Search

Catholic priest and theologian Hans Kiing, the renowned scholar and prolific writer who had lived with Parkinson's disease, macular degeneration and arthritis since 2013, died April 6 at his home [...]

'A retreat is a time to do nothing for as long as you can,' according to Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who attended many, directed several and complained about a [...]

NEW YORK Thomas Merton--orphaned at 6 and at 15 by the deaths of his parents--harbored a premonition of his end some five years before he was electrocuted by a faulty [...]

APPRECIATION 'God rest ye merry, gentleman,' the Christian world, the South African world, the human rights world, and the justice and peace world could all intone while farewelling one of [...]

CHICAGO -- New Ways Ministry, the 40-year-old advocacy group for LGBT Catholics, brought its eighth national symposium here April 28-30 with what one presenter called feelings of both 'hope and [...]

When the bishops at the Second Vatican Council issued the Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life 50 years ago, they intended it to be a guide for [...]

Can't afford the airfare to Goa, St. Francis Xavier's burial grounds in offshore Western India? Not up to a 100-mile hike or bike trip required of pilgrims to the tomb [...]

Water--why worry? New Jersey is blessed with 40 inches of rain on average each year. Water is everywhere. Yet the state's magnificent shoreline is receding, its reservoirs are shrinking, salt [...]

No matter what word is used to describe them, the population of prodigal sons and daughters--those baptized but away from the Catholic church--is huge. Of the nation's 65 million U.S. [...]

Newcomers to Barry University will be forgiven for thinking they have arrived at the United Nations, especially if their first visit takes them into the new student center whose atrium [...]

In his half-century of priesthood in the Milwaukee archdiocese, Fr. Paul Esser presided over scores of second collections. His finding: 'No one ever returned to tell parishioners how the money [...]

Richard Rohr does not have a bumper big enough for his message, what he terms life's 'five essential truths of initiation.' If he did, it would read: 'Life is hard. [...]

What college-bound freshman has not heard a parent, teacher or school counselor intone: 'Your college years are the best of your life.' Even if not all students believe it, all [...]

I never intended that my life be in any way enmeshed in the Holocaust. Born toward the end of World War II, I have no memory of when I first [...]

'I was a stranger and you welcomed me'--or didn't. This slogan might not be sewn on the vestments of the dark-skinned or foreign-accented priest in your parish, but it might [...]

Call them two old men of the cloth. Call them gurus, authors and teachers. Call them spiritual men who have ignited movements around themselves--even if neither sought to. One is [...]

Increasingly law schools that call themselves Catholic are raising questions about the nature of their Catholic identity. Is it even desirable to have such an identity? Does the linking of [...]

Gary Eiseman hardly looks the mother hen type. Tall, burly and not bashful, it's difficult to imagine him worrying about young adults getting to university safely. But he does. 'I [...]

An hour before her Aunt Amelia died in September, Gisela Webb stood at her bedside, rubbing her arm and singing 'Tantum Ergo.' Webb's cousin, the daughter of the dying woman, [...]

We become what we gaze on, St. Clare told her community of praying women in 13th century Italy 'Gaze upon him. Consider him. Contemplate him,' Clare instructed her followers in [...]

What do House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and retired congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro have in common? Besides being Democrats, all are graduates of Catholic [...]

Lynne Smith describes herself as a new monastic for the new millennium. Smith is a Presbyterian Benedictine--not just a baptized Presbyterian, but an ordained minister in the Presbyterian church. She [...]

Fifteen decades have passed since the Oblates arrived in south Texas. Known as the 'the Cavalry of Christ,' these early missionaries from France rode hundreds of miles across the Lower [...]

The journey from St. Cloud, Minn., to Homa Bay, Kenya, takes a minimum of 20 hours under the best conditions. Once inside the country, Kenya offers few attractions -- other [...]

NEW HAVEN, CONN. * Speakers at a weekend colloquium billed Fr. Henri Nouwen as 'the most popular of spiritual writers and guides of the last half century,' as some 170 [...]

LITTLE FERRY, NJ. * When the water is above your knees and you are sitting on tables for three hours awaiting rescue to higher ground, 'there ground. 'there are no [...]

