Well, there’s an obvious place to start this edition of “Weeks in Review” … the cry room at your local parish, which Joe Simmons would like to thank parents for not using. Based on the response in the comments and on Facebook and Twitter, this one struck a nerve. As Joe put it, there’s a joy to hearing little kids in church, and gratitude for the parents who are willing to risk that joyful noise: “Your ‘yes’ to kids helps the rest of us say ‘yes’ to the God who chooses the messiness of the human condition.”
And then there’s the other obvious place to start: TJP’s resignation and pre-conclave roundup.
Habemus papal news!
- New to the pages of TJP, Pau Vidal, writing from a refugee camp in Africa, offers us some insights into interpreting the papal resignation from Benedict’s Ash Wednesday remarks, “imagining a community of followers of Jesus – a Church – from which no one is excluded.”
- Michael Rossmann, also writing from Africa, on what his Tanzanian students say an African pope would mean to them.
- We’ve also republished Fr. James Martin’s “Habemus Me” from America magazine, suggesting one way to figure out the answer to “What did the Jesuit say when he was elected pope?”
- And finally, if you’re more focused on trying to game the conclave:
- Peter Folan on what makes for papabile autentico
- And on the latest TJPodcat, our own contributors’ papal prognostications
- Peter Folan on what makes for papabile autentico
TJP on Policy
- Brian Konzman points us at a piece, worth reading, about the links between poverty and incarceration
- If you’re not keeping up with the non-stop sequester news, Nathaniel Romano can help you get up to speed
- Mario Powell isn’t filibustering on the issue of drones — but he is asking whether or not a moral compass might be a better resource than remote killing machines
Throwbacks You Can’t Take With You
… or some of TJP’s recurring features:
- Two throwback Thursdays from Vinny Marchionni: on the Oscars and the fifteenth anniversary of The Big Lebowski
- Perry Petrich and You Can’t Take It With You bid goodbye, among others, to a singer of the civil rights era and a writer who inspired the Occupy movement
A couple of laughs …
- Quang Tran got introduced to the Late Nite Catechism
- Speaking for the clean-shaven, Eric Ramirez tackles the “Beards of Ministry”
… and a bit more of Lent
- The spirituality of putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, even when your taste seems to outstrip talent — Jeff Sullivan responds to some of Ira Glass’s advice on bearing fruit in creative work
- Tim O’Brien returns to some of the poems of John Donne, “who knew the depths of human love for God and others…and taught the rest of us about it as well”
- We don’t get to start over until we’ve started by first giving up, says Brendan Busse
- Matt Spotts, asking (and answering): “Who taught you to go deep? Who dared you to crack open the secret vaults of your heart?”
And while you’re catching up with all of that, we’ll be catching our breath, praying for the Church and cardinals during the conclave, and getting ready to read everything we can about and by our next Pope. When we do, you can be sure to read all about it here at TJP.
