German
Pastoral advisor Manfred Becker-Irrnen speaks during his sermon at the “Blessing for All” service at Cologne Cathedral. Several hundred people celebrated a blessing service also for same-sex couples in front of Cologne Cathedral. Sascha Thelen/dpa via Reuters Connect.
Eight Catholic priests held a ceremony blessing same-sex couples in front of the Cologne Cathedral in western Germany on Wednesday evening, in protest against socially conservative Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, the archbishop of Cologne.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich S.J., Archbishop of Luxembourg, (in mask) greets Pope Francis at the opening of the Synodal Path at the Vatican Oct. 9, 2021. Vatican Media/Handout via REUTERS
A prominent liberal cardinal who leads a body representing European bishops has called for “fundamental revision” in Catholic teaching on homosexuality, and said it is wrong to fire Church workers for being LGBTQ.
Image via RNS/Reuters/Max Rossi
During our nearly 40 years of friendship, I led several interreligious missions with Keeler, including meetings with then-Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. We co-led trips to Israel, including a visit to a civilian bomb shelter, and a poignant painful pilgrimage to the infamous death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sometimes public figures can seem distant and impersonal, but that was never the case with the always gracious and welcoming Keeler.
Image via RNS/The Trustees of the British Museum
In Jerusalem, Boehm said, there was a “very thin membrane” between the earthly and metaphysical.
That porousness is the origin of all the show’s marvelous art and of many of the city’s troubles, past and present. Almost lost on one wall of the show is a photograph of a glorious pulpit that stood in the Al-Aqsa Mosque from 1188 until 1969, when a delusional Australian torched it. He was trying to destroy the mosque so that the temple could be rebuilt to facilitate Jesus’ return.
MICROSOFT WORD is one of those computer programs that mimics the power of the human brain: It has enormous capabilities—specifically for document preparation—but we use only a tiny percentage of it, mainly to make signs for our yard sale next weekend. Naturally, we do this during office hours, since heaven knows the weekend will be busy enough.
Likewise, our brains can handle numerous complex tasks, such as learning multiple languages—a capacity I would never use, since I'm currently inside my home hiding out from the sequester—although for some reason the only thing it lets me remember from high school is that you should never talk to a football player's prom date, because you can get the snot beat out of you.
Similarly, Microsoft Word can do things you never asked for.
Recently a colleague was typing something religious for our next issue when Word suddenly offered to translate it into French, and then back into English again. Always open to distractions when typing religiously, my colleague clicked, "Well, sure, why not?" (Control/Shift/F2/blink) and the result revealed why it's often difficult to find common ground with people from other countries: They talk funny.
In some languages, for example, sounds we assume are caused by the speaker dislodging a hairball from his (or her) throat are actually words meant to communicate important messages about, say, a nation's willingness to go to war if not left alone, which the U.N. translator totally misses because he (or she) is thinking about that hairball.