By Russell Shaw
Promoting international religious liberty is one of those things that America ought to be doing for its own sake, but doing it would also serve U.S. national security interests as an anti-terrorism tool. Yet indifference to religion at the upper reaches of the U.S. political culture has been a serious obstacle to that for years and remains so today.
2/5/18
Reading Time
3
min
By Fr. Robert Wagner
There is a flurry of activity in the passage we hear this week from the Gospel of Mark. Preceding this Sunday's reading, Jesus cast a demon from a man in the synagogue of Capernaum. Our Gospel begins when Jesus left the synagogue and entered the home of Peter, where, encountering the apostle's mother-in-law with a fever, He healed her.
2/1/18
Reading Time
3
min
By Fr. Kenneth Doyle
What does the church teach about what happens after someone dies? The reason I bring it up is that often when I attend a Catholic funeral, I hear the priest say in a homily that the deceased is now in heaven and suffering no more. But how does that fit in with the church's teaching on purgatory?
2/1/18
Reading Time
2
min
By Fr. Kenneth Doyle
Is it my husband's and my responsibility to get these children to Mass each Sunday? We have taken them at times, but now they are coming up with any excuse not to go.
2/1/18
Reading Time
2
min
By Christina Capecchi
When it came time to interview prospective sailors for his expedition across Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton had clear-cut criteria. He had to pick the right men for his journey to the bottom of the world, a news-making attempt to be the first to cross the continent via the coldest place on Earth: the South Pole.
2/1/18
Reading Time
3
min
By Elizabeth Foss
When I give to someone else the rare gift of genuine presence, I give them the essence of Christian compassion. Compassion calls us to suffer with someone, to enter into whatever it is that causes pain.
2/1/18
Reading Time
3
min
By Russell Shaw
“We are at the limit of what is licit.” In early December, Pope Francis offered that assessment of nuclear deterrence during a question and answer session with reporters on the plane back to Rome from Bangladesh.
1/30/18
Reading Time
3
min
By Mary Beth Bonacci
Last year, I spent a raucous New Year’s Eve in San Francisco celebrating with some of my oldest and dearest friends against the backdrop of one of the most exciting cities in the world.
1/30/18
Reading Time
4
min
We owe it to all of these beautiful people in our lives to break our contempt habit, to decisively kill off whatever contempt may be prowling the precincts of our hearts.
1/30/18
Reading Time
3
min
God’s healing mercy