encouraged Catholic...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 23, 2009 Three years ago this Sunday, Pope Benedict published his first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, about the love of God that we are called to receive and to share. In it he...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 16, 2009 Last week we focused on the general outlook of Dignitas Personae, the December instruction of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on bioethical issues at the beginning of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 16, 2009 On Tuesday I traveled to Immaculate Conception Church in Manhattan for the funeral of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, founder and editor-in-chief of First Things magazine, author of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 9, 2009 During Advent, as the attention of the Christian world was meditating anew on how the Word of God had taken on our nature, was conceived as an embryo in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Into the Deep January 9, 2009 100 years ago today in Carracastle in County Mayo, Patrick Joseph Peyton was born, the sixth of nine children. Like so many born in Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century, he...
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...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial January 9, 2009 During Advent, as the attention of the Christian world was meditating anew on how the Word of God had taken on our nature, was conceived as an embryo in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary...
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...
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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...
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 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 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...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor December 22, 2006 The whole season of Advent is a lesson in preparation. As we listen to the prophets, we mark the centuries of advance work God did to get the people of Israel ready to expect, recognize and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor December 15, 2006 During the 2004 presidential election cycle, there was much debate over whether Catholic politicians who publicly promote intrinsic evils like abortion should be denied Holy Communion. While...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor December 8, 2006 In the history of the Church, no encyclical has been a greater sign of contradiction than Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Humanae Vitae, which taught that the use of contraception in marriage...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor December 1, 2006 Last month at their November meetings, the U.S. bishops approved three teaching documents concerning, respectively, the pastoral care of those with a homosexual orientation, the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor November 24, 2006 There was much comment in both the secular and Catholic media about the items on the agenda for the U.S. Bishops’ Conference meeting last week in Baltimore. All noted a marked shift...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor November 17, 2006 Playing politics is nothing new for politicians. We are all accustomed to how legislators, when they may not be able or want to defeat a bill on the open floor, seek to use the rules of the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor November 10, 2006 The beginning of November is a time when Americans are accustomed to focus on elections and the various issues that drive them, the economy, the direction of the country, safety and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor November 3, 2006 The talking point interrogatives have begun to reappear as we near the November 9th Constitutional Convention and our legislators prepare to vote on whether to give first approval to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor October 27, 2006 In last week’s editorial on voting guides, the question was raised about the responsibilities of a faithful Catholic with respect to candidates who support the evil of abortion. Brief...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor October 20, 2006 It is an indisputably positive development that Catholics in general are rediscovering that faith and life go together and that our relationship with God and our desire to please him...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor October 13, 2006 When Cardinal Sean O’Malley went to Rome a couple of weeks ago to take possession of his titular Church, the munificent 150-seat Santa Maria della Vittoria, little did he realize that...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor October 6, 2006 When told that Pope Pius XII opposed his policies, Joseph Stalin derisively responded, “How many battalions does the Pope have?” To someone convinced that might makes right, that the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor September 29, 2006 As he concluded his apostolic pilgrimage to Germany, Pope Benedict XVI gave one last gift to the crowds who had assembled at the Munich airport to wish him auf wiedersehen and those...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor September 22, 2006 In the midst of his very fruitful apostolic pilgrimage to his native Bavaria, Pope Benedict stopped at the University of Regensburg, where as a young professor he became famous for...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor September 15, 2006 The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, in their Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, wrote that “all citizens are to bear in mind that it is both their right...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor September 8, 2006 The most fitting way to mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks is to act on the lessons that infamous day has taught us. The first lesson is that evil...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor September 1, 2006 The August 24 decision of the Food and Drug Administration to allow women over 18 to have access to the Plan B morning after pills without a prescription has left Catholic and pro-life...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor August 25, 2006 In the early days of the Church, there was great solidarity and mutual loving sacrifice. Christians looked upon themselves as they really were — brothers and sisters — and whenever any...