Mighty planet Earth / orbits to order, its greenest blues / attractive, to make our / life-giving aerial envelope / lawful, obedient, singing. / It turns...
Bruce Chatwin casts travel as an act of sacrifice, of “sloughing-off” the world and discovering the self anew. His work contains moments of aching spirituality.
Pope Francis commissions specially selected "Missionaries of Mercy" for Holy Year while record numbers of Italian Catholics are seeking "annulments" of their baptism
"Metaphysics." The word unexpectedly provided me with new reflections on the deepest meaning of the birth of Jesus and the Incarnation—the seen and the unseen.
For the men I met with for a biweekly seminar at a mid-level security prison, the biblical struggle with Satan is an everyday affair, expressed in just those terms.
Vatican confirms details of Francis's trip to Mexico; Francesca Chaouqui claims some cardinals want the pope dead; and globalization brings Christmas trees to Rome.
People with disabilities present us with a mystery, Jean Vanier once explained; they are the very presence of Jesus. There is something particular in their kindness.
Pope Francis opened the Jubilee Year of Mercy heralding "mercy before judgment" in the spirit of Vatican II. But did the liturgy symbolically contradict the message?
The importance of loving care for persons near the end of life is fundamental in Catholic teaching. But we've embraced a version of love without that obligation.
John Boyne’s new novel pays attention to the circumstances of priestly life in real-world Catholic Ireland, asking: How does one be a good priest under suspicion?
Anahid Nersessian argues that Romanticism dramatizes the “desirability of constraint.” Her book on how British Romantics imagined "utopia" powerfully does the same.
If today the world and the self are devalued, as Walker Percy has suggested, art—particularly the novel— can awaken the reader to their recovery from '4 p.m. blues.'
The church historically has not been kind to the idea of universal salvation. But there have always been theologians who dared to hope that hell would remain empty.
“the quality of mercy” / is a fierce and terrible beauty.../ it hungers in its waiting / then consumes our darkest brokenness / even as it invites us to its table...
Life teaches us that true gratitude is invoked spontaneously, by utterance, not by canned speech. Perhaps this is why I can’t easily summon memories of Thanksgiving.
Current students are taught by lay people. Our teachers were Benedictine monks, and teaching only begins to describe the role those virtuous men played in our lives.
I will wear sweatshirts with bright appliqués / Of owls, and work for Head Start. Saturdays //
Will be the food bank; Sundays, church at ten. / Evenings I'll...
Arch after arch set in the brick, / Rosettes along them, pebble-thick; // Draped, helmed, armed figures, scribes with scrolls, / And eagles in their leafy holes:...
Judas takes hold of Christ, pressing himself on him: arm, beard, lips. A soldier in gleaming armor goes for Christ’s neck. A young man flees: John the Evangelist.
As a result of a recent vogue for feeling culturally embattled, the word “Christian” now is seen less as identifying an ethic, and more as identifying a demographic.
Preachers have told stories in a variety of ways over the centuries. But preaching in the U.S. has seen a shift from typology to illustration as the prevailing mode.
Does Montaigne resemble the contemporary essayist who writes about faith? The short answer is that he does not—at least not in easily recognizable ways.
The best-selling author and founding pastor of the House for All Sinners and Saints Lutheran congregation talks about unsaintly saints, purity codes, and more.
Francis's encyclical contains a fundamental lesson: We are not the source of meaning or value; if we believe we are, we exchange the real world for a virtual one.
Vatican announces who will and will not be attending round two of the Synod; Hungarian cardinal silent on refugee crisis; Heated debates over paving stones in Rome.
Spanning almost James Agee's entire lifetime, these letters between author and his priest cover alcohol, God, poetry, childhood, and a “mouthful of sweet potato.”
At the Fifth Station of the Cross / I am asked to “accept in particular / the death that is destined for me” / Which I must keep myself from guessing...
Dying is an adult activity. This has been one of its bigger surprises for me. I find I need to leave behind the child side of myself to go where I now need to go.
One of Merton’s gifts as a writer was the ability to insinuate himself into the lives of those he'd never met and remain a personal presence decades after his death.
When the priest said “The Mass is ended, alleluia,” she burst out laughing. As a guest at Mass, she sensed the beauty of Catholic worship, and also its strangeness.
Asleep, she has no idea she is old. // She’s running uphill, no lightfoot, but quite fast /
past the houses and driveways of family friends / toward the higher...
Laura Swan does a good job of explaining both the beguines’ spiritual practices in the context of their own times and how their continuing legacy affects us today.
The African-American Christian tradition has been vital in our history for reasons of the spirit but also as a reminder that the Bible is a subversive book.
Restoring the order of the sacraments of initiation for children of Catholic parents might help us see adolescent catechesis as a worthy endeavor in its own right.
The core liberal conviction about the Supreme Court still rings true: it is most constructive when power is used to vindicate the rights of beleaguered minorities.
