Fr Ronald Rolheiser, Author at Catholic Herald

Fr Ronald Rolheiser

February 16, 2017

In the Hebrew scriptures, that part of the Bible we call the Old Testament, we find a strong religious challenge to always welcome the stranger, the foreigner. This was emphasised for two reasons. First, because the Jewish people themselves had once been foreigners and immigrants. Their scriptures kept reminding them not to forget that. Second,

Embittered moralising

February 09, 2017

One of the dangers inherent in trying to live out a life of Christian fidelity is that we are prone to become embittered moralisers, older brothers of the Prodigal Son, angry and jealous at God’s over-generous mercy, bitter because persons who wander and stray can so easily access the heavenly banquet table. But this isn’t

God’s power as powerlessness

February 02, 2017

The French novelist and essayist Léon Bloy once made this comment about God’s power in our world: “God seems to have condemned himself until the end of time not to exercise any immediate right of a master over a servant or a king over a subject. We can do what we want. He will defend

The Noonday Devil and Sabbath

January 26, 2017

Early Christian monks believed in something they called acedia. More colloquially, they called it the Noonday Devil, a name that essentially describes the concept. Acedia, for them, was different from ordinary depression in that it didn’t draw you into the dark, chaotic areas of your mind and heart, to have you diseased before your own

Taking our wounds to the Eucharist

January 19, 2017

Recently a man came to me, asking for help. He carried some deep wounds, not physical wounds but emotional wounds to his soul. What surprised me initially was that, while he was deeply wounded, he had not been severely traumatised either in childhood or adulthood. He seemed to have just absorbed the normal bumps and

Orthodoxy, sin and heresy

January 12, 2017

Recently, while on the road giving a workshop, I took the opportunity to go the cathedral in the city I was in for a Sunday Eucharist. I was taken aback by the homily. The priest used the Gospel text where Jesus says, “I am the vine and you are the branches”, to tell the congregation

My favourite books of the past year

January 05, 2017

So much of life, particularly today, constitutes an unconscious conspiracy against reading. Lack of time, the pressure of our jobs and electronic technology, among other things, are more and more putting books out of reach and out of mind. There is never enough time to read. The upside of this is that when I do

Incarnation – God is with us

December 22, 2016

For many of us, I suspect, it gets harder each year to capture the mood of Christmas. About the only thing that still warms us are memories: memories of younger, more naïve days when lights and carols, Christmas trees and gifts still excited us. But we are adult now and so too, it seems, is

Our churches as sanctuaries

December 15, 2016

Whenever we have been at our best, as Christians, we have opened our churches as sanctuaries to the poor and the endangered. We have a long, proud history wherein refugees, homeless persons, immigrants facing deportation and others who are endangered take shelter inside our churches. If we believe what Jesus tells us about the Last

Our inadequate self-expression

December 08, 2016

Art, too, has its martyrs and perhaps our greatest pain is that of inadequate self-expression. That’s an insight from Iris Murdoch and it holds true, I believe, for almost everyone. Inside each of us there’s a great symphony, a great novel, a great dance, a great poem, a great painting, a great book of wisdom,

The end of the world

December 02, 2016

People are forever predicting the end of the world. In Christian circles this is generally connected with speculation around the promise Jesus made at his Ascension, namely, that he would be coming back, and soon, to bring history to its culmination and establish God’s eternal kingdom. There have been speculations about the end of the

The pitfalls of being a warrior prophet

November 24, 2016

A prophet makes a vow of love, not of alienation. Daniel Berrigan wrote those words – and they need to be highlighted today, when a lot of sincere, committed, religious people self-define as cultural warriors, as prophets at war with secular culture. This is the stance of many seminarians, clergy, bishops and whole denominations of

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