• 10 articles

Cowboyin’

“Been cowboyin’ lately?” The question came from a young farmer named Josh. He and an older man were checking out a 1949 Ford pickup for sale across the street from the local farm store. "Been cowboyin’ lately?” Twenty years ago, on my first visit to this town, I sat on a front porch with a deacon who had been recently assigned to...

05 23 2022

Evangelize? “Not My Yob.” Oh Yes, It Is.

By: Bill Sheridan The mid-70s featured a TV sitcom called ‘Chico and the Man’ starring Freddie Prinze as Chico. Its main character gained notoriety with a tag line which became famous. Anytime a difficult task arose, you could count on the next words out of Chico’s mouth, “It’s not my yob!” It was funny on TV. But not so much when ada...

12 30 2018

Three Secular Maxims for the “New Evangelization” Evangelist

It’s odd to me that the term “New Evangelization” has yet to catch real fire in the Catholic Church.  What I mean is that it has yet to become a common enough term that the vast majority of Catholics not only recognize it but that they also know what it means. In a nutshell, it carries forth the evangelical mission of the Second Vatican C...

02 17 2018

Dialoguing with Muslims: Where to Start?

“If someone had invited him to their church, would he have still gone out and done what he did?”  A good friend of mine posed that question to me recently about Sayfullo Saipov, the Muslim man charged with murdering eight people in the recent Manhattan terror attack.  My friend’s own answer to the question: “I don’t think that he would ...

11 10 2017

Reclaim Religious Freedom – An Independence Day Homily

Six years of my priesthood were spent serving as the Vice Rector of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland - my previous assignment. Emmitsburg is a small town with a great Catholic Heritage; But just eight miles north of the town is the historic Gettysburg National Battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  Since the National Park Ser...

07 04 2017

One Simple Way to Do the Scariest Thing as a Catholic – Evangelize

When I stepped out onto campus as a brand new Catholic missionary with FOCUS, I was still a bit new to the “Jesus thing”. I had a huge conversion my senior year, and knew Jesus was the only way to experience joy in life. Still, talking about him to folks I didn’t really know was a very new thing to me. When I would say “Jesus” out loud, I...

05 26 2017

Evangelical Suffering: The Martyrdom of Blessed Miguel Pro

Miguel Augustin Pro Juarez was ordained a Priest in Belgium on August 31, 1925.  Already by 1926, however, due to his poor health, Fr. Miguel’s superiors sent him back to his homeland of Mexico.  Thus began his story of heroic suffering for which he is known.  Less than a month after his arrival home, “an order suppressing all public worship...

04 10 2017

Wise Men, The Nothingness of Eastern Religions, and the Somethingness of Christianity

A brilliant and valiant teacher named John Senior is continuing to be discovered by those startled by today’s shadowy darkness, especially through a newly published biography. Interestingly, Senior could be described as an apostle of shadows, not because shadows are not real but because they point to the fact that things are real. How else could ...

01 07 2017

Three Simple Ways To Evangelize (And Grow in Faith)

If you clicked on this article because you thought you had stumbled onto a list of “silver bullet” ideas for easily evangelizing your friends, co-workers, and family members, I am sorry to say you are going to be disappointed. When it comes to living and sharing our Catholic faith, there is no “easy” way to do it. The martyrs who died for t...

01 04 2017

Christmas – The Continuing Cosmic Revolution

Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the Lord have created it (Isaiah 45:8). Christmas can seem so quaint: bells, tinsel, fake snow, not to mention goofy elves and other unmentionable accretions. We can l...

12 24 2016

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