by Joyce Coronel | Jan 5, 2024 | Tidbits
The Christmas lights have barely been packed away but the countdown to Lent has begun (Ash Wednesday is an unusually early Feb. 14 this year.) Which can only mean one thing: You’ll need to come up with your Lenten plan stat AND March Madness is right around the corner.
Now, why would The Soulful Catholic give a lick about the National Collegiate Athletic Association annual basketball tournament? And what, pray tell, does this have to do with Lent anyway?
by Joyce Coronel | Sep 11, 2023 | Tidbits
You might not be surprised to learn that church attendance is down here and around the U.S.
Outside of Christmas and Easter, it’s not very often that you have a standing-room only crowd at church on Sunday. There’s a startling graph published by Pew Research that shows a steep decline in church attendance starting in 2007 when 54 percent of Americans said they attended religious services monthly or more.
By 2019, that number dropped to 45 percent. Pew also reported that during most of the Covid 19 pandemic, about 6 in 10 Americans did not take part in religious services in any way, including roughly 7 in 10 adults under age 30. Seventy percent of our young people are not going to church!
by Joyce Coronel | Aug 10, 2023 | Tidbits
As they wheeled me into the ICU, I noticed the crucifix on the wall among all the other life-saving equipment. I was in a Catholic hospital, after all, and its catholicity was something that struck me again and again during my four-night stay.
What can only be described as one of the most terrible and yet somehow wonderful experiences of my life unfolded just a few weeks ago when I was sitting in the chapel at the Diocesan Pastoral Center in downtown Phoenix. Staff at the DPC are blessed to be able to attend Mass in the chapel most workdays.
Shortly after the Gospel was proclaimed and we settled into our pews, I felt as though someone punched me in the forehead.
by Joyce Coronel | Jun 26, 2023 | Tidbits
For every parent of an adult child who has rejected the faith, the story of a local man named Bill ought to infuse hope and a renewed determination to pray and fast for their children.
“I was away from the Church for 32 years,” Bill told The Soulful Catholic one hot afternoon during a discussion about faith and the Bible. Bill had signed up to participate in Christ in Our Neighborhood, a small-group program focused on the Sunday Mass readings.
While away from the Catholic Church, Bill belonged to a denomination that proclaimed Catholics are not actually Christians and will not be saved.
There was a long and rocky road back to the Church established by Christ, but eventually, Bill was home.
by Joyce Coronel | Jun 20, 2023 | Tidbits
“We offer you no salary, no recompense, no holiday or pension. But much hard work, a poor dwelling, few consolations, many disappointments, frequent sickness, a violent or lonely death and unknown grave.”
Well. If Bishop Auguste Martin was trying to sell priests on serving as missionaries in Louisiana in 1873, those hardly seem motivational words. And yet, they came: five French priests eager to serve the Lord in spite of gargantuan difficulty and guaranteed danger. The U.S. Bishops’ Conference voted to advance the beatification cause of the five young men at their plenary assembly last week.
And it makes me wonder: What keeps us from having the kind of zeal and love?
by Joyce Coronel | May 3, 2023 | Tidbits
The bumper sticker on the car ahead of me caught my attention: “My religion is kindness,” it proclaimed to weary commuters stalled at a red light.
I looked closer and saw it the quote was attributed to the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader to Tibetan Buddhists.
Well, I’m for kindness; aren’t you?
It’s the underlying message that kindness is the apex of religion that makes me balk. At a time in our nation’s history when fewer and fewer people identify as followers of Christ, this kind of declaration shouldn’t surprise us though.
