David Mills

1 day ago | oursundayvisitor.com | David Mills

But he won’t be. The Church believes that in her teaching she has the best foundation for building the structures human beings should build. Catholics can build upon it well or badly, they can refuse to live in the building themselves, but they can’t change the foundation. The foundation limits what Catholics, including the pope, can say about religious matters, the way a building’s foundation limits and to some extent decides what can be built on top of it.

1 week ago | post-gazette.com | David Mills

There is no good cause that can’t be used to advance a bad one. In Congress, as I write, three college presidents are testifying before the House’s Committee on Education and Workforce on what they’ve done to suppress anti-Semitism and protect their Jewish students and faculty. This would be more believable if not driven by a president not hitherto noted for his opposition to antisemitism, nor in challenging people in his own party who flirt with it.

2 weeks ago | post-gazette.com | David Mills

It could have been — it could still be — you or me. And more to the point, it is now regularly others, people particularly vulnerable to abuse. Last Thursday, about 20 ICE agents raided a home before light, terrorizing a mother and her three daughters who had just moved into a nice home in a normal middle class neighborhood, forcing them to stand outside in the rain in their sleepwear and underwear while they ransacked their house looking for people who no longer lived there.

2 weeks ago | oursundayvisitor.com | David Mills

The Church says, “Just look at yourself,” with the assumption that when we look honestly, we won’t really like what we see, and that new clarity will drive us to Jesus for forgiveness and help in being better. And that works, more or less, within the severe limits of fallen humanity. But unfortunately, even with all the help Lent gives us, we see ourselves more badly than we can imagine and we resist seeing better. We need more help. Which the Church provides.

3 weeks ago | oursundayvisitor.com | David Mills

Unless you happen to be one of the very few great men or women of history, your life won’t change the world much, and a generation or two after you die, no one will remember you and whatever good you did. Even if you’re one of a kind, you’re not one of a kind for long. Your fate is to be one of the unremembered dead. Besides being unbelievable, the idea that we’re uniquely special is dangerous to those of us with normal human narcissism and self-regard.