This study is about a woman caught in adultery. Apparently someone entered a room while she and her lover were engaged in sexual activity. That would have been extremely embarrassing to be caught in a sexual act. It would also have been a very fearful experience since the Mosaic Law required that the woman and her lover be killed (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22). One wonders why the story does not mention anything about the man who was also engaged in the sexual activity. On the surface it appears that the woman was singled out by the religious leaders. Maybe it was a trap designed to see if Jesus would condemn only the woman. We know nothing about her husband or her lover. The story has been appealed to by many as a wonderful act of forgiveness and even tolerance by others. We are not told what Jesus wrote on the ground or why the religious leaders left, starting with the older men and finally the younger men. The message of the story is simple. Jesus never condemned her and only warned her to not do it again. Consequently some teach that we should be more tolerant. READ MORE

by Josh Hinchie, SJ

In a classic scene from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Scuttle the seagull tries to show Ariel how to use the “human stuff” she found in a shipwreck. He confidently explains that a fork (“dinglehopper”) is used to comb hair, while a tobacco pipe (“snarfblatt”) is a musical instrument. Of course, as comically misguided as these explanations are, we can’t really blame Scuttle: after all, it’s hard to know the purpose of an artifact without first knowing the intentions of its maker. Since Scuttle doesn’t understand humans’ intentions and interests, he can’t understand how to use the things they’ve made.

I can’t help thinking the same is true of our lives. We’re constantly worrying about how to spend our one (rather short) life: should I get this degree? Apply for this job? Marry this person? Vow perpetual poverty, chastity and obedience? You get the idea. Our attempts to figure out how best to use our lives will be no more successful than Scuttle’s attempts to understand how to use forks, unless we first ask, “What are human beings made for?” If we can figure out the latter, we’re less likely to go wrong with the former. READ MORE

by Andriy Zelinksyy

I find myself moved by a bright star in the deep, dark sky over the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. One tiny but very bright light sparkling through the cold night over the city I moved to because of Russian airstrikes on Kyiv, where I have been living and serving for the last 10 years.

I love Kyiv, one of the greenest, most pleasant and peaceful capitals in Europe. On Feb. 24, I woke up in a completely different world.

The peace was obliterated by the Russian bombs dropped on my city and so many other Ukrainian cities. Since that first morning, the Russians have not, even for a single day, stopped bombing and shelling our cities and villages. CONTINUE READING

The Antiracism Awareness Task Force hosts monthly "Media Meditation" sessions virtually on the last Thursday of each month. This month it is this Thursday, March 31 at 6 PM. The sessions involve two parts; the first half hour is for parishioners to, in a completely unstructured manner, share personal reflections on the media items in the monthly calendar sent out in the beginning of the month. The second half involves prayer, whether an antiracist-focused examen or rosary, for antiracist meditation and further self reflection. Parishioners are welcome to join for either part - and are also welcome to just listen!

Crossing the Sea: Our Journey to Liberation

Join the LGBTQ+ community and allies as we celebrate not only our people’s crossing the Red Sea, but also our own journeys to liberation.

At our Seder, we examine freedom through the shared lens of our Judaism as well as our sexual and gender identities. Share your stories. Celebrate with your community. (Ticket includes a festive meal.)

COST*: ADULTS $30 – CHILDREN $15

Contact the organizer at [email protected].

Sister Nathalie Becquart, XMCJ, the undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops office at the Vatican will deliver a New Ways Ministry-sponsored lecture entitled “Synodality: A Path of Reconciliation." (To register, click here.)

The lecture will be on Sunday, April 3, 2022, 12 noon, Eastern U.S. Time, on Zoom.

March 30 @ 7:30 pm -8:30 pm

ROME — Pope Francis' newly released apostolic constitution, which is intended to reform the Vatican's central bureaucracy, has been praised as a breakthrough by church leaders and theologians for expanding the roles laypeople can exercise in the Catholic Church, even while it remains unclear how the shift in church governance will take place.

At a March 21 Vatican press conference two days after the publication of the new constitution, Jesuit Fr. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a distinguished canon lawyer and former rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, said that in the new document, the "power of governance in the church does not come from the Sacrament of [Holy] Orders," meaning ordination, but instead, from "canonical mission." READ MORE

Parish: 'the thought' is a publication of St. Ignatius Catholic Community—Baltimore. Each edition contains articles and news feeds that are included for awareness of current topics in our world today. The positions expressed by outside authors and news feeds are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of St. Ignatius Catholic Community or its staff.