In a time when leaders are constantly under scrutiny and their flaws widely published, it is good to open the pages of Sacred Scripture and read of those whom God himself chose to lead others. With utter frankness, the Bible refuses to misrepresent its heroes and heroines as individuals without flaws, failings and even grave sin. Many of those whose accomplishments were great were not perfect people.

In its 1962 landmark Engel v. Vitale case, the United States Supreme Court ruled that prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. The court judged it a violation of the First Amendment clause forbidding the establishment of a government religion. In subsequent decisions, prayer was also banned at school graduations and sports events.

Hilaire Belloc was one of England’s most prolific writers in the 20th century. He was a poet, writer, orator, historian, BBC Radio commentator, and political activist. He was a friend of Winston Churchill and a student of St. John Henry Newman. Ernest Hemingway held him in high esteem and even imitated his style. Belloc was most especially known as an apologist renowned for his Catholic faith.

Recorded history and archaeology have uncovered the sad fact that abortion and infanticide are not modern phenomena. Peoples across the centuries have terminated the life of children in the womb of their mothers and have exposed children already born to death. Whether it was to eliminate children with deformities, to conceal illicit sexual behavior, to avoid the expenses of raising a family, innocent lives have been discarded. Some societies such as the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans, the Carthaginians, and the Canaanites even tried to appease their false gods by sacrificing their children.

Among the original 13 colonies that seeded our great country, Philadel­phia was the fastest growing city. And it was not without its problems. Benja­min Franklin noted the increasing number of mentally ill and homeless people wandering the city streets. With the help of his Quaker friends, in 1751 he opened the doors of America’s first hospital to care for such people. Homelessness has been a part of our national story from its very beginning.

I am taking the opportunity of this Christmastide to offer you my special gratitude and encouragement for your lives as priests. While the secular world around us strips away its Christmas ornaments, we keep the light of Christmas burning brightly in our churches.

In 1970, Russian writer and activist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Stripped of his freedom, he had spent eight years in prisons and forced labor camps in the former Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Prize because he had made the world aware of the dehumanizing and repressive measures of the communist state.

Sumptuously robed, the Magi pay homage to the barely clad Jesus “ who … became poor although he was rich, so that, by his poverty, [we] might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).

Led by the bright light of a star, they have found their way through science to “ the true Light who enlightens everyone” (Jn 1:9). And now they make their act of faith.

On Sept. 6, 1620, one hundred and two pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England. They were seeking freedom to worship God according to their conscience and not according to the dictates of the state. After an arduous journey, they dropped anchor in the New World on Nov. 21, 1620. They had intended to go to Virginia but found themselves in present day New England. There they first set foot at Plymouth Rock.

In March 2017, Kevin Shaw, a student at Pierce College in Los Angeles, filed a lawsuit against the community college. The college administrators had stopped him from passing out copies of the U.S. Constitution in Spanish. They argued that he had not sought permission from them and that he was doing this outside the school’s free speech zone, a designated area the size of three parking spaces. Shaw argued that his civil right to free speech had been violated.

In The Golden Girls, Dorothy Zbornak fires off one caustic remark after another to the naïve Rose from St. Olaf, to Southern Belle Blanche, and to her feisty mom Sophia, a match for her sharp tongue. In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper constantly puts down his friends with his scientific retorts. And, womanizer Charlie Harper from Two and a Half Men comes in for a tie for sarcasm with sharp-tongued Max Black from 2 Broke Girls. From these characters comes an unrelenting barrage of sarcasm.

Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln both fought bravely on opposite sides of the Civil War. Both were convinced that they were doing what was right. Yet, no matter who won the war, slavery was evil before the war just as it was after the war. Hitler worked passionately for the evil cause that he espoused, just as Gandhi exerted his energies for the goals that he judged morally good. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist convicted of delivering babies and then killing them, steadfastly pursued his goals while Mother Teresa worked with untiring zeal to save the lives of the destitute and abandoned.

From the beginning of the 21st century, the English language has been undergoing radical surgery. Words once acceptable have been cut from common usage and branded as a cancer infecting society with sexist attitudes. Today, it is better to ask for a server in a restaurant and not for a waiter or waitress. These last two nouns might offend a person who identifies as neither. Better to say flight attendant and not steward or stewardess. First-year student, not freshman. Chairperson, not chairman. Firefighter, not fireman. Spokesperson, not spokesman. The list could go on.

With the end of silent movies in the early 1920s, Hollywood bounded into the glitz and glamour of the Golden Age of Movies. Names such as Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tyrone Power and Judy Garland still conjure images of beauty and brilliant acting. These and many others rose to stardom in Los Angeles, the City of the Angels. However, in so many instances, their ascent to fame left behind a trail of sordid scandals in the city of those less than angels. While the public viewing their movies were felt constrained by a puritanical morality, many of these actors and actresses were freely indulging in a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure.

One of the greatest paintings displayed in the Louvre is Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana. The artist depicts the first miracle of Jesus at the wedding of Cana in the midst of a sumptuous feast of food and music. Veronese’s vivacious style brilliantly joins the Biblical event and the contemporary. The artist places Christ at the very center of a lavish wedding feast of 16th century Venice, because Christ is at the center of every Christian marriage.

The Aug. 3rd mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, took the lives of 22 people and left 24 others injured. The very next day, a gunman fired on people enjoying themselves in the Oregon Historic District of Dayton, Ohio. He killed nine people and injured 27 others. In light of the mass shooting at the July 28th California Gilroy Garlic Festival, the May 31st Virginia Beach shooting, and the April 29th shooting at the University of North Carolina, the almost instantaneous succession of the El Paso and Dayton shootings has caused many Americans to question whether our country is getting more and more violent. And rightly so!

On Aug. 7, almost immediately after U.S. immigration authorities conducted a surprise raid on undocumented workers in several Mississippi factories, the image of a tearful Magdalena Gomez Gregorio was flashed before our eyes. This 11-year-old girl stood before the media, the nation and the world, sobbing and crying. She had been separated from her parents. The scene was broadcasted by a local television station and then picked up nationally.

In the immediate wake of the August 12, 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA, a wave of image-destroying activism swept the nation. The impulse to erase the shame of slavery led to the cathartic attempt to edit history. The University of Texas in Austin removed from its campus the images of Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, two Confederate generals as well as the Confederate cabinet member John Reagan. Duke University also removed a Robert E. Lee statue from its campus chapel.

At seven o’clock in the evening on August 18, 1996, Fr. Alejandro Pezet was celebrating Mass in the commercial center of Buenos Aires. After he finished distributing Holy Communion, a woman came up to tell him that she had found a discarded Host on a candleholder at the back of the church. Fr. Alejandro took the defiled Host and placed it in a container of water in the tabernacle.

Palermo, Sicily is at the very southern end of Italy. For millennia, Palermo has stood as the crossroads of civilizations. Traders, sailors, and invaders have landed on her shores and stayed. In this ancient city on the edge of Europe, baroque churches compete with open air markets to attract attention. Worth the visit is Palermo’s Palatine Chapel. It was built by Norman kings in the 12th century and houses some of the world’s most beautiful mosaics.