Active Catholics can look down on the "slackers," like those who go to the "utility Mass" on Sunday evening, for just barely fulfilling their obligation. Some ask why they even bother going.

Jesus astonishes because he did all in his own name — as if he himself were the source of all truth, as if he himself were the source of all healing and divine power, as if he himself were the fulfillment of all your hope.

I’d long regarded as shallow irony the curse, “May you live in interesting times.” But thanks to the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, I now appreciate its ironic depths: People actively want to think of themselves as living through “interesting times,” and they thus make the times — well, more interesting. Already in mid-March, as civil authorities warned