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor August 18, 2006 August 16, 2005 was supposed to be Al Qaeda’s bloody sequel to September 11, 2001. Thanks be to God, and to the vigilance and hard work of anti-terrorist units in several countries...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Editorial The Anchor August 11, 2006 Sometime those in the pro-life movement wish that they could go back in time and re-fight some of the key battles in the history of the culture war. They long to go back before the time...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor July 21, 2006 There was justifiable outrage last week when Massachusetts legislators, by a vote of 100-91, pusillanimously adjourned the Constitutional Convention. The original vote on the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor July 21, 2006 On July 11th, Pope Benedict acceded to Joaquin Navarro-Valls’ “oft-expressed readiness” to retire from the position of the director of the Holy See Press Office and de facto...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor July 14, 2006 As Pope Benedict was flying from Rome to Valencia for last weekend’s World Meeting of Families, reporters on the papal plane asked him for a preview of what he would say. They...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor July 7, 2006 Acting on last week’s editorial on the Protection of Marriage Amendment, one subscriber emailed his state representative. In a succinct and straightforward manner, he stated:...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor June 30, 2006 On Tuesday, the citizens of our nation will focus yet again on the bravery and principles that led to the Declaration of Independence and the birth of our nation. Fifty-six...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor June 23, 2006 Many Catholics were startled last week when they learned, mainly through secular news outlets, that the U.S. Bishops had voted to change the prayers of the Mass. Provocative...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor June 16, 2006 On June 7, 49 U.S. Senators voted in favor of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to protect marriage as a heterosexual institution. 48 Senators opposed it. The procedural...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor June 9, 2006 Normally editorials are dedicated to commenting on some recent or upcoming news event. This week it is regrettably devoted to the lack of one. The first or second Saturday in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor June 2, 2006 Last weekend Pope Benedict embarked on the first foreign pilgrimage of his own design. As he stated in his inaugural talk at Warsaw’s airport, he went to Poland in order to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor May 26, 2006 The sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy is simply one of the most painful things with which most in the Church have ever had to deal. Words are not adequate to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor May 19, 2006 Faithful Catholics have been asking how they should respond to today’s release of The Da Vinci Code movie. Should they heed calls from a senior Vatican archbishop to boycott...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor May 12, 2006 In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that the Church was about to revise her teaching on the immorality of condoms in order to prevent the transmission of HIV and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor May 5, 2006 Jesus told us in St. Matthew’s Gospel that when he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, he will separate us into two groups. On his right, he will place...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor April 28, 2006 Ten days ago, the largest and most famous Church in the world celebrated the 500th anniversary of the inauguration of its reconstruction. The original St. Peter’s Basilica in...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor April 21, 2006 In a March column in The Boston Globe, provocatively entitled “Should Liberals Leave the Catholic Church?,” Joan Vennochi candidly vented her frustration that Church...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor April 14, 2006 This afternoon, at the beginning of the recitation of the Passion according to St. John, Catholics will hear of the treachery of the most famous traitor of all time, Judas...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor April 7, 2006 As Catholics throughout the world convene on Sunday in Church to enter into the passion of the King of Kings, dressed in a scarlet cloak with a reed in his hands, others will...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor March 24, 2006 The eyes of the Church universal and much of our region are justly on Rome today, where Pope Benedict XVI will create fifteen new cardinals. In addition to the particular...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor March 17, 2006 Two weeks ago, 55 Catholic Democrats in the House of Representatives released a “Statement of Principles,” describing what their collective goals are on Capitol Hill. They...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor March 10, 2006 There’s a dramatic scene in the Acts of the Apostles when the twelve, after having been miraculously freed from the public prison, are brought back before the Sanhedrin. There they...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor March 3, 2006 There was palpable joy and hometown pride throughout our diocese last week when Pope Benedict named Archbishop Sean O’Malley a cardinal. For a decade, we were blessed by his...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor February 24, 2006 One of the least commented upon sections of Pope Benedict’s first encyclical on God’s love deals with the Church and politics. In an era in which the Church in various...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor February 17, 2006 In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, after describing who God is and who we are, Pope Benedict turns to what the Church is. The Church, he says, is “God family in the world...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor February 10, 2006 In his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI takes us to the “heart of the Christian faith” and presents us with a “summary of the Christian life.” He described who God is, who...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor February 3, 2006 Most of us, when we receive a letter, normally open and read it. When the letter is from a close family member, we generally consume it faster. And most of us do not seem...