News Archives - Page 783 of 1758 - Archdiocese of Baltimore

Take a look at history while walking forward

On Jan. 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. He is the first African-American to earn the highest honor in the United States of America. On Jan. 4, 1899, 120 years ago, black Catholic men from all over the nation convened on Washington, D.C., for a four-day...

Part two: Black Catholicism has roots in St. Mary’s County

St. Clement in St. Mary’s County holds a unique position in the history of the Catholic religion and the origin of black Catholicism. When the colonists arrived in 1634, St. Clement was known as Heron Island. The newcomers gave it the name of St. Clement. They also gave Point Lookout the name of St. Michael...

St. Mary’s County a fertile ground for black Catholics

November is Black Catholic History Month within the United States. In celebration of this month, I offer this story about St. Mary’s County, a fertile ground of faith among African-American Catholics.

Reflections on youth programs

In the forward to “What We Have Seen and Heard: Essays and Stories from Black Catholics in Baltimore,” Cardinal William Keeler opened with a quote from the Acts of the Apostles 4:20, which read, “Peter and John said, ‘It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.’ ”

Wit & Wisdom: I feel the earth move

So where were you when the Aug. 23 earthquake hit? I was hearing confessions at Oak Crest in a room off the chapel. The whole room and chapel shook. After that, no one else came to confession! I guess people figured: “Don’t go in there! What kind of penance is Father Joe handing out?”

Giving thanks for ‘all things in good plenty’

When Mary Chilton first spotted the New World in November 1620, the 13-year-old had been aboard the Mayflower for 10 weeks, stuck in the same clothes and cramped in dark, damp quarters among seasick passengers and dying goats. Each family was allotted one storage trunk for all their possessions.

7 billion not too many for this planet

You’re one in 7 billion. According to UN estimates, as of Oct. 31, there are now 7 billion people on the planet (well, a few more each day since then). That’s a lot of people. Depending on whom you ask, that’s a good thing, or a reason to panic.

Prayer, meditation can help still a negative mind

The human mind has been referred to as a recording and playback machine. Sometimes I wish it didn’t record and play back certain things. What am I talking about?

Gala puts a human face on Catholic education

The sounds of a choir of Baltimore City Catholic schoolchildren and the Archbishop Curley High School drumline welcomed 1,100 formally dressed celebrants to the Baltimore Convention Center Oct. 22 for a gala dinner feting Catholic schools in the archdiocese.

Deacons reflect on Word of God

Monsignor James Hannon was a little intimidated by his assignment to preach the homily for the Archdiocese of Baltimore deacons’ convocation Oct. 1 in Potomac. The priest, who recently left his pastorate of a handful of parishes in Mountain Maryland to become associate director of the division of clergy personnel for the archdiocese, told a...

Father Barron’s ‘Catholicism’

In the fall of 1972, a group of us, philosophy majors all, approached our dean of studies, Father Bob Evers, with a request: Under the supervision of a faculty member, could we build a two-credit senior seminar in our last college semester around Kenneth Clark’s BBC series, “Civilization,” which had been shown on American public...

The gentlemanly art of the insult

One of the (many) signs of our cultural decline is that verbal insults, these days, are almost invariably scatological or sexual, provoking a blizzard of asterisks whenever A wants to put the smackdown on B. Once upon a time, it was not so.