Scandal is developing around an American woman living in Ireland who claims to be a Catholic mystic but hides her true identity, misleads people, takes in millions of dollars and is protected by influential people. For the past several years, Kathryn Ann Clarke, going under the name of “Anne a lay apostle” has been travelling [...]
Eve Tushnet is among the most promising young Catholic intellectuals in America. She is a student of art and culture whose writing touches on sexuality, personhood, and faith. Published in journals secular and religious, she was profiled in the New York Times as a “gay Catholic voice against same-sex marriage.” This is the first of [...]
In one of his homilies, Fr. Mitch Pacwa of EWTN told the story of a group of seminarians who visited a silversmith to see how silver is refined so that they could understand better the references in Scripture about the necessity that we be refined like silver refined by a silversmith. The seminarians watched as [...]
Imagine someone coming up to you and without hesitation telling you: “I desire to save your soul.” This is exactly what St. John Bosco would do in his attempt to rescue the kids of Turin, Italy from the depths of despair. He would make his point very clear to the youths he would encounter in the [...]
As the sun sends red and blue hues through the stained-glass windows into a convent chapel in the Chicago area, a dozen Dominican Sisters of the Immaculate Conception enter the rooom for their morning prayers. Their voices blend into invocations of praise as they chant the Liturgy of the Hours. Their white habits with black [...]
You may think you have a religious vocation, but do you? A recent post on a Catholic social media website warned of three faulty motivations of those who were attracted to religious life. The post said that the candidate might see religious life as 1) a refuge from a hostile world, 2) an attraction to [...]
The Holy Scriptures contain examples of simple, even lowly men and women, who said a heroic yes to God. And always it cost them dear. Think of the humiliation Noah underwent as he built that ark and his neighbors laughed at him. Think of Moses who at age 80 was called away from home and [...]
During the season of Advent the readings at Mass include passages about John the Baptist, the humble inhabitant of the Judean desert who possessed nothing but the truth and owed no one but the God who created him. He was fearless in his preaching. He discomfited all in their complacency, but to all he gave [...]
There are days and then there are days. Have you ever felt like there was so much to say and do, and not enough time, concentration, or energy to accomplish half of your expectations? Lately, during my daily chores, blog ideas, article notes, and lessons pop into my head and I rarely write them down. [...]
Blessed John Paul II gave the Church many beautiful gifts; among them were the Year of the Rosary (2002-2003) and the Year of the Eucharist (2004-2005). In doing so, he encouraged priests, religious and laity to use these gifts and harness the spiritual power and strength that flows from them. Both he and his successor [...]
That human beings were created to be creators, to work, is undeniable. The anthropological concept of homo faber, man the tool-maker, attests to this basic aspect of what it means to be human. From a Christian perspective, we confess that human beings make things in a way that imitates their Maker. While God creates “out [...]
“It was nothing dramatic,” says Dr. Karl E. Blake of Wexford, Pennsylvania, retired surgeon and member of the World War II generation, “but it was important, and no one has written about it, at least that I’ve seen.” I got an unexpected call from Dr. Blake last Memorial Day, mid-afternoon, after just returning from the [...]
Thomas Joseph Dudley, USMC died in Afghanistan during combat on July 7, 2011. He was 29 years old, married, and had three children. He was laid to rest in Rock Hill, SC on July 15, 2011 amid an outpouring of patriotism and support for his young family. During Staff Sergeant Dudley’s funeral, his young son, in [...]
Coach Jerry Sandusky, the now notorious pedophile, and his boss, coach Joe Paterno, have some Catholic background. Paterno played football for a Catholic high school in New York. The New York Times states that Paterno is a “practicing Catholic.” The most I could ascertain about Sandusky is that his paternal grandparents emigrated from Poland. To [...]
In economics, the first lesson I teach my pupils is the lesson of things that are seen and things that are not seen. Actions have some effects that are readily apparent and others are overlooked or not perceived. It’s the same with our military veterans. We see the obvious price they’ve paid—the time they spent [...]
“Just existing became what was important,” says 87-year-old Frank Kravetz of Pittsburgh, captive of the “hell-hole” that was Nuremberg Prison Camp. “Yet even as I struggled with the day-to-day sadness and despair, I never once had any regrets that I signed up to serve.” An extended tour of Nazi camps as a wounded POW scratching [...]
I was privileged this afternoon [written October 26] to spend time with Sister Margherita Marchione, the so-called “fighting nun,” who has spent 50 years battling to defend the truth about the life and activity of Pope Pius XII, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, during the time of the Second World War. Sister Margherita, who [...]
Many, many years ago, people who wanted to live more fully for God — to know Him more intimately in their daily lives and see themselves in His more truthful light – would often seek guidance from an Ascetic who was, more than likely, living in the desert. I find Asceticism fascinating. It was almost as [...]
Most Catholics have heard about Saint Don Bosco and the order he founded based on the spirituality and charism of Saint Francis de Sales, today called the Salesians, which are divided up into Fathers, Brothers and Sisters. The idea of founding such a religious community within the Catholic Church was primarily to help young boys, [...]
Jesus said “Behold, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28-20). In all the centuries since His resurrection, with the rising and the setting of the daily sun, Christ has descended to be with us, always. Every time a priest has proclaimed “This is my body…. This is [...]
Andrew Sullivan was a member of Miles Jesu for 28 years, a priest for seven years and served as General Secretary of the Society of Miles Jesufor four years. Miles Jesu, a Catholic religious congregation underwent a visitation by the Vicariate of Rome in 2007 and later a Commissioner was appointed to take control and re-found [...]
We are all on a journey — the journey of this life. It begins in the mystery of “not being” before we are conceived, and seems to end, humanly speaking, in the “not being” of death. From dust to dust. But faith — not precisely scientific, repeatable, experimentally verifiable knowledge, but a type of knowledge [...]
In the tradition of Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, cross-cultural comparisons can sometimes provide insights to which we, as citizens, might be blind. A recent visitor to our parish in metropolitan Seattle, Father Kiiza Justus of Uganda, granted me an interview.[i] . Uganda – “the pearl of Africa” – has the youngest population in the [...]
What struck me the most about Mother Teresa when I saw her for the first time was her diminutive size and the rounded hump on her back. It actually startled me for a moment. I had not known she was so short. I immediately attributed the hump to her constant stooping to care for the [...]
