Category: Catholic Voice
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For Lent: Take off ‘First World’ Lenses and Learn the Reality of Others
-Fr. John Roche, SDB Recently I led a day of reflection for a wonderful bishop, Bishop Gerald Barnes of San Bernardino, his presbyteral council and his curia. I had been invited to share Salesian spirituality to offer some reflection on the Salesian Year of Youth. To model the central Salesian priority of youth serving youth,…
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An Advocate for the Young
-Fr. John Roche, SDB For this month of January, I will step out of the role of columnist and proudly express my Salesian identity. This is the month the Church remembers St. John Bosco, the Father and Teacher of the young. This marvelous saint is the founder of my order, the Salesians of Don Bosco,…
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God is in the Mess
-Fr. John Roche, SDB I don’t know about you, but every Advent and Christmas season reawakens inside my heart the desire for the perfect Christmas, the perfect family celebration or the greatest and most meaningful spiritual experience of the Incarnation. Swinging from the secular to the religious, the longing is all the same. Madison Avenue…
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Where are Our Young People?
-Fr. John Roche, SDB I will not be surprised if the present generation of young people coming of age will go down as the most researched and studied generation of any to date. For the most part, the studies are encouraging. The work of William Strauss and Neil Howe raised the bar with their study…
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When Innocent Children are Caught in the Cross-Fire
-Fr. John Roche, SDB It happened again. An innocent child is caught in the cross-fire of urban gang wars and a community is rocked to the core. People of faith question deeply, ministers fumble for words, and the pain only widens. Where is God in all of this? I remember questioning God in a similar…
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It is Who is Inside that Counts
-Fr. John Roche, SDB Browsing for a greeting card some years ago, I came upon a section of cards that had no particular greeting on the inside. These cards were labeled “Birthday, blank inside” or “Thank You, blank inside,” etc. I took a moment or two to linger in this aisle looking at the various…
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The Real Apocalyptic Litmus Test for Rapture Prophets
-Fr. John Roche, SDB Some years ago, a great storyteller, national speaker and teacher, Father John Tickle of the Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, gave a course on the Catholic interpretation of the Book of Revelation. This particular series of lectures has stayed with me all of these years and has been an important…
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My God is NOT a Bean-Counter
-Fr. John Roche, SDB I am no longer sure what my Enneagram number is, nor do I remember the wing personalities associated with it. I have been an INFJ, an ENFJ and an INFP depending on the time and circumstances of my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. And for all the practical good those tools of assessing…