Sightings Articles
Infallibility and Heresy
Not since certain American Protestants were publicly anti-Catholic, as older readers may remember them having been, have we read as many headlines with words like “infallibility,” “heresy,” papal “plots,” “schism,” etc., as we do these days. My late ...
December 5, 2016
"Just a Parish Priest"
Assignment: to make sense of this week’s Sightings, please take 15 minutes or so to read Evan Osnos’s New Yorker story from this past winter (see “Resources” below). It focuses on a Chicago Catholic priest who has tended ferociously to the faithful i...
October 3, 2016
Closing and Reopening Sanctuaries
“Trending Now…” is a familiar category in pop culture. ...
February 22, 2016
"Religious Freedom" After 50 Years?
December 7th: Sightings notes the date because fifty years ago today, by a vote of 2,308 to 70, the “Council Fathers” at the Second Vatican Council voted to promulgate Dignitatis Humanae, “On the Dignity of the Human Person.” Regarded as one of th...
December 7, 2015
When Tap Water Becomes Holy Water: The Strange Saga of the Pope's Water Glass
a strange incident involving the glass of water used by the Pope
October 22, 2015
Annulments and Change
“Annulments” turned up in many a recent headline in print and on blogs, referencing a new papal action. To anticipate a united response is to miss the dynamics of contemporary bi-polar Catholicism. One typical headline-and-subheading summarized ...
September 14, 2015
Vatican and Sisters
Now and then I make visits, not visitations, to Catholic premises, usually university campuses. I started doing so in the years of the Second Vatican Council, some fifty years ago. At that time, a Protestant in such precincts was a bit unfamiliar, ev...