I met Fr. Anthony Schueller, SSS for the first time at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City, where I was serving as Director of Religious Education and as deacon, in 1993. During our brief conversation on that occasion, he invited me to submit three articles for Emmanuel to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary […]
Author: Owen F. Cummings
Eucharistic Teachings · March / April 2021
Ernest Skublics and the Sacraments, ‘In Piam Memoriam’
What is the connection between the sacraments and the Trinity and why is it important? Ernest Skublics (1936-2019), Theologian Ernest Skublics was a very fine liturgical and sacramental theologian. Just a few weeks after his death on April 9, 2019, his final book Plunged into the Trinity: Our Sacramental Becoming, Essays in Sacramental Ecclesiology was […]
From the Archives · March / April 2021
Eucharistic Absence
What can we do about the increasing number of people who rarely come to celebrate the Eucharist, who seem to live quite well without it? Can those who deeply appreciate this sacrament make a difference here? In a recent collection of his poetry the Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney included a piece about […]
From the Archives · January / February 2021
Michael Hurley, Ecumenical Pioneer
Irish Jesuit Michael Hurley dedicated his life to healing the divisions among Christians. He challenged the Catholic Church of his day to move beyond fear and to be an active player in the work of restoring church unity. Unity is for mission and for love; lacking unity, the church has nothing to say to a […]
From the Archives · March / April 2020
Eucharist as Theodicy
This article was originally published in Emmanuel in 2011, issue 117, number 2. Christian thought about suffering cannot be reduced to explaining it away, in however philosophically sophisticated a way. It must rather embrace the fact that suffering lies at the heart of its formative story. (Frances M. Young1) Our opening words come from the […]
Eucharist: Living & Evangelizing · November / December 2019
From Heart and Soul to Stone and Mortar
The anniversary of a great cathedral is a reminder of the importance of signs of God’s presence and grace in our world. This year, 2019, was the thirtieth anniversary of my ordination to the permanent diaconate, and six of these years were spent serving in the Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City. In September […]
Eucharistic Teachings · September / October 2019
Musings on the Church and Theology
The Church is changing and changing fast. What will the future Catholic Church be like? “The temptation is found, in present controversy and in our interpretation of the past, to clarify complexity by dividing the wheat from the cockle, the light from the dark, ‘us’ from ‘them.’” (Nicholas Lash1) “The Roman Catholic Church is not […]
Eucharist: Living & Evangelizing · September / October 2018
Thoughts About Catechesis in Today’s Church
Catechists share the faith they love, as well as the person of Jesus Christ, with a new generation of seekers and believers. But how do they do this effectively today? Catechists Are Theologians Sometimes theologians speak and write as though they were living on another planet, speaking and writing in a language other than human! […]
Eucharistic Teachings · July / August 2018
Remembering Paul VI (1963-1978)
Giovanni Battista Montini was a conciliar bishop before the council. As pope, he was charged with the task of implementing Vatican II’s program and shepherding the Church through turbulent times. “When Cardinal Montini became Paul VI, this meant that one of the most thoughtful and determined of the moderately progressive conservatives was now pope.” (Adrian […]
Eucharistic Teachings · January / February 2018
The Oxford Movement, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and the Eucharist
John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey in the nineteenth century and Geoffrey Rowell in the twentieth stand as great ecumenical witnesses. “Pusey’s sacramental mysticism sometimes drew near to ecstasy as he used biblical imagery to tell of dying and rising with Christ in baptism and continuing in relationship with that body of Christ through the […]