The history of the Catholic Church in Oklahoma is a fascinating and still unfolding story. It was an intrepid band of Benedictine missionary monks who arrived in 1875 and established the first permanent Catholic settlement in Indian Territory.

Each year in January, we take time to pray with and for Christians worldwide during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which is observed in the Northern Hemisphere this year from Jan. 18 to 25. 

We have concluded our period of Advent preparation and now celebrate the joyful season of Christmas. Merry Christmas to you and to all your loved ones!

On Dec. 11, the day before the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I blessed a beautiful bronze statue of Our Lady atop our replica of Tepeyac Hill on the grounds of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine. This was the first public event at the shrine, and it was open to the public. 

On Nov. 2, The Oklahoman featured a story about a student-athlete at one of our Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. On its face, the story was celebrating this student’s athletic success, but it was about more than that.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving to be observed on the final Thursday in November throughout the United States. The precedents for such a day of thanksgiving go back much further in our history. 

On the Via Veneto just north of the Piazza Barberini in Rome is a well-known church called Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappucini. To many tourists it is more popularly known as “the bone church.”

The liturgical calendar is the Church’s schedule of feasts and seasons that mark the rhythm of our life of faith. The cornerstone of the liturgical year is Sunday, the Lord’s Day, which is always a “little Easter.”

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God!” These words of the English poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins find an echo in our hearts whenever we experience moments of transcendence or awe before the wonder of God’s creation.

It has been 10 years since I began walking the Way of Saint James, the Camino de Santiago. The Camino is a network of historic paths leading from various points in Europe to the tomb of Saint James the Greater, the son of Zebedee, friend of Jesus and the first apostle to give his life for the Gospel. 

Each year we have an opportunity to renew our prophetic commitment to promoting human dignity and sanctity of every life from conception to natural death.

This column was originally published in 2016. As this edition of the Sooner Catholic is published on August 21, I will once again be on pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago with Bishop Wall and Bishop Conley.

Restricting abortion isn’t enough. We need to open our doors to vulnerable mothers and children.

January 22, 1973, is one of the solemn dates in our nation’s history that will “live in infamy.” Today, June 24, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, that infamy has been significantly rectified. 

Before the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue its long-anticipated abortion decision in the Dobbs case. 

I think we all would admit the past few years have been times of rapid change in our world, in our nation, in our Church and in our archdiocese.

The frenzy following the leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion that the anticipated Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade has been jarring

“The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.” These words of Blessed Stanley Rother provide a good summary of the theme for Good Shepherd Sunday that the Church observes each year on the Fourth Sunday of Easter. 

“May is Mary’s month, and I muse at that and wonder why.” So begins Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “The May Magnificat.”

As the Church enters Holy Week and celebrates another Paschal Triduum, some may ask what Easter means in times such as these.