NASHVILLE, TENN. * Linda Polk does not expect 'felonism,' the word she coined in 2011, to be designated the most used new word in 2019. But could it hurt? She [...]

Marching along New York's Fifth Avenue in the 2009 St. Patrick's Day Parade, many a Sister and a Daughter of Charity heard onlookers shout: 'Thank you for teaching me to [...]

UNITED NATIONS The short, round, elderly man in the gray, striped suit greets diplomats, opens a conference on world hunger, holds a midafternoon press conference and presides daily over the [...]

QUITO, ECUADOR. Can education alleviate poverty? One man who has lived with the poor of this South American capital believes that it can. His name is John Halligan. The 78-year-old, [...]

Taking an unpopular stand doesn't always land one in the doghouse. Br. Kenneth Hoagland displayed a file shelf in his principal's office containing 5,000 letters he received in 2005 following [...]

Missionary Franciscan Sr. Pauline O'Brien has no problem describing the role the Social Apostolate of Savannah plays in the life of this city. 'We grow with the gaps,' she said, [...]

Keith Helmuth has had reason to cry over the ecological landscape of Earth, his common home, these last 70-plus years. From the window of a jetliner on a clear, moonlit [...]

DALLAS -- 'Love gives everything gladly, everything again and again, daily,' wrote Blessed Theresa Gerhardinger, who founded the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Regensburg, Germany, in 1833. Her own [...]

Sacred. Heart Br. Ronald Hingle is upbeat about the future of religious vocations. Though overall numbers may not be growing by leaps and bounds, they are rising, said Hingle, who [...]

Wayzata may not be on everyone's resort radar, but on its Web site, the Minneapolis suburb of 4,113 people boasts: 'It's as good as the good life in Minnesota gets.' [...]

'I left Earth three times. I found no place else to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth.' --Wally Schirra (1923-2007) Retired astronaut Wally Schirra, reflecting on his missions aboard [...]

Joyce Springer is no run-of-the-mill Sunday catechetical teacher. Her religious education classes abound with aromas, tastes, colors, movement and high-octane participation. When she pops popcorn and gets children to reflect [...]

When the history of religious women in New Orleans is written; its first 300 years will not lack drama. The city has seen flees, the Civil War, slavery, race riots [...]

In certain midtown Manhattan elevators, just coupling the words 'religion' and 'lawyering' is enough to stop conversations, turn heads and draw comments of disbelief and intense curiosity. Amy Uelman knows [...]

Patti Morin saw it coming. Already in 1970 as a junior at the Academy of the Holy Cross in Kensington, Md., she had to imagine a Catholic parish without a [...]

You're pregnant, unmarried, a teenager. You're pregnant with an abusive spouse. You're pregnant, living without a man and already have children whom you can barely feed, clothe and shelter. You've [...]

By age 47, Jean Farmer already took medications for high blood pressure, was diagnosed as pre-diabetic and wore a patch to help alleviate her menopause symptoms. Besides raising a teenage [...]

Sue Clark's pet ministry started serendipitously in an Oshkosh, Wis., restaurant five years ago. Clark, a traveling sales representative at the time, overheard an elderly woman tell her son how [...]

'God is so happy. We're all here on Washington Square worshiping him,' said Fr. John McGuire. The Dominican priest and native New Yorker has directed Catholic campus ministry at New [...]

For 20 years Franciscan Sr. Florence Deacon ran the Model United Nations program at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, where she is a professor of history Often she would ask [...]

Like the word 'blonde' or 'mother-in-law,' just say, 'New Jersey' and laughter erupts. The state that has proven fodder for funny men for decades gave comedians a boost in 1987 [...]

They jumped rope for Africa. They sold lemonade at the Rye, N.Y., suburban train station. They donated money at Christmas to build a school for African children instead of using [...]

The Sr. Thea Bowman Middle School in central Harlem may be the only school in the nation whose students, all girls, have to climb a mountain to gain admission. What [...]

Passionist Fr. Leo Gorman knows that many of those tuning in to 'The Sunday Mass' live alone. That's why in exchanging a kiss of peace with his far-flung audience, he [...]