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...