VIEWS

A good friend of mine lost his wife the other day. He was devastated, but he was even more worried about his three children — all in their teens — who have now lost their mother.

That the popular culture in America has changed dramatically in the past half century is news to no one. Nor should it be surprising that such a dramatic change in culture would greatly impact Catholics since we make up nearly a quarter of our nation’s population.

Efforts by government agencies to quash freedoms and liberties enjoyed by Americans appear to be in overdrive these days. At least that’s the perception. One must only look at recent revelations concerning the National Security Agency.

Today we remember Chaldean Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, who, along with three subdeacons from Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul, Iraq, were killed June 3, 2007, while leaving the church after Mass.

Russell Shaw has become the bull in the china shop of U.S. Catholic history, knocking heroes off pedestals and overturning conventional story-lines.

If you asked Catholics in the United States in the 1950s if it was possible to be fully Catholic and fully American, most would have answered with an enthusiastic YES! Today, many Catholics have at best ambivalent feelings about the relationship.

Not the blood-spattered walls, not the unsterilized surgical instruments, not the corpses of tiny babies kept in cat food containers are of interest to reporters and their editors these days, unless of course they belong to the Catholic or pro-life press.

For all the thousands of people I have interviewed, from the famous to the felonious, an encounter with those suffering mental challenges was and still is a challenge for me.

It was a brief greeting to former colleagues. But if you read Pope Francis’s April 18 letter to the Argentine bishops’ conference closely, you get a glimpse of the man, his convictions and his vision.

People look at Dr. Kermit Gosnell and wonder, how could he kill aborted babies born alive? Don’t wonder. He could well be just like a lot of doctors you know.