One moment, people were cheering, anxiously anticipating their friends crossing the finish line in the Boston marathon. The next moment, stunned and bloody, they were fleeing in fright from harms’ way. Chechen-born Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokha had turned their would-be victory shouts into victims’ screams of horror and pain.

Recently in Pennsylvania, members of our military attended an Army Reserve briefing program warning them to be on the lookout for terrorists. Military personnel were told that they are prohibited from taking leadership roles in any organization that the Pentagon considers ‘extremist.’ Furthermore, they are forbidden to distribute the organization’s literature.

[On Saturday, April 6, 2013, in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s call for the Year of Faith, our diocese held its first Diocesan Catechetical Convention in forty years. I offer the following reflection as an aid to understanding the true nature and purpose of all catechesis.]

Not many news reports carried the story. But somehow it was able to leak. A professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton was teaching the course called Intercultural Communications. In one exercise to demonstrate the deep-seated emotions that surround issues, the professor asked the students to write Jesus’ name in big letters on a paper, place the paper on the ground and then stomp on the name of Jesus. Ryan Rotela, a junior, refused.

Habemus Papam! With these traditional words, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Protodeacon of the Sacred College of Cardinals, announced to the world, “We have a Pope!” And, do we have a Pope! He wasted no time in taking the world by surprise.