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor January 27, 2006 Pope Benedict has followed Pope John Paul II in insistently heralding the urgency of a new proclamation of the Gospel to our own age. The Church is fundamentally...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor January 20, 2006 In a powerful January 9 address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI argued that the way to peace can only happen through a joint...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor January 13, 2006 As we prepare for the Week of Christian Unity that runs from January 18-25, Christians in our commonwealth are confronting an issue on which they are clearly united. It’s a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor January 6, 2006 Five days before the celebration of the birth of Jesus, most Americans got a Christmas present and the American Civil Liberties Union a long overdue lump of coal. These...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor December 23, 2005 In 1223, St. Francis of Assisi inaugurated a pious practice that in places today has become so common that many think that it always existed. This great saint, as he was...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor December 16, 2005 Historians of the abortion debate in our country have long noted how abortion advocates have manipulated the extreme cases of rape, incest and life-endangering...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor December 9, 2005 The Church has long had a written policy against the ordination to the priesthood of men with homosexual tendencies. Over the course of the last few decades...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor December 2, 2005 Catholics are long accustomed to having Isaiah and John the Baptist prepare them, during the first two weeks of Advent, for the coming of the Lord. Theirs are the voices...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor November 25 2005 When the pilgrims lowered the anchor in Plymouth harbor in December 1620, they were filled with hope. They had survived a perilous three-month journey on an inhospitable...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor November 18, 2005 Proposition 11 of the recently concluded Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist requested that “the reasons for the relationship between celibacy and priestly ordination be...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor November 11, 2005 The recently concluded Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist proposed to Pope Benedict that the Church must do a better job explaining the “relationship between celibacy and...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor November 4, 2005 Among the many issues debated and discussed during the recent Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, the topic of priestly celibacy was perhaps the most closely followed...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor October 28, 2005 In his first trip outside the Vatican this past May, Pope Benedict visited Bari to celebrate with 300,000 Italian Catholics the feast of Corpus Christi. In his homily...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor October 21, 2005 This December we mark the 40th anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council. We begin this week in the Anchor a series of articles meant not only to bring to life...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor October 14, 2005 During the height of the clergy sex abuse revelations in 2002, when Pope John Paul II summoned the Cardinals of the United States to Rome, they asked him to appoint a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor October 7, 2005 Forty years ago, as the Second Vatican Council was coming to a close, Pope Paul VI established the Synod of Bishops as a regular organ for the successors of the apostles to...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor September 30, 2005 Earlier this week in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a federal district judge began hearing arguments in a highly watched case pitting a legion of lawyers from the American...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor September 23, 2005 Last week’s Senate confirmation hearings for President Bush’s nominee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court were not really about John Roberts and his rather obvious...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor September 16, 2005 Those who are faithful to Jesus Christ are now being called by the successors of his apostles in the state of Massachusetts to rise up in defense of the institution of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor September 16, 2005 Those who are faithful to Jesus Christ are now being called by the successors of his apostles in the state of Massachusetts to rise up in defense of the institution of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor September 9, 2005 The response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th — the fourth anniversary of which we mark this weekend — has provided the standard by which we are able to evaluate...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor September 2, 2005 When Christians think of the saving work of Jesus, many focus on the triduum during which he was crucified, died and rose again. Others concentrate on the three years of his...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor August 26, 2005 When Jesus returned to Nazareth and preached the Gospel in the synagogue that Scripture was fulfilled in their hearing, those of his native place rose up and tried to throw him off...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor August 19, 2005 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said in the Gospel, “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3). That’s one of the reasons...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor August 12, 2005 In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II called contraception and abortion “fruits of the same tree.” The roots of that tree are found in a mentality, he...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor August 5, 2005 To believe in Jesus Christ as the Son-of-God-made-man means, minimally, to trust in what Jesus said and did. It is not possible for a true disciple to think that Jesus could have...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor July 15, 2005 On the international calendar, 7/7 has now been added to 9/11 and 3/11 as days of unforgettable infamy. The four London bombs that have left 52 people dead and scores more wounded...
