“The ways of the Lord are not comfortable. But we were not created for comfort, but for greatness.” – Pope Benedict XVI When faced with choices in life, do you tend to pursue what is most noble — what ...

The story of the origin of the Christmas creche rests with the very holy man, St. Francis of Assisi. In the year 1223, St. Francis, a deacon, was visiting the town of Grecio to celebrate Christmas.

Vatican II in Session, Public Domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. “The appearance of the church in the modern era shows that in a completely new way it has become a church of heathens, and ...

The stench of their burning is with us yet. The stakes and gibbets where witches perished by the tens of thousands during early modern times still stand in popular imagination. For historians, the ...

You can’t get too far into Catholic sacred music without running into “neumes,” those little square notes on four lines that look beautiful if oddly antiquated. Most people have no idea how to read ...

The official process for declaring someone a saint is called canonization. Prior to the year 1234, the Church did not have a formal process as such. Usually martyrs and those recognized as holy were ...

To assess the Inquisition properly, we must distinguish between the principle which undergirded it, and the actions of those responsible for implementing the principle. DISCUSSION: Catholics have a ...

After providing a survey of the complex question of capital punishment Cardinal Dulles writes that: “The Pope and the bishops, using their prudential judgment, have concluded that in contemporary ...

As a Judge and a Defender of the Bond within our respective dioceses’ Catholic Marriage Tribunal, we encounter misunderstandings every day about the declaration of nullity (or annulment) process.

The newly published Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church dedicates one of its first chapters to the institution of the family, described as “the vital cell of society.” The opening number ...

Many people believe that faith and reason, or religion and science, are locked in an irreconcilable war of attrition against one another. One must choose to be a person of learning, science, and ...

The contemporary crisis of freedom is at root a crisis of truth. In our own day, John Paul II has clearly demonstrated the inseparable connection between freedom and truth. In the course of his long ...