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Landing Editorial The Anchor July 8, 2005 Right at the beginning of the extended weekend on which Americans were celebrating the 229th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor July 1, 2005 When I began this column seven months ago, I took as its theme Jesus’ words to St. Peter, “Put out into the deep and lower your nets for a catch” (Lk 5:4). This was the imperative...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor June 24, 2005 “Among those born of women, no one is greater than John the Baptist” (Lk 7:28 ). Truth incarnate once paid that supreme compliment, which is why the Church founded by Him...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor June 17, 2005 Pope Benedict has picked up right where his predecessor left off. Pope John Paul II spent most of his priesthood, and all of his pontificate, trying to strengthen the Christian...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor June 10, 2005 It was similar to when the Red Sox won the World Series. A huge crowd. Jubilation and standing ovations. Lots of kids in uniforms jubilantly giving each other high fives. Grown men...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor June 3, 2005 Because of the Incarnation, every part of Jesus’ body is sacred. We have never celebrated the feast of the Lord’s sacred brain, however, even though through it the Word...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor May 27, 2005 Since 1868, Americans have come together at the end of May to remember and honor those who have given their lives to protect and defend us, who have paid the supreme sacrifice so that...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor May 20, 2005 One month ago today, on the day after his election as the successor of St. Peter, Pope Benedict XVI re-assembled the Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, celebrated together with them the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor May 13, 2005 From the time I was a boy, I have always been fascinated by the feast of Pentecost. When I was in grammar school, the wonder had to do with the fact that Pentecost is the “birthday of...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor May 6, 2005 Prior to the papal conclave, I was asked hundreds of times by parishioners, friends, guys at the health club, and reporters, who I thought the next Pope would be. My staple response —...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor April 29, 2005 “Dear Brothers and Sisters, after the great John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard.” These were the first words of our new Holy...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor April 22, 2005 Almost two years before the Cardinal electors assembled in the Sistine Chapel to discern, with God’s help, the one to whom they should pass the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor April 15, 2005 On Monday, 115 Cardinal electors will enter the Sistine Chapel and begin their work of discerning, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the one God the Father will reveal as the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor Special Edition Upon the Death of Pope John Paul II April 9, 2005 If there were ever any doubt, Pope John Paul II’s funeral was evidence of how extraordinarily important a figure he was within the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor April 8, 2005 On the walls to the right and left of the tabernacle in Pope John Paul II’s private chapel in the Vatican, there are large basrelief sculptures of the deaths of Saints Peter and Paul...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor April 1, 2005 Catholics can easily recall when Jesus instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist. He did it during the first Mass, which began during the Last Supper with the words of consecration...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor March 25, 2005 No greater homily has ever been given than the one Jesus preaches today, nailed to his perpendicular pulpit. It consists of a mere seven sentences, spread over the span of three...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor March 18, 2005 Next week we mark the tenth anniversary of the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which may be the most important and prophetic document of John Paul II’s pontificate. Perhaps more...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor March 11, 2005 Last month the last of the three Fatima visionaries, Sr. Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Sacred Heart, better known by her baptismal name, Lucia dos Santos, died at age 97. As long as...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor March 4, 2005 Each year of his pontificate, the Holy Father has written a Lenten message to guide and inspire Catholics throughout the world better to understand and live the meaning of this...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting Into The Deep The Anchor February 25, 2005 Last March, I saw one of the real signs of the “new springtime” in the Church to which Pope John Paul II frequently refers. It was the annual Catholic Men’s Conference for the...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor February 18, 2005 Scripture scholars often describe the four Gospels as “passion accounts with very long introductions.” This is because the preaching of the apostles — and the earliest Christian...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor February 11, 2005 Lent is a forty day uphill pilgrimage with Jesus. Jesus starts by taking us, on the first Sunday, to a desert mountain where he teaches us by example how to say no to the devil’s...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor February 4, 2005 “What would become of the world if there were no religious?” That’s the question St. Teresa of Avila asked aloud in her 16th century autobiography. It’s also the question Pope...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor January 28, 2005 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...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor January 21, 2005 Thirteen years ago I went to jail for the first time, to interview a pro-life hero for a magazine I had helped to found in college. Bill Cotter had been sentenced to two-and-a...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor January 14, 2005 Right before Christmas, as he met with his chief collaborators in the Roman Curia, Pope John Paul II made a statement that caught many in the media — and in the Church — off-guard...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor January 7, 2005 After John the Baptist had pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God, St. Andrew and a friend ran after Jesus and spent the rest of the afternoon with him. Then Andrew went to find his...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor December 24, 2004 It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth, the night when “he appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Those words from “O Holy Night,” like the lyrics from most treasured...
Fr. Roger J. Landry Putting into the Deep The Anchor December 17, 2004 Last week we marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, easily the most famous and perhaps the most influential American Catholic priest of the 20th...